THE CHARACTER
A woman from Belluno tells Milan. Michela Fregona has a degree in ancient literature, a diploma in transverse flute, a journalist, writer and teacher in evening schools. You organize courses, reviews, presentations. A path that has led her, in the last three years, to curate some events for the Dal Verme Theater, a historic Milanese hall that this year celebrates her 150th anniversary. This year Fregona has imagined “Milan tells”, a series of four events – all on Saturdays: 8 and 22 October, 5 and 26 November – between books and cities, in which the protagonist is the Lombard capital in some of its many facets , through the words of four authors.
Michela Fregona, what brought you to Milan at the Dal Verme Theater?
«It is the third year that I collaborate with the Dal Verme Theater. I started during the lockdown, curating an online review. At that time the theater was at a standstill, but it had begun, quickly and intelligently, the activities to keep the orchestra playing and reach its audience through these channels. This allowed the structure to actually reach much more people than just the city pool of fans and subscribers. I organized a first season of “Connections” online. The idea was to bring together several arts: the director together with the music critic, as when we had Pupi Avati talking about his film on Mozart with Sandro Cappelletto. An obsolete and adventurous first season. Translated last year into a live season, with a program of events between music and literature. With the idea of making characters from the literary world dialogue with pieces of the orchestra’s life, therefore composers, conductors, performers … This too had an excellent response ».
What does the “Milano Tells” review consist of?
«This year is the 150th anniversary of the Dal Verme Theater. A lung for the city that has summarized the entire history of Milan, always with a very human attention to its public. So I proposed a small season of homage to the city ».
Describe the four dates …
«It is a journey in which four writers with as many books stage the city from different points of view. There is the thriller, with Jacopo De Michelis’s “La stazione” (La nave di Teseo), a novel set at the Milan Central Station, with its visionary architectures. In the second event Cecilia Scerbanenco will talk about her father Giorgio as a writer, a resident of Milan, the inventor of a certain way of seeing the city. The violent city, from the bad years, but at the same time a city in continuous transformation, which still has places of extreme mystery. This through the rediscovered novel “Si vive bene in due” and his “The manufacturer of stories”, both published by La nave di Teseo. The third appointment will be with Marina Di Guardo and the thriller “Dress Code Rosso Sangue” (Mondadori), set in the world of fashion. Milan as a bewitching creature. Finally we will have Alessandro Zaccuri, author of “Poco a me” (Marsilio), a novel nominated for the Strega Prize and winner of the Isola d’Elba-Raffaele Brignetti Prize. The protagonist is Giulia Beccaria. A very curious book, a kind of funny work, very refined, which tells of a post-Enlightenment Milan ».