'Reappropriating' Romeo and Juliet: the Play Restored to Italy. (19th April 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Paravano, Cristina
• Is Part Of: New theatre quarterly. Volume 34:Part 2=Number 134(2018)
• Page Start: 186
• Page End: 194
• Publication Date: 2018-04-19
• Subjects: Shakespeare, -- musical adaptation, -- Riccardo Cocciante, -- Pasquale Panella, -- Italian cultural identity; Theater -- Periodicals; 792.05
• DOI: 10.1017/S0266464X18000088
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0266-464X

Abstract

Abstract : The story of Romeo and Juliet has been reinvented in a number of musical adaptations. One of the boldest and most sophisticated attempts is Giulietta e Romeo (2007), a two-act Italian production with the music of the French-Italian singer and composer Riccardo Cocciante and with a libretto by the poet Pasquale Panella. As Cristina Paravano argues in this article, the work offers a unique opportunity to rethink Shakespeare and Italy from a suggestive contemporary Italian perspective. What distinguished this production from other musical adaptations was its strong intertextuality on a musical and textual level. By embracing forms of re-creation and re -vision, it created a profoundly and intrinsically Italian version of the story, drawing on and combining Italian musical, literary, and cultural traditions. The result was a combination of Cocciante's pop-rock background, contemporary pop-electronic music, operatic conventions and techniques, and Italian musical tradition, all filtered through the memory of Nino Rota's tunes written for Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet . On the other hand, Panella's libretto taps into Shakespeare's Italian sources: while keeping to the Shakespearean plot line, the author adds interpolations from Luigi da Porto's Istoria novellamente ritrovata di due nobili amanti (1530) and Matteo Bandello's novella (1554, 2: IX). The present paper evaluates how this innovative rendition enacts a further exchange between England and Italy so that metaphorically Italy 'reappropriates'' its own story.