THE VENUES
Enhancing the cultural heritage
With a view to ensuring the sustainability of its heritage, in recent years the Fondazione Campania dei Festival has begun an investigation into the power of urban spaces and the most evocative places in Campania, transforming the region into a stage and its landscape and natural beauty into outposts of renewed cultural thinking.
Over the past five years, the Campania Teatro Festival has therefore reached many venues throughout the region: in collaboration with the Campania Regional Museums Directorate, the courtyards and the Romantic Garden of the Royal Palace of Naples, and among the Museums the National Archaeological Museum and the Madre Museum; in the city's theatres at San Carlo, Mercadante, Politeama, Trianon, Bellini, Nuovo and Sala Assoli; in the Historical Archives of the Banco di Napoli, in the Refectory of the Cloister of San Domenico Maggiore, at Palazzo Fondi, at Made in Cloister, and at the Circolo Canottieri, at Piazza del Gesù, at the Maschio Angioino, at the Church of Donnaregina, at the Academy of Fine Arts, at Villa Pignatelli; in the neighbourhoods of Ponticelli, Sanità and rione De Gasperi; outdoors at the Teatro Grande di Pompei (in collaboration with the Teatro Stabile di Napoli - Teatro Nazionale for the 'Pompeii Theatrum Mundi' theatre festival), at the Rotonda Diaz on the Mergellina seafront. For the Region, instead, in Salerno in the Cloister of the Cathedral, in the courtyard of the Ghirelli Theatre, on the Promenade and in the Piccolo Teatro Porta Catena, and in the province on the steps of the Cathedral of Amalfi, in Capaccio Centro and in the Coppola Palace in Valle Cilento. In Caserta at the Reggia, at the Teatro Comunale, in the Amphitheatre of Santa Maria Capua Vetere, at the Belvedere di San Leucio, and in the Foresta di Tora e Piccilli. In Benevento at the Hortus Conclusus, the Natural Theatre of Pietrelcina and in Montesarchio (in Piazza Umberto I and in the Sannio Caudino Archaeological Museum). In Avellino at the monumental complex of Santa Chiara in Solofra, the Colosseum Theatre in Baiano, the Amphitheatre in Avella and the Abbey of Mercogliano.
In the city of Naples, in particular, the Museum and the Real Bosco di Capodimonte (with the setting up of four to eight stages in the green park of the Bourbon Royal Palace) have been the main venue of the Festival for the past two years. In particular, in addition to the rooms of the Museum, the open-air spaces included: the Courtyard of the Reggia, the Terrace of the Palazzina dei Principi, the Porta Miano Landscape Garden, the Giant's Prairies, the Casino della Regina, the Porcelain Factory, the Pastoral Landscape Garden, the Cisternone and the Capraia Prairies.
This choice, also dictated by the great relationship of collaboration with director Sylvain Bellenger and the vastness of the spaces that made it possible to set up theatres in compliance with the safety distances imposed by the anti-Covid regulations, has transformed the Reggia into a true citadel of theatre, art and culture, with events distributed throughout the entire month of programming (from mid-June to mid-July) throughout the day.
In the 2021 and 2022 editions of the Campania Teatro Festival, the special project 'Il sogno reale. I Borbone di Napoli', the brainchild of Ruggero Cappuccio and curated by Marco Perillo, focused on the enhancement of the Bourbon sites of Campania. For the project, in both editions, seven Italian writers entrusted their unpublished stories to seven different Italian actors who staged them in the context of the Reggia di Capodimonte. This artistic project was inspired by an interest in the Bourbon dynasty, in an era of splendour and primacy unprecedented in the history of southern Italy. A dream that from the late 18th century can extend into the present, revealing once again the beauty of the monuments bequeathed by a common cultural history.
Finally, in order to meet the mission of enhancing the Region's tangible and intangible cultural heritage, a printed guide to the most representative places of the century of the Kingdom was produced as part of the project and distributed free of charge to the public that attended the Festival performances.
Since 2017, the Fondazione has activated joint discount agreements for the Festival with several Campania museums, including:
These concessions make it possible to purchase a ticket for the Campania Teatro Festival at a reduced cost of €5 and, at the same time, to benefit from an additional discount on the entrance ticket to the affiliated museums.
