The Cambridge University Italian Society presents Napoli Milionaria by Eduardo De Filippo, directed by Ludovico Nolfi (Ars in Fieri International Theatre Company) and performed in Italian with English surtitles.

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Eduardo De Filippo wrote Napoli Milionaria in one sitting and staged it immediately after completion in March 1945 (exactly eighty years ago), when Italy was yet to be freed from Nazi-fascism.

 

This masterpiece, one of the works by the great Neapolitan playwright most performed worldwide, tells a tragicomic story of the devastating and corrupting outcomes of World War II, but speaks universally about any war.

 

The play is set in Naples in 1942. Amalia, against the moral integrity of her husband, Gennaro, sells food through the black market to feed her family. When Gennaro is captured by the retreating German army and reported missing, Amalia expands her crooked business in cahoots with Settebellezze, a dodgy businessman.

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The arrival of the American forces in late 1943 brings wealth and goods to the city of Naples, comprehensively destroyed and deprived of its gorgeous millenary soul, and Gennaro's family is in complete disarray when he unexpectedly returns home. It will be the illness of his little daughter Rituccia that will wake up everyone from the nightmare they had fallen into. But in Gennaro’s own words: the war is not over yet and we have to wait for the night to pass. "Ha da passà 'a nuttata."

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"A few weeks after the liberation, from my house balcony I looked out at the panorama of this wrinkled city; then I saw the play in embryo and I wrote it all in one go, like a long article about the war and its ruinous consequences." Eduardo De Filippo.

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Eduardo De Filippo (1900-1984), Italian playwright, actor, director, screenwriter and poet, is considered one of the greatest playwrights of the twentieth century. His theatre plays, which he performed himself, although written in Neapolitan dialect, have been translated and performed all over the world. For his artistic achievements, he was appointed Senator for life, and awarded the Doctor of Letters, Honoris Causa degree, from both La Sapienza University in Rome and Birmingham University.