When we arrived in the large Innocent III Square, there were upside-down chairs on the stage each with a letter prominently displayed: POOR THEATER. Then every now and then people in costume could be seen wandering between one spot and another in the square and the alleys.
Surreal scenes that were the perfect prelude to Shakespeare's most surreal story: the "DREAM OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHT" directed by Jurij Ferrini of the company Unità di Ricerca Teatrale known as URT.
To say that this was a performance of the English playwright's original play would be to make a somewhat pompous statement. In the play, the story was intertwined with that of a modern amateur theater company and ended with some reflections on sustainability and the future of our planet.
Chairs were moved during the play as in a great game of Scrabble to form words that emphasized the essence of the scene, and the actors' lines moved to laughter as well as deep reflection. Their skill was infectious and you could feel a positive adrenaline rush through people's bodies.
We must then give special thanks to Jurij Ferrini. His interview in the Fuori Festival space dedicated to meetings with the protagonists of the show inspired us to a new adventure. Together with Giacomo Zito, the artistic director of the theater festival, he has initiated a discussion that all students from Anagni and high schools in our area should be able to see.
But we postpone all future thoughts when the review is over and rationality returns to its role alongside emotionality.
At the end of the show, we found the bubbles in the applause of the audience but also in the glass with some really interesting proposals from local producers. The sparkling of Cesanese or Passerina grapes is a relatively recent practice, yet the mastery of the wineries of Alta Ciociaria has already achieved results of the highest oenological expression.
The wineries we met were Marcella Giuliani's, led by sparkling Monica Marcucci, and Casale della Ioria presented by Marina Perinelli who had two sparkling white wines tasted. Then we tasted a rosé sparkling wine from the Corte dei Papi winery.
Monica was the first to arrive and the last to leave, and we entrusted her with the task of breaking the ice with the interviews. Ampass is a sparkling wine produced according to the ancestral Pet-Nat method: the wine is bottled while still in fermentation and then in the spring must is added for re-fermentation in the bottle. A fresh sparkling wine with passerina grapes from the Frusinate area. We pleasantly tasted the 2021 vintage.
Marina Perinelli (proud of Anagni) of Casale della Ioria, which as of this year is producing Tres Bianco, an Anagni IGP Wine Award winner on its first release. Their proposal of a sparkling wine made from passerina grapes was much appreciated, which was told to the audience by sommelier Maria Vittori.
In the meantime, we must devote space to the enormous success of Isabella Spallaforte, who with her family raises animals and runs a historic butcher shop in the Osteria della Fontana area of Anagni. To call her 'proudly Anagnina' is reductive; Isabella is a force of nature and never stops being smiling and positive.
His cured meats were accompanied by bread from Marini Bakery with Tony Poce, another guy who finds his energy in the life force that flows in the streets of Anagni. Tony uses flours from Anagni's Pesoli Mill, who also visited us this evening and was available to tell the story of his mill and its flours to the audience.
But what is a bread without oil? And the bubbly evening featured Olio dei Papi, an innovative project that starts from a true story about the Papal Kingdom's policy on oil and comes to the present day with a cooperative model of recovering ancient abandoned olive groves. A must try!
Councilor Anna de Lellis was the perfect host of the Fuori Festival capable of creating harmony and promoting all of Anagni's producers. Finally, thanks to the Pro Loco of Anagni for their patience and the positivity with which they know how to solve the thousands of problems that inevitably happen.