“ Le Grand Bal du Guépard”
“The Grand Ball of the Leopard”
Palermo 6 Aprile 2019 Villa Boscogrande
The Dream of the Principe di Salina
To exist also consists of the awareness that historical memories, traditions, past achievements and their legends are fully part of our artistic and cultural background. As such they will live on forever, for indviduals and places – alongside the historical events both written and lived through – food and drinking habits of this land of Sicily accompany our lives so as to become and integral part our memory. After the great success of the first edition the Dance Company Harmonia Suave directed by Carla Favata will organize the 2st Edition of the Historical Commemoration of the Gran Ballo dai Ponteleone as described in the Sixth Chapter of the acclaimed novel “The Leopard” by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and as directed for the screen by Luchino Visconti in the omonymous ward-winning movie. Luchino Visconti.
“Le Grand Bal du Guépard”
“The Grand Ball of the Leopard”
The Dream of the Prince of Salina
Saturday April 6 2019, in Palermo within the enchanting Villa Boscogrande, location of the opening scene of Visconti’s movie.
The novel “The Leopard” is set in Palermo, 1860 in the aftermath of the landing on the the Island of Garibaldi’s Thousand. As such, it tells the story of the period stretching from the glories of the Romantic era to the annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to the Kingdom of Italy.
The novel’s pages are redolent with the memories of the wonderful places and memories now gone forever which the Principe di Salina experienced in his childhood and as a young man. Those places are now laying in ruins. The same are now brought back to mind in the most atmospheric scenes of the movie “The Leopard” and especially in the first, shot in the fascinating Villa Boscogrande, as well as in the sixth, which descrive the Gran ballo dai Ponteleone . The novel’s characters, the costumes and dances – such as the famous Waltz or Mazurka by Giuseppe Verdi and Nino Rota respectively – together with the magistereal coreographies by Alberto Testa, the places, the musical scores, landscapes and buffet where rhum jelly, timballo di maccheroni and rosolio – all will be celebrated during
“Le Grand Bal du Guépard”
“Il Gran Ballo del Gattopardo”
“The Great Ball of the Leopard”
The Dream of the Prince of Salina
Within both a nostalgic and intense atmosphere aimed at bringing back to life a crucial passage in the history of Sicily. “If we wish everything to stay the same, everything must change”. Thus Tancredi, the Prince’s nephew, in “The Leopard”: an apparently enigmatic and ambiguous phrase still nowadays rich in its implications. “Le Grand Bal du Guépard “ – “The Grand Ball of the Leopard” of the Dance Company Harmonia Suave diretta da Carla Favata, will re-enact the climax of the novel as contained in its Sixth Chapter in the description of the “Grande Ballo dai Ponteleone”.
This describes a crucial historical passage in which Palermo’s ruling elite lived in awe of the new events, for “following the arrival of the Piedmontese and the ominous events of Aspromonte [where the Piedmontes shot Garibaldi], having fears of expropriations and violence subsided, the two hundred people who constituted “‘the World” never got tired of meeting each other to congratulate themselves on being still in exsistence” ( G. Tomasi di Lampedusa “The Leopard”).
All participants will wear 1860 attires clothing; dances will be listed according to a rigorously philological carnet; the film location , the music, the buffet’s historical menu, the view from the Villa’s balconies and the smells of the land of Siciliy – and more: the Novel’s pages as well as the movie’s central scenes - all will scrupolously brought to life under Carla Favata’s direction, aimed at making participants live again the glories of time gone past forever cast in the pages of a novel that made history.
The Grand Ball, guided tours and visits to the venues of both “The Leopard” and Palermo will be organized by Compagnia Harmonia Suave directed by Carla Favata. For info, please contact: Carla Favata e-mail carla.favata@gmail.com
