ach attentive reflection on the history of a canon is already a reflection on the future of the same canon.
With this statement, Luca Ronconi explains the meaning of his contribution, which sees him among the protagonists of the Lucretian celebrations with the staging of Amor nello specchio by Giovanni Battista Andreini, a puzzling and lively comedy dating back to 1622, now on stage in Ferrara in a new production which also sees the involvement of the charismatic Mariangela Melato.
The play, produced by the Teatro Comunale with the aid of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, will debut next Summer and will have as the remarkable backdrop the wonderful view traced by Aleotti between the Estensi Castle and the great green band surrounding the city.
The location, the artists involved, the opera elected as a symbol: the elements destined to capture the attention on this episode are many, but its most authentic strong point lies in the precise desire to overcome the dangers of the historical reconstruction or the mythicizing of a period , constructing a joyful and breath-taking play, which in a transversal way- and therefore open to many different interpretations- allows one to capture the value of the artistic provocation, which signals a breakaway from tradition and predict new paths.
Amor nello specchio tells the story of a scandalous relationship between two women, Florinda and Lidia, in the fable like and lavish style of baroque comedy, where rejected and hunted lovers, masters and servants, goblins, magicians and spirits of the dead co-habit. It tells the story with a delightful intuition of the psychological processes which rule passion and the irreverent pleasure of a person who has enough serenity within themselves to admit that "a happy ending" is something which can be guaranteed even to those who do not respect the rules.
It is in the surpassing of these consolidated schemes that Ronconi retraces the tie which accosts, without force, comedy to the figure which Lucrezia Borgia transmits to us via a secular tradition: one of the bitterest and disturbing, much-discussed and strong images of woman that history can recall.
Nevertheless it also captures in the deepest and most unequivocal sense the feeling that interest in the past must be renewed daily, a lesson which the theatre has always taught.

Teatro Comunale di Ferrara
C.so Martiri della Libertà 5
44100 Ferrara
Tel. 0039 0532 218 342
www.comune.fe.it/teatro
teatro@comune.fe.it