Silent City
You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Silent City Experience is a tour between creativity and imagination, dedicated to the city of Matera, its history and its inhabitants. The inspiration of this tour is Silent City, an opera about Matera, written and composed collecting the stories of its inhabitants – especially children and elderly people.
Silent City is a co-creation exercise. In the words of its creator Vania, “The history of a place is made up by the lives of many, many people – this is why every single story is so important, because they make up a unique, undistinguishable whole”.
Many lives have indeed passed through Matera, the third-oldest continuously inhabited place. The heart of Matera are its famous Sassi, a labyrinthine network of caves, dug into calcareous rock, inhabited since the Neolithic. People lived in these cave-like dwellings for thousands and thousands of years, often in extreme poverty, sleeping with animals.
After World War II, Italy was on track to becoming a modern society. The misery of people living in the Sassi led to the city being called ‘the shame of Italy’ and a policy was enforced to relocate Sassi dwellers to new houses in the modern part of the city.
The Silent City opera starts with a scene set during this specific time – a child and his mother are forcibly removed from their cave home, and in the ensuing commotion, the child is lost. Years later, the child (now an elderly man) meets a group of children on a school trip, and leads them on a journey to discover the soul of Matera, travelling in space and time between the Old and Modern City.
Silent City Experience allows visitors to follow in the footsteps of these children - you’ll be taking an immersive, multisensory jaunt across the past, present, and distant future of Matera.
The tour was especially created for families with children, but it’s open to everybody. You’ll be given an illustrated booklet, which includes the opera’s libretto.
Contact the manager
Vania Cauzillo
Stage director and documentarist, co-founder of the L’Albero Theater Company since 2007. In recent years her research has focused on artistic processes imagined starting from the participation of the community in the experience of creation manly with opera languages. With l'Albero Theatre company she tested and prototyped a format call "community Opera " and produced a contemporary opera for the official program of Matera 2019, Silent City. Since 2019 she has been nominated in the board of RESEO | eu network of opera and dance education. She is president of #reteteatro41, the network of Lucanian theatre companies, and she is a consultant for the San Carlo theatre in Naples for international projects and those related to cinema. She produced and directed her first documentary From the Hearth to the Moon (2014) distributed by Rai Cultura. She directed The research of the form. The genius of Sergio Musmeci (2016) prod. Effenove with MAXXI of Rome. Where do you stop, the episode of MATERA15 / 19 (2017) prod. Open Fields Production. The word is too much for me, prod. JUMP CUT (2020)
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Marghe
Margherita Ragg is an Italian travel writer, creator of The Crowded Planet, a sustainable travel blog. She enjoys hiking, running, eating ramen, and spending time outdoors.
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Meet the bloggers
Marghe
Margherita Ragg is an Italian travel writer, creator of The Crowded Planet, a sustainable travel blog. She enjoys hiking, running, eating ramen, and spending time outdoors.
Nick
Nick Burns is an Australian photographer, now living in Italy. He is co-creator of The Crowded Planet, and in his free time he enjoys running, drinking craft beer, and spending time with his cat Tappo.
Contact the manager
Vania Cauzillo
Stage director and documentarist, co-founder of the L’Albero Theater Company since 2007. In recent years her research has focused on artistic processes imagined starting from the participation of the community in the experience of creation manly with opera languages. With l'Albero Theatre company she tested and prototyped a format call "community Opera " and produced a contemporary opera for the official program of Matera 2019, Silent City. Since 2019 she has been nominated in the board of RESEO | eu network of opera and dance education. She is president of #reteteatro41, the network of Lucanian theatre companies, and she is a consultant for the San Carlo theatre in Naples for international projects and those related to cinema. She produced and directed her first documentary From the Hearth to the Moon (2014) distributed by Rai Cultura. She directed The research of the form. The genius of Sergio Musmeci (2016) prod. Effenove with MAXXI of Rome. Where do you stop, the episode of MATERA15 / 19 (2017) prod. Open Fields Production. The word is too much for me, prod. JUMP CUT (2020)
MessageGuided by local actors, artists or musicians, you’ll travel to the heart of the Old City, completing a series of creative tasks making use of all 5 senses. The book includes QR codes that you can use to listen to the opera, as you wander through the Sassi, letting your footsteps be led by your imagination. You’re encouraged to look at the small things – like a flower growing out of cracks in the pavement, or a feather floating in the air.
The guides will always be at hand to offer help and advice, but ultimately you’re invited to make your own way to a series of locations. Once you reach the Cathedral, where the tour ends, it’s time to put together all the clues and elements you’ve collected during your exploration – while the sunset illuminates the Sassi with peach hues, you’ll be writing your own story of Matera, leaving your own trace on the collective history of the city.
Nick
Nick Burns is an Australian photographer, now living in Italy. He is co-creator of The Crowded Planet, and in his free time he enjoys running, drinking craft beer, and spending time with his cat Tappo.
Marghe
Relive our emotions
Explore the magical atmosphere of the Sassi of Matera, home to people ever since the Paleolithic. Get lost between courtyards and alleyways, passages and staircases, in search of atmospheres forgotten by time. Discover Matera’s collective history using all five senses, and take home an unforgettable souvenir – your personal story.
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