June 3-5, 2013, 9:00 PM

LUISS Guido Carli, University Gardens, Viale Pola, 12 - Rome

Loosely based on the works of Franco Molè, Georges Courteline, and Georges Feydeau
Music: Jacques Offenbach, Edith Piaf, and Enzo Salvi

• Free adaptation and direction: Ferdinando Ceriani
• Staging collaboration: Carla Ferraro
• Assistant director: Alice Guidi

Snapshots from the director 

Music, sequins, wild dancing, songs, vibrant colors, flâneurs, coquettes, stock market speculators, opium addicts, acrobats, poets, actors, playwrights… the “Belle Époque” was a bit of all this. It was a unique period that flourished in Paris at the end of the 19th century, where the greatest minds of European culture and beyond gathered, debated, painted, and fell in love in the city’s cafés and theaters.

The effortless prosperity of French theater during those years is, to say the least, surprising. So many plays, so many theaters, so many productions made Paris the stage for Europe—and therefore the world—the epicenter of major cultural movements and the avant-garde, and the meeting place for all those who had something to say.

Iconic venues like Les Folies Bergères, the Moulin Rouge, and the Bal Bullier serve as the backdrop for a series of scenes and fragments that transport us directly into that atmosphere of music and indulgence, where we might encounter Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, or Degas.

And it was precisely in those years, and precisely in that seemingly “floral” theater—light, carefree, and an irresistible, sincere expression of a frenzied joie de vivre—that the first signs of that transformative movement began to emerge. This movement would then fully blossom in the 20th century, marking the end of an era… the Belle Époque!

Ferdinando Ceriani

Students | Leading actors

• Agnese Gorgoglione
• Alessandra Gesualdi
• Alessandro Adamo
• Andrea De Stasi
• Anna Leccese
• Aurelien Piffaretti
• Camilla Gentili
• Carlo Asta
• Carlo Ferrero
• Chiara Cerini
• Claudia Cavaliere
• Deneuve Presicce
• Diletta Aliotta
• Elena Nafissi
• Emanuela Biagioli
• Eugenia Brandimarte
• Eugenio Durante
• Federica Di Chiara
• Federica Passarelli
• Francesca Beniamino
• Francesca D'Ambrosio
• Francesca Elena Cifone
• Giacomo Bucciarelli
• Gianluca De Matteis
• Giovanna Benvegna 
• Giovanni Parlatore
• Giovanni Visaggio
• Giulia Ceccarelli
• Giulia Di Lorenzo
• Giulia Rosato
• Laura Cardile
• Leonello Marraccini
• Margherita Pennetta
• Maria Enrica Pugliese
• Maria Murrone
• Maria Pernice
• Maria Russo
• Mariachiara Gramegna
• Martina Vairo
• Matteo Santilli
• Miriam Bulbarelli
• Raffaella Caravatta
• Roberto Di Paolo
• Selene Petremolo
• Silviarita Popolo
• Simonetta Baratta
• Valentina Cascapera

Cultural Activities
LUISS Guido Carli
Tel: 06 85225655/5600
attivitaculturali@luiss.it