At Fla the story of Galliano Magno the lawyer of the Matteotti trial – Entertainment

PESCARA. A century ago, on 10 June 1924, the parliamentarian and secretary of the Italian Unitarian Socialists, Giacomo Matteotti, was kidnapped and killed by fascist followers under the orders of senior hierarchs of the regime and probably of Mussolini himself. Two years later, in March 1926, the secluded city of Chieti was chosen to celebrate the trial, officially for reasons of public order. A farce trial, right from the first hearing: Chieti, among other things, is governed by Camillo Bottari, very loyal to the hierarch Roberto Farinacci, secretary of the fascist party and defender of one of the accused, Amerigo Dumini. The widow is represented by Galliano Magno from Abruzzo.
Now the story of that trial is proposed in a show, And I was Sandokanpresented as a national preview in Pescara at the Fla, Thursday 7 November at 9pm at the Teatro Massimo. Not a simple historical re-enactment, but a theatrical work that explores the life and emotions of a man from Abruzzo who has lived through the history of Italy. Produced by Tam Tam Communications and directed by Milo Vallone, the show combines theatrical and cinematographic language, with interactions between audiovisual parts and those performed live. «A full-bodied and intense work, written with careful fidelity to historical data», explains Vallone. The story celebrates a double anniversary, the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Galliano Magno and the centenary of the Matteotti murder: on stage authentic letters and speeches by Magno and Matteotti, but also the intimate and human sides of the protagonist.
The text by Mauro Morelli, a lawyer from Pescara with a passion for theatre, tells the story of Galliano Magno from when he became mayor of Orsogna at just 24 years old, to the persecutions he suffered over the twenty years, up to the trial in Chieti. It was he who defined it as “a hoax trial” and that defense cost him a lot in human and professional terms. «I became passionate about the figure of Magno», says Morelli, «thinking that his life, upright and at the same time heroic, deserved greater knowledge. Because Magno, despite having been the target of punitive expeditions during the Twenty Years, refused to fuel the spiral of hatred once the war was over. When many were pushing for the purge of those involved with the regime, he did not give vent to feelings of revenge and worked, as president of the local CLN, for an admirable process of pacification of the country”.
Giacomo Matteotti is played by Morelli himself, while the young Federico Colalongo is Magno. A character, says the actor, who «speaks to us, today, as a man who is the enemy of hatred and faithful to his heart even before his ideas, in a moment like the current one in which wars, real and virtual, seem take us back to mistakes already committed and punished by History.” The cast also includes Luigi Ciavarelli, Angelo Del Romano, Michele Di Mauro, Dana Gasparro, Nicola Pietrangeli, Francesco Sarmiento and Claudia D’Antonio. The music composed and performed live by Vincenzo De Ritis.