Roberto Benigni interviewed on Q – CBC Radio (Canada)
Fri, May 29 (CBC Radio) – Roberto Benigni. The oscar-winning actor, writer, comedian and director talks to Jian Ghomeshi about his latest project – the great poet, Dante.
Benigni is making his first trip to Canada, performing June 2-3 at the St. Denis Theatre in Montreal, June 7 at Casino Rama in Orillia, Ont., and June 10 in Quebec City.
LISTEN TO THE RADIO INTERVIEW with Roberto Benigni on Q – CBC Radio (Canada)
Part 1
Part 2
«Fave Benigni moment/quote today (w/ apologies to Mark Twain): “I’d go to Heaven for the climate, but I want to go to Hell for the company.”»(Jihan Gomeshi‘s Tweet after his interview with Benigni)
When Italian actor-director Roberto Benigni got up on stage to accept his best actor Oscar for Life is Beautiful in 1998, he quoted lines of love from Dante.
That tribute to his wife was part of a lifelong relationship the exuberant actor has had with Italy’s greatest classical poet. Benigni is coming to Canada next week with a one-man show about Dante Alighieri, a fellow Tuscan and the man who wrote the Divine Comedy.
Benigni has been touring Europe for three years with his show, TuttoDante (All Dante) and will make stops in Montreal, Orillia, Ont., and Quebec City. His American premiere in San Francisco took place Thursday night.
“It was a wonderful evening, very moving and very friendly, because in my upbringing, we can joke about everything, but not about poetry,” Benigni said of his debut.
Benigni, speaking to CBC’s cultural affairs show Q on Friday, mocked his own Italian-accented English but said the language of Dante is “universal.”
“I’ve been told, ‘You’re crazy, your English is [in]comprehensible, but Dante invented a new language and I am going to invent a new language too,” he said.
Benigni said his mother introduced him to the 14th-century poet, famous for conducting readers on a tour of hell, purgatory and heaven in Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. His mother urged Roberto to read Dante to improve his memory, but for the would-be actor, it was a flight of imagination.
“When I was a little boy, I was reading Dante and I was saying to myself ‘Bravo, Dante, Bravo.’ It’s so beautiful, the music, the sound, the meaning. I felt like calling him by phone, like a friend,” he said.
Dante’s poetry continues to move Benigni with its passion and tribute to love, he said.
“When you read Dante, you do believe. The exquisite truth is to believe in something that maybe you know is a fiction, but you believe in it willingly. We need a conversion … not a personal religious conversion … but a conversion of our imagination.
“We need to take notice of incomprehensible things, of the mystery of life and death — this is very healthy,” he said.
3 years of sold-out shows
Benigni’s show, which has sold out over the last three years in Europe, mixes the contemporary with his comic take on the world.
“The first part [is] about Berlusconi and Obama and what happens in the world. In the second part we talk about the first circle of hell, which is about [lust] — the lechers, about sex, about passion, about love. It’s very beautiful,” he said.
TuttoDante is performed in French or English and Italian, complete with a recitation from The Inferno in medieval Italian, which he believes is nonetheless accessible to all audiences.
“Dante Alighieri is a universal poet, and great creators they are writing for everybody always. Every single verse is very moving, and the beauty — if we don’t understand, we just stay listening to the sound and it’s like hearing music,” Benigni said.
Benigni is a national hero in Italy, having made some of that country’s most popular movies, including Johnny Stecchino (Johnny Toothpick) and Il piccolo diavolo (Little Devil).
He is also know by fans of ’80s and ’90s American art house cinema for his colourful acting turns in films by American director Jim Jarmusch, such as Night on Earth, Coffee and Cigarettes and Down by Law. That was his first work in English.
He has not made a movie while touring with TuttoDante, but said he plans to work on a new script this fall.
