Tribute to Giuseppe Verdi - Film Review of the 2023 Caracalla Festival

After the world premiere of Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, the 2023 Caracalla Festival celebrates the art of the great composer from Busseto with a film festival of little-known movies inspired by his figure and works.

The event, hosted in the Teatro del Portico, in front of the Temple of Jupiter in the Baths of Caracalla, is scheduled into three evenings with 6 screenings and kicks off on 26 June with Giuseppe Verdi nella vita e nella gloria (The Life and Works of Verdi) of Giuseppe De Liguoro, a 1913 biopic on the composer with the new music of the Roman composer and electronic musician Vincenzo Ramaglia. Following is Macbeth Neo Film Opera by Daniele Campea, in the presence of the director, a 2017 production in which Verdi's music accompanies the famous Shakespearean tragedy in an expressionist version against a dreamlike and post-industrial background.

The program continues on 29 June with the historical version of Verdi's masterpiece La Traviata, staged in the Rai studios in Milan in December 1954, directed by Franco Enriquez with the musical conduction of Nino Sanzogno, and on 3 July with Il Trovatore by Carmine Gallone, a 1949 film adaptation of the homonymous work; digitized and made screenable specifically for the occasion, the film represents a testimony of great historical value for the Capital, thanks to the participation of the Rome Opera Orchestra conducted by Gabriele Santini. De Liguoro, Emmer, Carpignano and Gallone's movies are presented to the public in collaboration with the CSC-Cineteca Nazionale.

Luciano Emmer's Sulle orme di Verdi and Vittorio Carpignano's La terra del melodramma anticipate the screenings on 29 June and 3 July; the two rare documentaries from 1947, recently restored by the CSC-Cineteca Nazionale, recall places and stories of Italian melodramma with historical images of Giuseppe Verdi's birthplace in Roncole di Busseto and Villa of Sant'Agata.