DANGEROUS LIAISONS with Stefania Sandrelli

Santuzza Stefania Sandrelli
Piano Rocco Roca Rey
Soprano of the Mascagni Academy
Mise en scène by Marco Voleri
Production by Mascagni Festival / Aida Produzioni

With this reading, the whole story of Cavalleria Rusticana is read from Santuzza’s perspective, portrayed for the occasion by the great actress Stefania Sandrelli. In her lives the pride of wounded and betrayed love, the despair of a woman who feels she has lost her man, the darkness of a day without sun, the fear of having lost happiness forever. But Santuzza is not driven by a passive feeling, she is fueled by extreme determination, she is not a woman who remains silent, who cries in silence. She is a woman with a wealth of emotions and a rare vitality. She is a woman who speaks out, she is a woman not driven by desires of revenge, but of justice.
The combination of these characteristics gives the opera house a unique character, far from any model, in which we recognize more than in any other the signs of novelty belonging to Cavalleria Rusticana and the female universe of Mascagni.
The reading intends to reveal how Cavalleria Rusticana is not just a drama of jealousy or a genre scene, there is something important that, when read today, goes beyond the scheme of the adulterine triangle so dear to bourgeois drama: there is a significant work on women, there is a disturbing force that brings on stage an inner tragedy, one that leaves no way out, one that represents, without possible solutions or accommodations, the lacerations of a sadly still alive male mentality today.
It is a tragedy that is very contemporary: Santuzza is a woman forced to rely on patriarchal rules and use them in her favor to redeem her honor because in a community that condemns her, it is the only way to regain a role and not be marginalized.
Many of the murders and femicides we read about every day still arise from situations like these, from the drama of female loneliness, from the protection of male honor, incredibly alive still today. The message of this reading that gives voice to Santuzza, to the woman who does not intend to endure and her inner world, is a strong message: it is necessary to fight stereotypes and prejudices, denounce injustices, treat men and women equally, stay away from patriarchal rules. Still today many of the violence within relationships can be attributed to the growing inability of some men to find a way to deal with frustrations and the lack of possession.