Tag: "English"
Jun 13, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
Roberto Benigni in Canada – Press Conference of TuttoDante (June 2, 2009)
[More articles, videos, interviews and photos will be online very soon...]
Jun 03, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
Con Benigni l’America scopre Dante
(NY Daily News) – Isabella Rossellini, Elvis Costello, Jim Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi, Aidan Quinn and Lizzie Bracco came to see Roberto Benigni rhapsodize about Dante’s “Divine Comedy” at the Hammerstein Ballroom on Saturday. Jim Jarmusch, who cast the Oscar-winner in “Down By Law,” “Coffee and Cigarettes” and “Night on Earth,” told us, “Americans mostly know him as a clown, but he’s incredibly erudite about art and literature.” Benigni himself was modest about his mastery of The Supreme Poet. “It is as if Jim Carrey would come to Rome talking about Walt Whitman,” Benigni told the packed house. The “Life is Beautiful” director spent almost as much time feasting on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s “jailbait affair” with 18-year-old model Noemi Letizia. “This underage pussy, it’s very dangerous,” said Benigni. “We picture Berlusconi at the 18th birthday party of the barely legal girl, just waiting in the wings for her to blow out her birthday candles…counting down the candles until finally, ‘Eighteen!!!’ You remember with Monica Lewinsky, President Clinton was asked, ‘Did you have sex with that woman?’ He said, ‘I did not have sex with that woman!’ In Italy, it is the opposite. Berlusconi says, “I had sex with that woman” and everybody says, ‘You did not!’ He says, ‘Yes, I did!’ He’s 73 years old. I never voted for him but now I think I will. It is a good image for Italians, no?”
Jun 01, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
Roberto Benigni’s TuttoDante in New York
If you attended TuttoDante show in New York, write and send your comments/reviews/photos to www.unbenignidanobel.it .
Send a message to info@unbenignidanobel.it – we’ll publish your articles in our website.
Here are some photos from yesterday night: Roberto Benigni performing on the stage of Hammerstein Ballroom, Manhattan Center, and after the show meeting friends and journalists (in the last two pictures
you can see Jim Jarmusch behind Roberto Benigni) :
May 31, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
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.
May 29, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
Video: Roberto Benigni on the stage of “Davies Symphony Hall”, San Francisco
Here are two videos of the end of TuttoDante show in San Francisco (May 26, 2009):
“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 American premiere in San Francisco.
Review: Roberto Benigni’s ‘TuttoDante’ – Robert Hurwitt, Chronicle Theater Critic
He didn’t leap through the audience, but Roberto Benigni hit the Davies Symphony Hall stage Tuesday with the same unbridled exuberance with which he’d received his “Life Is Beautiful” Oscar 10 years ago. The sold-out house cheered as he ran Olympic laps, bounced off the wall and greeted the house with, “Buona sera! I hope everybody speaks English.”
Then he got a bit carried away. “This is a flabbergasting moment,” Benigni continued. “I feel like to undress myself and to jump on you.”
An extra dose of ebullience would be understandable, even if it’s just Benigni’s standard operating mode. Tuesday marked his North American stage debut performing his solo “TuttoDante,” a runaway hit in Italy. A celebration and appreciation of his fellow Tuscan and the “Divine Comedy,” “Dante” moves on from its one-night stand here to New York (Saturday), followed by two nights in Montreal and two more gigs before closing June 12 in Chicago.
It isn’t actually all Dante, the title notwithstanding, but it is mostly in English, albeit fractured. It’s also very funny, oddly didactic, idiosyncratic, overlong (two hours and 10 minutes, without intermission), somewhat wearying and unexpectedly sublime.
Benigni opens the show in stand-up mode, riffing about his poor command of English (“I don’t understand myself what I am saying“), Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, American bathrooms, Florentine sewage, God’s errors (“He put dawn too early in the morning“) and the show itself (“like Jim Carrey in Rome doing a show about Walt Whitman – in Italian“). [...]
[...Read the full article on the San Francisco Chronicle website]
May 29, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
Video: Roberto Benigni in San Francisco
Benigni conquista San Francisco con il suo Dante
di Silvia Bizio, Repubblica — 28 maggio 2009
SAN FRANCISCO – Dante, Berlusconi, Vittorio Emanuele: un Roberto Benigni in grandissima forma non ha risparmiato lodi e stoccate nel debutto della sua tournée americana “Tutto Dante” a San Francisco, dove è stato accolto come una rockstar. Era la sua unica apparizione sulla costa ovest e in molti non sono riusciti a entrare all’ auditorio Davies Symphony Hall. Benigni ha fatto lo show nel suo inglese maccheronico avvalendosi della traduzione elettronica quando ha recitato il V Canto dell’ Inferno. Per due ore e mezzo ha tenuto banco passando da Berlusconi agli scandali italiani, dall’ amore che gli sprizza da tutti i pori (sono “scombussolated”) alla sua giovinezza studiando Dante. «Benigni a San Francisco che fa Dante Alighieri in inglese è come Jim Carrey a Roma che recita Walt Whitman in italiano», esclama. Poi approda al caso Noemi: «In genere quando uno vuole uscire con una ragazza la porta a cena fuori: lui le offre il ministero della Difesa!». Poi tocca a Vittorio Emanuele: «Che figura mi fa fare! my king, il mio re! Vuole le ragazze, ma che costino poco».
Al termine dello spettacolo Benigni la star ha fatto una breve apparizione al party in suo onore: «Ho la febbre, sono esausto, so che il mio inglese va molto migliorato, ma non volevo fare lo spettacolo solo per gli italiani. Confesso però che non mi aspettavo una folla del genere, mi sono davvero emozionato».
A bundle of energy and a blessing to the ears, Roberto Benigni read Dante’s Divine Comedy Inferno in San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall on May 26, 2009.
Roberto’s performance is impeccable and soothing to the soul. A gracious reminder of Dante’s poetry’s eternal beauty and Benigni’s gripping storytelling.
Thank you Roberto, for all you do!
Enza Sebastiani ’09
www.enzasebastiani.com
May 28, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
Grande Benigni a San Francisco
(L’Espresso – Oltreconfine di Federica Bianchi) – Roberto Benigni è un concentrato di italianità buona che non smette di caricare e eccitare le folle. Lo show di ieri sera a San Francisco e’ andato esaurito. Tanti, tantissimi gli italiani in platea ma anche una buona manciata di americani “puri” che ne ammirano l’arte e il coraggio. E si perche’ ce ne vuole di coraggio per tenere banco in un inglese maccheronico per oltre due ore spiegando prima i retroscena della politica berlusconiana e poi il sesto canto dell’Inferno. Chiaramente non tutto cio’ che ha detto e’ stato perfettamente compreso, e forse un buon manager americano potrebbe indirizzarlo meglio verso le battute che funzionano e quelle che fanno flop da queste parti, ma in generale la sua performance e’ stata grandiosa.
E ha ricordato al mondo che gli italiani non sono tutti copie o controfigure di Berlusconi. Prossima tappa: sabato a New York! Roberto, sei tutti noi!
A great comment posted on our Facebook Group “TuttoDante di Roberto Benigni“:
Frank Ruffa (Silicon Valley, CA) wrote:
I was lucky enough to have seen Benigni in San Francisco last night at the Davies Symphony Hall. The final, extended standing ovation spoke volumes about the profound emotions he elicited from the spectators. I only wish we could see all of his performances on TV or … DVD. Men and women who don’t know Dante’s work are lacking the equivalent of the missing link between savagery and humanity – Benigni was born to enrich us by, as he puts it, extending our minds and souls beyond the mundane confines of our materialistic lives.
BRAVO, Roberto! You’re not only an Italian National Treasure; you should be honored by the United Nations as a World Heritage ‘Reawakener of the Soul”.
Grazie!!!!!!!!
May 28, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
TuttoDante in San Francisco – Listen to this Radio Interview with Roberto Benigni
(KGO Newstalk AM 810) – KGO’s Scott Lettieri brings us this report about TuttoDante, a one-man show by the world-renowned Roberto Benigni. Coming to San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall in May, the show is “About love! About sex! About passions!” exclaims Roberto.
Here is Scott’s interview with the extremely vivacious director and actor.
LISTEN TO THE RADIO INTERVIEW with Roberto Benigni:
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May 25, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post
If you’re going to San Francisco…
“If you’re going to San Francisco Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair”……
[Send a message to info@unbenignidanobel.it - we'll publish your articles in our website.]
Roberto Benigni is making his American stage debut at the Davies Symphony Hall on May 26 in San Francisco with his one-man show TuttoDante.
Roberto Benigni in TuttoDante
Where: Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco
*The first live comments from Twitter during and after the show:
- Benigni wonders why no the bidet in his hotel? Troppo Forte!
- Pope productized purgatory to increase revenue! Benigni is hilarious!
- it was una cosa incredibile! The last part was an elocution like rendition of Canto 5.
Dante’s poetry an infinite labyrinth of words that express infinite emotions of man.
- Intoxicated by Dante Alighieri’s poetry Roberto Benigni’s comedy and theatrical rendition of Canto V; forza l’amore.
- roberto benigni was hilarious in tutto dante. guys in nyc try to get a ticket , he’s coming there next.
- Went to see Roberto Benigni perform (and discuss) Canto V of Dante’s Inferno. Fantastic.
- Saw Roberto Benigni in TuttoDante at Davies Symphony Hall last night. Part stand-up act, part in-depth lecture and all inspiring. Genius!
- Still laughing at the incredible show (‘TuttoDante’ w/Roberto Benigni) I saw last night- he is an amazing talent.
- The only thing that I didn’t like was that the sow had to finish! Thanks Roberto Benigni!!!!! (Giovanna)
In a recent interview, Roberto Benigni answered to a question about “Down by Law“: “[...] For me it was a dream, this is such a wonderful memory, such a wonderful souvenir. And what it is very rare, I met also Tom Waits and John Lurie, the musician and the singer, and we are still very close friends.“.
…..Did you like TuttoDante show? Join our Facebook group “TuttoDante di Roberto Benigni“ (the group now has more than 1300 members).