The Neapolitan context immediately gives a charm and a connotation that definitely lacked the Teatro Margherita in Bari. It is actually the former church of St. Mary Donnaregina Vecchia, a church, hosting one of the most important frescoes of the city of Naples, built in the fourteenth century for the Poor Clare nuns of the same convent. Unlike Bari here the scene is set in the apse, in front of the audience while at its sides like two arms that surround the audience there were the “Giullari di Dio” of the Parish of St. Clare in Naples who as the mourning of Bari Vecchia said Christian prayers. The place is perfect for the performance. The set-up was easy but at the same time spectacular. The agreement between Namjoo and Faraualla was maximum, to the limit of perfection. Compared to the "Bari" version on this occasion we could find something new: a solo song by Antonella Morea sitting among the “Giullari di Dio”. The lonely song of Morea is a poignant "Fenesta ca lucive", a nineteenth-century Neapolitan song whose music is attributed to the school of Antonio Zingarelli, almost certainly to Bellini. The theme of the song is the death of a girl while her fiancé is away for a long time. The lack of news of the groom do to consider him dead and the death of the girl is presumably attributable to pain for his presumed death. In the song there are some symbolic elements connected in any way to the performance of Neshat: a window (a communication symbol) that in the song is closed precisely to indicate the lack of communication that characterizes the death or the lamp as a symbol of the soul that lives beyond death, of life continuing in another dimension.
The third adaptation of this performance I saw was at Teatro Cavallerizza in Reggio Emilia in November 2016. The installation remembers of the first version in Bari but in this case there weren’t the mourning women on the stage. The local contribution has been given by D’Esperanto Duo ( Paolo Simonazzi and Emanuele Reverberi) who played the instrumental version (by the Medieval instrument ghironda and a bagpipe) of “Dies Irae” according to the Monchio delle Corti tradition and “Crétiens reveillez-vous” from the French tradition.
Passage through the world with its composite structure and incorporation of local characteristics from the places in which it has been shown is a performance that nourishes and stimulates deep emotions by touching the "passages" most important of the human condition. A melting pot of universal instinctive emotions. An incentive to growth. A promise of rebirth.
Shoja Azari, Mohsen Namjoo, Shirin Neshat, PASSAGE THROUGH THE WORLD (2015)
Photo credit: Luciano Romano.