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Enrique Irazoqui e Il Vangelo secondo Matteo di Pasolini
Text by Guido Barbieri with Fabiana Piersanti
Flute
Massimo Mercelli
Soloists of the Orchestra Filarmonica Vittorio Calamani
Violins
Giacomo Coletti
Tommaso Santini
Viola
Arianna Bloise
Clavicembalo
Filippo Proietti
Cello
Anna Camporini
Contrabass
Giovanni Ludovisi
Narranting voice
Guido Barbieri
Program
Johann Sebastian Bach
Suite n. 2 in si minore BWV1067
per flauto e orchestra
Michael Nyman
Flauto solo
Giovanni Sollima
Contrafactus per flauto e archi
Program notes
This is the story of a Jesus who never existed, a stone Jesus, with eyes of ink and black eyebrows, born among the Sassi of Matera and who died at the end of a film. This is the true story, in fact, of Enrique Irazoqui, the young Catalan anarchist and trade unionist whom Pier Paolo Pasolini, by chance and then by choice, selected for the lead role in one of his most controversial films: The Gospel according to St. Matthew, filmed in southern Italy between 1963 and 1964. It was a coincidence – or rather a synchronicity – that brought Enrique and Pier Paolo together in Rome, just as Pasolini was looking for a face, a body, a look for the Jesus he had in mind. And he realised that this 19-years-old boy, a Basque father and Italian mother of Jewish origin, who had recently arrived in Italy to collect funds for the clandestine university union in Barcelona, was his ideal Christ. “I have found Jesus, Jesus is in my house” – Pasolini said immediately after meeting him. He was not an actor, however, and would never have been an actor, even if his face appears, never as a main character, in about ten films shot in Spain and Italy in the following years. In fact, his existence followed very different paths. He lost his passport and was expelled from university for participating – according to the Franco regime – in a “communist propaganda” film, but in 1969 he managed to reach Paris, where he graduated with a degree in Economics. Then, thanks to the support of some Italian intellectuals such as Elsa Morante and Natalia Ginzburg, he moved to the United States where he studied and taught Spanish literature in several universities. Passionate about chess, he played professionally, and during a competition between the French and Spanish national teams, he managed to defeat Marcel Duchamp, also a top-level player, in a legendary match. In the 1970s, he began experimenting with the technique of playing against a computer, but disappointed with the performance of the existing programs, he improved a device that allowed two computers to play against each other. In the second half of his life he retired and went to Cadaques on the Costa Brava, a town famous for being the retreat of Picasso, Dali and Garcia Lorca, where he continued to organise chess tournaments and cultivate his deep passion for photography. He died in September 2020, at the age of 76.
Associazione Festival della Piana del Cavaliere
Piazza XX settembre, 4/A - 02040 Configni (RI)
info@festivalpianadelcavaliere.it
eventi@festivalpianadelcavaliere.it
President: Stefano Calamani
Artistic Director: Anna Leonardi
Press Office and Coordination: Marta Balzar
Organizational Collaborator: Chiara Dragoni
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Artistic Direction
Anna Leonardi
direzioneartistica@festivalpianadelcavaliere.it
Press Office & Coordination
Marta Balzar | +39 338.7680005
eventi@festivalpianadelcavaliere.it
ufficiostampa@festivalpianadelcavaliere.it
Assistant to the Coordination
Chiara Dragoni | +39 327.8690329