Last night I’ve been to Roberto Benigni’s show in Piazza Santa Croce. In the last few days Benigni has been reading Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, one different chant every night. Foreign people maybe don’t know, but this collection of three books (Hell, Purgatory and Heaven) and one hundred Cantos written in the 14th century is the foundation of italian language as well as a mandatory reading in our secondary school. More or less similar to Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Anglo-Saxon countries. Well, maybe more Since they were forced to read it in their young age, many italians have nightmares when you talk about Dante, but actually everybody agrees is a great masterpiece.

Benigni is a unique actor and he is great at trasmitting pathos, fun, irony, and to explain the true meaning and beauty of this work. He red the 8th Canto, when Dante and Virgilio cross the Stige marsh heading to the gate of Dis. And he took the opportunity to talk about our country, our time, our world, in Dante’s perspective and using paradox and analogies, and all of this is in a wonderful scenery, surrounded by Santa Croce and the giant statue of Dante on the left. At the end of the show everybody felt elevated, in peace with the world. Of course I was in good company and that helped as well