On Saturday, December 28th, at 7:00 PM, the NarteA Cultural Association presents "Ghost of Christmases Past," a highly successful Christmas show performed in the underground Neapolis, at the San Lorenzo Maggiore Monumental Complex. The dramatized itinerary, written and directed by Febo Quercia, combines plays performed by Carlo Caracciolo, Antimo Casertano, Sergio Del Prete, Valeria Frallicciardi, and Daniela Ioia, with a guided tour led by Matteo Borriello, Lina Toscano, and Camilla Tripodi. Reservations are required at 339 7020849 or 333 3152415. Tickets are €15.
Quercia's work draws inspiration from the critical edition of the "Cantata dei Pastori" adapted by Roberto De Simone, which suggests that Christmas rituals are part of the cycle of winter festivals of pagan origin, during which exchanges and relationships with the underworld take place. The journey into the afterlife begins in August-September with the celebrations of those Madonnas, often black, who seem to express the pain and mourning of a female deity for the death of nature. Connected to the subterranean aspect of this cult is also the aspect of solar worship, and the entire cycle of Christmas festivities seems to allude to an ancient solar deity (the old year) who descends underground to give birth to a child (the new year). Between December 8th and January 8th, the relationship between the two worlds intensifies: as evidence of this, some disturbing and deformed presences appear in the nativity scene, belonging to the demonic world. Among them are figures equipped with dog-headed pastoral staffs, identified in classical iconography as the guardians and guides of souls.
In NarteA's theatrical itinerary, it will be one of those guardians of the souls in purgatory who come to earth via bridges and wells, who will open the way for the return of several characters linked to Naples's past history. Drawn from the imaginative features of Dickens's Ghost of Christmas Past, this strange character, halfway between the here and the hereafter, will open a rift in time through the opening of a well in the underground Neapolis. Among the souls in purgatory who will return to earth for one evening is the restless spirit of an inhabitant of Greco-Roman Naples, as well as those of Boccaccio, Fiammetta, and Eleonora Pimentel Fonseca; their stories are inextricably linked to the places they visited and the Christmas festivity.
EDITORIAL TEAM
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