A night with Shelley

Actors, poets and films for the bicentenary of the birth of Percy Bysshe Shelley

With the intent of painting as vivid and as varied a picture of the poet as possible, we present an alternation of poems by Shelley and by his favorite Italian poets, extracts from the diaries of his wife Mary, faithful daily accounts of their life, passages from the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, written by Mary following a crazy game played one evening with Shelley and Byron and an account of the extraordinary life of the “community of free spirits” made up of Shelley, Mary and her sister Claire as they traveled around Europe at the beginning of the 19th century, with particular attention to their fundamental relations with Byron.

The film Gothic, made by Ken Russel and inspired by the meeting between Shelley and Byron on the shores of Lake Geneva, will be shown.

The evening is a follow-up to the show Percy Bysshe Shelley, created for the Festival Opera Barga at Bagni di Lucca, where Shelley, Mary and their family stayed in 1818.