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THE ARTIST

Daniele Salvo (Reggio Emilia, 1970), when he was 22 years old graduated from the acting school of the Teatro Stabile di Torino, founded and directed by Luca Ronconi.

The maestro, which in that first two-year period was assiduously present, chooses him for two starring roles in the final recital dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini: Pylades, from the play of the same name, and Pablo from Calderon.

Already starting from the following year, Daniele Salvo participates as actor to most of the plays directed by Ronconi: Aminta by Torquato Tasso, in which he plays the role of Love, up to A Dream Play by August Strindberg, where he gives to the character of the Poet his own tormented and dazed lyricism.

In between, the reinterpretation of Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen, in which he plays the monologue of the onion; the Moor in Sturm und Drang by Max Klinger; Pietro the son, in Teorema by Pier Paolo Pasolini; Judas Cock in Davila Roa by Alessandro Baricco, Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov by

Fyodor Dostoevsky and Giuliano Valdarena in That Awful Mess on Via Merulana which also marks the beginning of his collaboration with the maestro as his assistant director, where several times he  was responsible for the spoken and sung choruses – Prometheus Bound and the Bacchae, the two tragedies that Ronconi directed for I.N.D.A. (Istituto nazionale del dramma antico - National Institute of the Ancient Drama) of Syracuse in 2002 are testimony of his work as assistant director.

However, in the case of the work of Gadda, his contribution, also focused on the drama, allowed him to investigate further the method of Luca Ronconi, and his "maniacal" attention to the text.

This feature, combined with the growing interest in the vocal instrument that pushed him into cyclic phoniatrics studies and to cooperate with Marco Podda, doctor, speech therapist and musician, is a constant of his work as a director, in which he face with the same procedural "humble reading" Shakespeare's texts, the Greek classics or contemporary authors like Edward Bond (Summer), Anita Desai (Notte e nebbia a Bombay, with Omero Antonutti), Amos Oz (Contro il fanatismo, Il monte del cattivo consiglio, Terra di confine) Paul Auster (Città di vetro), Nadine Gordimer (Aggrappati ad un'alba, with Anna Maria Guarnieri), Mario Rigoni Stern (Storie dell'altipiano), Antonio Tarantino (Gramsci a Turi).

However, to the philological rigor and to the sincere and theoretical passion that inspires all his productions, Daniele Salvo responds with a visionary charge that takes inspiration from the modern and surrealist iconographic repertoire and from the cinema of Ingmar Bergman, Andrej Tarkovskij, Orson Welles.

It is particularly evident in the staging of Shakespeare's texts, made for the Globe Theatre in Rome directed by Gigi Proietti, where Daniele Salvo directed, in order, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (prize Villarosa 2007), King Lear with Ugo Pagliai, Othello and The Tempest, with Giorgio Albertazzi in the role of Prospero. In this regard, Mr. Albertazzi said that Daniele Salvo "among all the directors I've worked on lately, he is the one closest to my spirit."

The bond between Daniele Salvo and Giorgio Albertazzi – started in 2009 with Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles for the Greek Theatre of Syracuse, and continued with Shakespeare thanks to a drama titled Amleto e altre storie (Hamlet and other stories) that invited the audience to a journey through the writing of Shakespeare of Richard III, Julius Caesar, King Lear and Hamlet – is intended to be strengthened with the new edition of Julius Caesar, work in progress for August 2017, again at the Globe Theatre in Rome.

On the side of classical texts, he was able to explore and learn the writing of Sophocles through the staging of Ajax, that I.N.D.A. entrusts him the following year, and Oedipus at Colonus, which earned him the Golden Graal 2012 award for best directed play.  A very complex operation, which pursues the idea of an interpretative truth to achieve with the help of all the means of expression – music, lights, scenes and costumes. And asking the actor to commit himself emotionally.

From this belief, perhaps, it derives his emancipation from the maestro, full of gratitude and yet determined by an expressive figure that can not help but think of the actor as a being crossed by emotions, made of flesh and blood, and of the emotionalism as a language that transcends time.

For Daniele Salvo, the work on the language becomes a job at the service of emotion, towards a recovery of the original relationship “signifier-meaning”: a significant vocality to get even using the euphony, broken voices, out of tune sounds, false cords.

In 2013, he has been chosen by Franco Branciaroli, artistic director of the Teatro Stabile di Brescia, to stage Macelleria Messicana by Enrico Groppali.  The play has as protagonists Elisabetta Pozzi and Paolo Bessegato.

In May 2013 he is also confirmed for the third time by I.N.D.A. of Syracuse which entrusted him with the staging Oedipus the King by Sophocles at the Greek Theatre, with Daniele Pecci, Ugo Pagliai and Laura Marinoni.

The play has such an outcome in popularity and receipts that I.N.D.A. decides to entrust to Daniele Salvo the staging of The Libation Bearers/Eumenides for the prestigious centenary of the institution. The show is staged, with great success, in May 2014, starring Francesco Scianna, Elisabetta Pozzi, Ugo Pagliai, Piera Degli Esposti, Paola Gassman.

In 2015 he staged, for the Teatro Vascello in Rome, "Pylades" by Pier Paolo Pasolini and founded the company “I sognatori” with 20 young actors from different backgrounds. Always in 2015, he directed the documentary "The memory will save us", a work shot entirely inside the camp of Auschwitz/Birkenau. In the summer of 2015, he resumes the play "King Lear" by Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre Rome. In autumn 2015, he directs a workshop on "The Bacchae" at the National Theatre of Craiova (Romania) with the company of the National Theatre. The successful staging of "The Tempest - Prospero's Dream" by Shakespeare, with Giorgio Albertazzi in the role of Prospero, is staged on November/December 2015 with great success at the Festival "La Versiliana" di Pietrasanta and at Teatro Ghione in Rome. In November, he resumed for the third time the show "La mia Primavera di Praga" with Jitka Frantova at the National Theatre in Prague.

In 2016, he became the artistic director Bis 3000 of Marioletta Bideri, known theatrical production company. For Bis 3000 he handles the artistic direction of the prestigious theater festival “Una stanza tutta per lei”,  under the patronage of the Camera dei Deputati, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation, Amnesty International, and Alleanza per il tumore ovarico. Since 2016, he is a member of the prestigious Fondazione Geo Barton, international production company based in Bucharest. Always in 2016, he stages the project "Dionysus - the twice-born God" from "The Bacchae" by Euripides at the Teatro Vascello in Rome, show co-produced with the Konstanz State Theatre (Romania) and realized in two versions (Italian/Ancient Greek - Romanian/Ancient Greek) at the Teatro Vascello in Rome (March 2016) and the Konstanz State Theatre (June 2016). The show is on tour to the Ancient theater of Taormina, to the Morgantina Greek theater, in Sciacca, Mantua, Pistoia, Milan and other Italian and European cities. In March 2016 he realizes the project "The Dictator's Last Night" Yasmina Kadrah for the Festival Dedica of Pordenone, with Fausto Russo Alesi. Always in 2016, he resumes "Pylades" by Pier Paolo Pasolini at the Teatro Vascello (April 2016), "Terra di confine" by Amos Oz at the Politeama Theatre in Trieste (April 2016), he realizes the project "I declare war on time" by the Sonnets of W. Shakespeare, co-produced by "Fondazione La Versiliana" and the Teatro Vascello in Rome, (on tour at the Festival La Versiliana, then in Milan, Bari and other Italian cities), he realizes the show "Verso la cuna del mondo" by Guido Gozzano , produced by Fahrenheit 451 Teatro, he directs the show "The tightrope walker" by Jean Genet, with Andrea Giordana, Giuseppe Zeno and Melania Giglio, at the Napoli Teatro Festival and at the Teatro Vascello in Rome, produced by Bis 3000 and by the Napoli Teatro Festival.

In July 2016, he was invited to represent Italy at the ''International Symposium on Ancient Greek Drama" at The Cyprus Centre of the International Theatre Institute (Cyprus). In November 2016, he held the workshop "King Lear by William Shakespeare" at the Fondazione Geo Barton (Bucharest). Afterwards he directs "Mimì in arte Mia Martini", with Melania Giglio, a show produced by "Il Cardellino" by Silvio Orlando, at the Off off Theater, then on an Italian tour. In November 2018 he directed "The last moons" by Furio Bordon, with Andrea Giordana, Galatea Ranzi and Luchino Giordana, a highly successful show, on an Italian tour in 2018 / '19, produced by the Southern Theater Center.

In January 2019 he directs "Jekyll" by Fabrizio Sinisi from Stevenson, a production of the Theater Center of Brescia, with, among others, Luca Micheletti and Carlo Valli. In May 2019 he assumes the Artistic Direction of the International Festival of Classical Theater "Amenanos" of Catania (Ancient Theater of Catania). He adapts and directs for the Festival "Prometheus" by Aeschylus , a highly successful show, invited to the International Festival of Ancient Theater of Cyprus 2020/2021 and invited to New York in 2021. For the Festival he also realizes "Choròs - travelling in the Greek tragedy" from Aeschylus / Euripides / Sophocles with the choir and orchestra of the Tergestina Chapel of Trieste and the direction of Maestro Marco Podda. In October 2019 he adapted and directed the third edition of William Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" for the Globe Theater directed by Gigi Proietti. In November 2019 he adapted and directed "Black Sea" by Gianni Paris, a show on illegal migrants, produced by Nove Teatro. In January 2020 he adapted and directed "The Last Night of Rai's" by Yasmina Khadra for the Biondo Theater of Palermo directed by Pamela Villoresi, a show about Muhammar Gheddafi's death, with, among others, Stefano Santospago and Carlo Valli. In July 2020 he takes care of the adaptation and direction of "Venere e Adone" by William Shakespeare, a production of the Globe Theater in Rome directed by Gigi Proietti. In October 2020 he will direct Franco Branciaroli in "La notte dell'Innominato" by Alessandro Manzoni, staged at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, Teatro Strehler, then on an Italian tour.

Daniele Salvo - Interview
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