Barontini, the show by Crestacci-Brucioni.

It will be on stage for free on Friday 13 June at 9.30 pm at the Fortezza Nuova the show “Barontini”, written by Alessandro Brucioni and Michele Crestacci, with Michele Crestacci, directed by Alessandro Brucioni, original music by Alessandro Brucioni, produced by Mo-WanTeatro. Free admission, booking is not required.

Dedicated to the figure of Ilio “Dario” Barontini, a legendary figure in anti-fascism and the Resistance, later a communist leader and parliamentarian in the post-war period, the show was strongly supported by the Municipal Administration and the Ilio “Dario” Barontini Association; it is supported by the Tuscany Region and the Teatro Goldoni Foundation. The event was presented at the City Hall by Mayor Luca Salvetti together with the Councilor for Culture Angela Rafanelli, Lenny Bottai president of the Ilio “Dario” Barontini association and the authors Brucioni and Crestacci.

“Starting from the idea of the Ilio Dario Barontini Association, we aimed to build a quality operation to tell the story of this character – declared Mayor Luca Salvetti – who is one of the most representative figures in the political history and civil commitment of this city. Knowing the work already done by Brucioni and Crestacci, who by staging characters like Modigliani, Mascagni, Picchi, Caproni, have told pieces of history of our city, we thought that no one better than them could do the same work with a character of great depth and many facets like Barontini. Initially we had thought of the dates of 5 and 6 June, but given the many requests we moved it to the evening before the Barontini cup and in the Fortezza to allow all rowing enthusiasts to attend, the boys who get on the historical boats of our city and all those who care about the story of anti-fascist Livorno that has been able to fight for the rights and dignity of people”. Councilor Rafanelli wanted to remember that the monologue is among the initiatives for the 80th anniversary of Liberation from Nazi-fascism, an opportunity to reaffirm the values in which we believe and to outline the future we want in front of us”. Lenny Bottai highlighted that “the association has carried out over time a long work of reconstruction of the militant memory of Ilio Barontini, an internationalist, one of the founders of the communist party, anti-fascist, a person who fought for the transformation of society. Today he risked being considered “a rower”, since his name is associated with a rowing race, as much as the rowing race that most represents the ideas of justice and freedom for the people of Livorno. This work by Brucioni and Crestacci represents another important step and with a popular approach to pass on and reach a wide audience the memory of Barontini and his ideas”. As the authors Brucioni and Crestacci recalled, Barontini is the fifth portrait in a series of monologues that tell a community, a city, and its history. In the first four portraits the stories of the painter Amedeo Modigliani, the poet Giorgio Caproni, the footballer Armando Picchi, and the musician/composer Pietro Mascagni were told. Through their stories we have rediscovered the spirit of a community and the perpetual sarcasm that reverberates through the streets of a Livorno, a rough, picturesque, and noisy land. A Livorno of clashes, revolutions, and cultural backwardness, of poetic inspirations and missed hopes. A Livorno where in 1921 the Communist Party was born, where workers and peasants lined up every Sunday with their little FIAT cars to go to the sea. Entering through the lens of the painful and epic events of four famous characters has been an opportunity to come to terms with ourselves and with a land in which we grew up, to confront historical, cultural, and social events of the 20th century and their impact on Livorno. When we encounter the story of Barontini, we are faced with a historical context of intense social, cultural, and political revolutions. A context that has seen the maturation of historical events that were the basis of a new way of conceiving the world both locally and internationally. Historical references that still reverberate with a strange, subtle, and voracious force in our present and that are at the origin of our aesthetics and forms of thought. The story of Barontini is placed between the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century in a post-Risorgimento historical period, in the full development of trade, the rush of European powers to the colonies, in a historical period of important discoveries and inventions, the advent of cinema, radio, combustion engines, electricity and the development of the railway network. A period that sees an extraordinary transformation of society and that marks a collective organized awareness, which finds in the anarchist-socialist movement one of its most vehement and fertile expressions.

The story of Barontini is the story of a man who finds himself immersed in the most shocking, exciting, and dramatic historical and social events of the 20th century: the rise of the socialist and communist movement, social struggles and political commitment, the first and second world wars, fascism, the Russian revolution and the birth of the Communist Party in Livorno, the civil war in Spain, Abyssinia, the partisan liberation struggle and the complex organization of the Italian state in the immediate post-war period.

Through a comic and dramatic style, the show traces the personal history of Ilio Barontini, returning the complex portrait of a man famous worldwide for his humanity and the value of his epic political struggles. In thinking about his figure, we focused on the reconstruction of the social, political, and cultural world of the time: Barontini in our imagination is the story of a man who grows, lives, and dies within the framework of one of the most intense utopias of the 20th century. A century of revolutionary winds that were lost on the walls of an ordinary condition of survival”.