MATTEOTTI (ANATOMY OF A FASCISM)

Wednesday, March 25, 2026, 9pm
Argot Produzioni, Officine della Cultura in co-production with Fondazione Sipario Toscana, Solares Fondazione delle Arti, Teatro Stabile dell’Umbria with the contribution of the Ministry of Culture and the Tuscany Region in collaboration with Infinito Produzione Teatrale
Ottavia Piccolo and I Solisti dell’Orchestra Multietnica di Arezzo

The half past four in the afternoon of June 10, 1924. Some witnesses declare to have witnessed a scuffle inside a car and have seen what will be recognized as the identification card of the honorable Deputy Giacomo Matteotti being thrown out.
Matteotti (anatomy of a fascism) retraces the rise and affirmation of that subversive phenomenon that Matteotti understood, from the beginning, in all its extreme seriousness, unlike many who did not see or did not want to see it.
The greatest danger, the disease that kills a man is the one you don’t feel growing.
Matteotti recognized them: those who at the café behind the Duomo in Ferrara ordered the “celibano” because they didn’t know that “cherry-brandy” is English; those who said to bring order to disorder, because fascism absolutely needs to feel in danger, to attack in order not to be attacked; those who, suddenly, paraded in thousands behind the Little Count Italo Balbo and took over the entire Italy.
Giacomo Matteotti – the opponent, the pacifist, the scholar, the administrator, the reformer, the visionary – spoke publicly and tirelessly in his many writings and speeches: a clear, truthful word, based on facts, indisputable. A word that unmasks. For this he was killed (see director’s notes).
I denounce the political maneuver by which the most radical subversion was passed off as its exact opposite, in the guarantee of order.
I denounce the systematic use of force, the silencing of dissenting voices.
I denounce to Italy and to the whole world that a monster called fascism becomes more powerful every day thanks to the silent consent of those who devalue it, legitimize it and do not fight it!
Tempest, that’s what they called him. One with hot blood.
One hundred years later, it is the theater, it is the music, it is the words of Stefano Massini, the voice of Ottavia Piccolo, the sounds of I Solisti dell’Orchestra Multietnica di Arezzo taking on the commitment to speak.