Theresa Maggio

From infomigrants.net

 

By ANSA Published on : 2019/10/04
An opera titled "Winter Journey" tells the story of a migrant who leaves his family in Africa to board one of the many boats from Libya to follow his dream of working in Europe and sending money back home.

The new opera titled "Winter Journey" had its world premiere in Palermo on the island of Sicily. It recounts the story of a migrant who has to leave his family in a war-torn African country behind.

Commissioned by the Massimo Theatre in Palermo, the opera was written by Ludovico Einaudi and Colm Toibin and directed by Roberto Andò.

The production is loosely inspired by Franz Schubert's "Winterreise," which also served as the basis for the title.

 

A city of culture and of cultures

Italian theaters are gradually returning to the age-old practice of commissioning works directly from playwrights. For writers Ludovico Einaudi and Colm Toibin, it was a first to have a theater approach them directly.

Massimo Theatre superintendent Francesco Giambrone said the theater chose the topic of the opera to celebrate "Palermo as a city of welcoming and emphasize attention on the contemporary language of the stage."

Ludovico Einaudi meanwhile stressed that the music in the opera is a mix of different traditions, not focusing on any particular style or school. The singers are not classically trained tenors nor sopranos either, but rather African performes who speak and sing in their own national languages, while the rest of the show takes place in English. The main characters are played by Badara Seck from Senegal and Rokia Traoré from Mali.

The show will be performed through October 8. 

A young man from Gambia was peacefully talking on a street corner with friends from his native Gambia when a mafioso-type jerk from the neighborhood came up to them and started insulting them. Usually, the immigrants will turn and run. But Yusupha Susso, a 21-year-old Gambian stuck up for himself and for his friends.  Read More 

And these are not squatters. There are people who pay dearly to live in a place like this. I know this little piazzetta well because I saw it every day when I visited the Le Balate Library for Children and Babies just a block away.

From the Guardian:
From 1 January to 6 December this year, 11,360 unaccompanied children like Jamieson – mainly from Eritrea, Nigeria, Gambia, Somalia and Senegal – arrived on its shores.

‘I did not ever think I would reach here,” says 17-year-old Jamieson, staring down at his dusty blue Crocs, given to him when he disembarked from the rescue boat in Sicily, in August. “I look back and I could have died many times. But I try to stop thinking of it.  Read More 

Plus, Italian authorities collected 200 bodies of immigrants = 40 dead of breathing diesel fumes while locked in the hold, 160 found drowned and floating a half mile from the Libyan coast after a shipwreck.

Shoes, kitchen utensils, coins, a compass, a package of couscous, a life jacket, a Bible and a Koran. These are some of the objects immigrants brought to confront their voyage in the Mediterranean and left on the vessels that brought them, in years past, to the coast of Lampedusa. Memories and symbols of today's  Read More 

NY Daily News: "More than 100,000 migrants have reached Italy so far this year, but at least 2,300 are believed to have died while trying to make the crossing."

The medical examiner has yet to make his report on the cadaver that arrived with 303 rescued immigrants. None of the other 302 immigrants can leave the boat to set foot in Sicily until the doctor has reached a determination of how the boy died aboard the Doctors Without Borders rescue ship Dignity I in  Read More 

I was walking home from an event at the Santa Chiara urban mission in the ancient, low-income Albergheria neighborhood of Palermo when these boys who were kicking a soccer ball around in the street said, "Take my picture! We'll be on YouTube!"