SHOWS

Phoenix is the name of the fabled bird that every 500 years flies to fulfill its destiny, sings its last wonderful song and builds its nest to burn and be reborn from its own ashes. The myth of the Phoenix is common to various cultures from Egypt to China. For the people of Catania, the inscription above the door of the 'Fortino' is well known: Melior De Cinere Surgo. The inscription is also emblematic of Catania as a city at the foot of the volcano, repeatedly incinerated and then reborn in the same place. Catania then as a place where the cycle of death and rebirth is part of the people's DNA.

But what can this myth tell us today? Is the archetype of rebirth still active and fruitful? We have imagined the earth as a desolate heath, a dark place dominated by an insatiable power that wears the robes of righteousness, a place where the bad is good and good things turn out to be wrong, a tragic place reminiscent of the land described in Macbeth. Here Phoenix is lost, has forgotten her task, the cycle of death and rebirth is interrupted, blocked by the prevalence of a power that regenerates itself from its own corruption. The exhausted and powerless Phoenix calls for help from the people so that she may awaken hope within herself. A distant sound evokes in her the song that leads her back to herself, she returns to flight but her gentle glide turns into flight from a terrible threat. Can her destiny still be fulfilled?