ITALY – After Le voci di dentro, the Servillo brothers have chosen the Teatro Bellini to bring their latest creation, La Parola Canta, to Naples. It is a concert, a recital and a festival – skilfully illuminated by Clay Paky – made up of music, poetry and songs which celebrate Naples: the eternal magic of its living tradition, and the importance of the fusion of different epochs and the widest possible participation in culture.
The show reveals an inexhaustible imagination and poetic richness, which generates and feeds Peppe and Toni Servillo’s extraordinary theatrical creativity.
Toni and Peppe Servillo reinterpret tradition with a jazz, folk and pop slant, also thanks to the valuable and charming musical support of the Solis String Quartet. They take the audience on an extraordinary voyage through Neapolitan theatrical culture: a journey made up of imagination and creativity, sung poetry and recited songs, and intenseness and laughter.
The words of classical authors, including De Filippo, Viviani and Libero Bovio, along with the contemporary voices of Moscato, Borrelli and Sovente, make up what Toni Servillo defines as “a show where theatre plays music and music becomes theatre. Where theatre sometimes fails, music sums up our existence and allows us to imagine another.”
LD Francesco Adinolfi took up the task of designing the lighting, which arose in a very spontaneous way last year during the Ravello Festival, where the two Servillo brothers performed with the Solis string quartet. The show began to take shape in January and, after the Bellini, it will depart for a short tour with dates already fixed in Rome, Barcelona and Cosenza.
The lighting design was developed from the idea of shaping the light that illuminates the stage with precision. Toni liked the idea of using light geometrically, cutting it out and shaping it into four-sided figures. It creates well defined areas: a pattern made up almost entirely of squares all over the stage.
The lighting designer began to develop his idea by allowing himself to be influenced by the music and driven by the acting. He was able to create the geometrical shapes and set up the changes in light when the show reached the Teatro Strehler in Milan, where he was provided with all the Clay Paky equipment he requested to shape the light without difficulty or limitations.
“My lighting design relies on Clay Paky Alpha Profile 1500s, whenever possible.” These lights combine the power of a 1500W lamp with a unique beam-shaping system, designed and patented by Clay Paky, which is capable of generating countless shapes in multiple dimensions.
“I asked for six ST versions, as I did at the Strehler last year.” The Alpha Profile 1500 ST is ideal for theatrical use. It houses a new elliptical reflector, the lens has a new special coating, and its colour temperature is 6000 K, with colours very close to the Planckian locus.
The Alpha Profile 1500 is a valuable resource for all lighting designers who work in highly professional environments. They are bright, quiet, innovative lights.