Under the sponsorship and support of the City of Naples, Cultura Napoli and the Pact for Reading of the city of Naples, on Saturday November 30, at 6:00 p.m. in Piazza Dante – Port’Alba side – there will be a large Festival of Books. The party of «Scugnizze Reading» (Rogiosi Publisher) of Gianni Simioli with Gabriele Espositowhich will offer the public a magnificent journey through the pages of the great classics, more modern and contemporary books and little-known books. With them there will be guests from the world of culture and music. The event is organized by the cultural association ControLuce in collaboration with the cultural association Port’Alba.
“With “Letture Scugnizze”, Gianni Simioli achieves an important objective: to succeed in speaking especially to the younger generations – declares Sergio Locoratolo, coordinator of cultural policies of the City of Naples –. Boys and girls need to know the unique history of Naples, made up of important characters and magnificent stories to discover. Put together Erri De Luca, Mario Merola, Maurizio de Giovanni, Alexandre Dumas, Eduardo De Filippo, Totò, Viviani, Tarantina, Peppe Lanzetta means not forgetting any of the souls of the city, who can represent so many inspirations for young people who, in each generation, are hungry for new visions. This look to the future sees us involved and therefore supporting this project, because it represents a founding approach to the cultural policies of Mayor Manfredi, which we pursue day after day by entering schools with Art and beauty.
“I chose Port’Alba as the launch location for the “Letture Scugnizze” book tour because our “street of books” deserves care and rebirth, and the events can be a good time to always rediscover it in all its beauty and its cultural power – declares Gianni Simioli –. Mine is a cultural crusade in favor of books and our young people. Boys need to read, to devote themselves to music, to have fun in a healthy way. They must put down their weapons and understand that life is sacred, precious, they are not in a video game. They are the real reason that pushed me to work all summer on writing “Letture Scugnizze”, involving Gabriele Esposito. In the interviews I was given about the book, I was often asked why he was one of the young songwriters. Because I admire his sensitivity, his thirst for knowledge and discovery, I like what he writes and I admire his journey. In fact, as artistic director of the New Year, I chose him among those who will be on stage in Piazza Plebiscito. So, what will happen at Port’Alba – Piazza Dante on November 30? In the book there are many writers and some of them will provide the live story of the pages that I have chosen for my “Scugnizze Letter”. There will be reading and music. It will be a great party. The festival of books!”
In his editorial work, Simioli pays tribute to his beloved Naplesthrough the characters who told it in the cinema, in the theater, in music and in books in an immense way.
A beautiful gallery of characters and authors: Antonio «Totò» De Curtis; Raffaele Viviani; Eduardo De Filippo with his poor and authentic cuisine in his wife’s book Isabella Quarantotti; Luciano De Crescenzo; Raffale La Capria; Massimo Troisi; Giuseppe Patroni Griffi; Giuseppe Marotta; Pino Daniele told by his son Alexander; Erri De Luca; Lorenzo Marone; Mario Merola; Peppe Lanzetta; ‘To Tarantina in the extraordinary biography collected by Roberto Delle Cese; Alessio Forgione; Curzio Malaparte; Aldo Masullo with “The Art of Happiness” edited by Francesca Mauro et Luciano Stella; San Gennaro with his “life, death and miracles”; Diego Armando Maradona; Anna Maria Ortese; Angelo Parrella; Pasquale Scialò; and many others, often surprising.
There are also “adopted Neapolitans” like Fabrizio De André told by Federico Vacalebre in a story of love and anarchy; and the strangers who told it, for better and for worse, as Norman Lewis, Walter Benjamin, Marcel Proust, Pablo Neruda, Fedor Dostoïevski, Sigmund Freud, Hans Christian Andersen, Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis, Albert Camus, Emily Dickinson, Fedor Dostoïevski, Alexandre Dumas, Sigmund Freud, André Gide, Nikolaj Gogol, Henrik Ibsen, Norman Lewis, Jean-Paul Sartrein an extraordinary work of study and research carried out by Pier Luigi Razzano. There is the esoteric Naples of the expert of the phenomenon Antonio Emanuele Piedimonte and Naples “sick” of football told by Maurizio de Giovanni. “Letture Scugnizze” is an extraordinary walk through the past and present of a town that bears the name of a mermaid, Partenope, and which has the absurd and absolute capacity to make one love and hate in a single moment.
