Notturno Americano is a trip to America of the early 20th century through the visionary look of Emanuel Carnevali, the writer who more than anybody else deeply plunged into the obscure areas of the glittering overseas cities.
Carnevali left behind Italy and his hometown Bologna for the United States where he was soon praised as a writer by the avant-garde circles of the time – from Ezra Pound to Sherwood Anderson – but remained largely unknown to the general public, despite his undisputed literary value. Emigration, poverty and hard work, the untrue American myth, homesickness towards Italy, are the central themes of his poems and writings.
The musical and reading performance, Notturno Americano, makes use of the reconstruction of Carnevali’s life based on Emidio Clementi’s novel The Last God (L’Ultimo Dio), and represents a further tribute to a forgotten son, pending between two countries and two different cultures, both of which have never stopped flirting and colliding with each other.
[the live show is in Italian, with supertitles in English]