Novecento

NOVECENTO by Alessandro Baricco. Performed by Antoine Bonnin. Directed by Kelly Rolfo. Running time: 1h15. Abandoned as a baby on an ocean liner, Novecento is born in the middle of the sea and will never set foot ashore.

A prodigious pianist with no past, he invents on the Atlantic a music never heard before, carried by the ocean, migration, jazz and war. Let yourself be swept along by this legend risen from the waves!

It is said that a baby was found in a shoebox on a liner cutting through the Atlantic. They named him Novecento. He had neither origin nor destination. Born between two worlds, he would never set foot on land. His kingdom was the ship, his horizon the endless sea.

There, seated at a piano, he listened to what no one else could hear. For Novecento had never seen the world, and yet he knew it better than anyone. Through the passengers, he sensed the cities, the exiles, the joys and the sorrows.

His music did not come from learning, but from an older memory, as if the ocean itself spoke through his hands. The trumpeter tells us that he played something that did not exist until he began to play it.

Aboard the Virginian passed the dreams of America, the emerging jazz, the poverty, the luxury and the clamour of History. In this enclosed space, Novecento brings forth the infinite. A fragile legend, suspended between the ocean and silence.

Disabled access: There is no possible access for people with reduced mobility in the Theatre.