ON STAGE

THE BALLAD OF CHESTERTON
A Chesterton ballad, a reading of a text by Hadjadj, tango dances, and folk music.

In line with its vocation to rediscover forgotten texts, this year the Meeting will present G.K. Chesterton the poet, with his Ballad of the White Horse, published in 1911. Massimo Popolizio will be the legendary English King Alfred who battled the Danes, barbarians, and pagans. Chesterton sets the clash in the Valley of the White Horse, named for a half-mile-long equine form on the hill above, formed in prehistoric times by trenches filled with white chalk. In a festival every seven years, local people scour it to keep it visible. He uses the White Horse as an allegory for the tradition, care, beauty, and hope that a people must cultivate in order to keep moss and weeds from growing and obliterating reason and civilization.
An inaugural festival, created and directed by Ambrogio Sparagna and Davide Rondoni, will feature Neapolitan songs, dances, verses from Dante, mandolins, tambourines, and shawms, in recounting Italy and its 150th anniversary.
For classical music lovers, the Meeting offers not only the Korean Kim Dong Kyu on piano, performing, among others, works by Chopin, Scriabin, Liszt, and Beethoven, but also The Teatro Regio of Parma presenting an anthology of opera arias. Dance will be present with the tango and with Irish dances, and, for those who love Irish folk music, the Chieftans will be playing. There will also be presentations of the CDs Sketches of You by Riro Maniscalco. In addition to the Chesterton Ballad, theater performances at the Meeting include a work on Job in which Andrea Carabelli brings alive a text by Fabrice Hadjadj; Sculpting Words, a homage to Eugenio Corti; and The Penultimate Supper by and with comedian Paolo Cevoli. Film will feature Welcome and Men of God, and the award gala for the Rimini Meeting Film Festival.