Calendar

“Breaking silence is the poet’s duty”, said an influential exponent of contemporary literature. Soyinka, mainly a civil and political poet, took on this task: enduring his personal desperation, he witnessed the horrors of the civil war that devastated his country and condemned the inhumanity of a time when “hope / is buried into obscurity” and “dying / turns into a gift”.

And even today, even far from his country, Soyinka has continued to play his role of critical conscience of a nation still afflicted by contradictions and conflicts, still far from political and social stability. The enchanting interpretation by Maddalena Crippa, accompanied by Massimiliano Gagliardi’s evocative sonorities, is an opportunity to appreciate at its best Soyinka’s powerful and visionary poetry. He tells about his people, but he doesn’t speak only to them: through the years, places and historical circumstances, his voice strongly reminds everybody that the principles and values that are the foundation of human dignity cannot be renounced.

Maddalena Crippa
Her training took place at Scuola del Piccolo Teatro in Milan where, at the age of eighteen, she made her debut in Il campiello (The little Square) by Goldoni (1975) directed by Strehler in Lucietta’s role. This way she started her career as a protagonist of the international theatre scene, at the side of eminent directors: Giorgio Strehler, Luca Ronconi, Massimo Castri, Cristina Pezzoli and Peter Stein. Over the last years she experimented her inclination as a singer in some musicals “Sboom, Canzonette Vagabonde, A Sud dell’alma” (Sboom, Vagabond popular songs, South of the soul) and in the show to pay homage to Giorgio Gaber “E pensare che c’era il pensiero” (And think that once there was the thought).

Massimiliano Gagliardi
Since he was very young, he started learning to play piano, graduating with full marks and honourable mention. He performed as piano soloist in several classical music concerts, and at the same time he approached light music, writing arrangements for several authors as well as new pieces for himself.
A rich musical legacy, deriving from the interweaving of his classical background with the fascination of Italian and foreign pop music.