The Matthew Online

Making a success of failure

By Meagan Haessig

ROME, Feb. 14 - Drama and theater serve as a means for providing the abstract and conventional tools for “world making”, author Olga Taxidou told a gathering of students and professors at the Aula Magna auditorium on the John Cabot University campus on Tuesday.

Taxidou, author of "Modernism and Performance," came to JCU to discuss her insights into the modernistic views of theater and the field of modernism itself. 

The "Godfather" wedding march? Listen up

By Alison Graham

ROME, Feb. 12 -- Monday night's concert program for The Filarmonic Orchestra di Roma promised “young music for the young in all of us,” and it delivered.

The concert, entitled “Hollywood Blockbusters”, included scores from movie hits such as “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”, "Pirates of the Carribean” “The Gladiator”, “James Bond”, “The Godfather”, “Titanic” and “Apollo 13”.

“The music always sends a message to the people, young or [not so] young,”  principal conductor Ezio Monti told the Matthew Online in an interview after the performance. “The music can change the people. The music can change the country. The music can change the world.”

JCU film series returns to a subdued showing

By Celestina Roddy

ROME, 30 Jan. - Monday's screening of "La meglio gioventu" film John Cabot University understandably was a subdued affair.

Usually, the screening, held the final Monday of each month in conjunction with Filmitalia, is a well-attended event, sometimes leaving people to stand.

However, this time it was not so do to two recent tragedies the university is enduring. 

Moccia musical has Rome's teens swooning

By Rubina S.

ROME, OCT. 29 -- On Saturday night Rome's Teatro Olimpico filled with enthusiastic teenagers eager to see the stage performance of "Tre Metri Sopra il Cielo", the modern-day teen romance that has captivated a nation.

More than 800,000 copies of the book have sold across Europe and the movie version brought in nearly 16 million euros at the box office and on home video. "Tre Metri Sopra il Cielo," (also known as "3MSC") is now being presented to the Italian public as a musical.

A Globe Theatre in Rome? It's as you like it

 

By Laura Henry

ROME, Oct 2 – As you stroll through the grand Italian splendor of Villa Borghese, the last thing you’d expect to see is a relic of the English Renaissance. But it’s there.

The Silvano Toti Globe Theatre, an exact replica of Shakespeare’s famous London playhouse, peeks through the trees across from stone ruins and Roman statues.

But why, in a city that has so much history of its own, would there be the need to build such a replica?

"l'Eridita" plays to packed JCU audience

By Ruthie Kasnett

ROME, March 5 - On Feb. 27, JCU’s Aula Magna changed scenes, literally. Moving away from its traditional lecture hall setting, where countless JCU classes take place, the room was transformed into a theatrical production of Marco Grossi’s “l’Eredita” (The Inheritance).

Written and directed by Grossi of Compagnia Urbana, “l’Eredita,” performed entirely in Italian, is a story about three very different brothers (and their individual and interpersonal relationships) who come to learn of a fortune left behind by their late uncle.

 

 

Caesar triumphantly returns to Rome

By Erin Kuschner

ROME, Nov.30 – An international theater company has chosen Rome as its new center of operations, performing Julius Caesar last night as the first play in a series of Shakespeare dramas set in the Eternal City.

The ishakespearecompany has been performing Julius Caesar for three weeks, with a final performance scheduled for this evening.  The main focus of this play is the theme of sacrifice shown through simplicity, and last night’s interpretation was no exception.