Last night, on the stage at the Teatro Massimo in Cagliari, there was initially only darkness. Then, a light shone on a chair and a table with books on it. Sitting at the table was Roberto Saviano .
"My Love Never Dies" begins like this, the light that tries to give shape to things, even when it seems impossible. Even when it seems pointless. A photo appears behind her. Rossella Casini. She's twenty years old. She will always be twenty. This is the only photo that remains of her.
Rossella's fault is love. She studies pedagogy in Florence, it's 1977, the world is awash with attempts to reshape things, Rossella—says Saviano—wants to make mistakes. The author uses the term "errare," which means to err but also to move forward, and in this polysemy, Agostino suggests that, more than being wrong, we are on a journey.
It's during this journey that she meets Francesco, a Calabrian economics student. It's not love at first sight. It becomes love, a love that for her is a perpetual infatuation, not the routine of getting used to the other, but the ongoing choice, the daily telling of herself: I'm here, I choose you. A love, Saviano confesses, that she's never encountered before, that can do anything, that doesn't depend on consequences or conditions.
She can go to Palmi with Francesco. She can discover that the Frisina family, his, are linked to the Gallico 'ndrina, which recently went to war with the Condello family. She can believe that love can stop the mafia war. Omnia amor vincit.
The show unfolds between the story of the two lovers, poetry—from Raffaele Carrieri to Vladimir Mayakovsky, passing through Anna Akhmatova—and current events. The audience breathes with her, in the unrealizable hope that Rossella can truly put an end to the feud, that she can impose the truth, which is another form of love. But we know that won't happen. On February 22, 1981, Rossella Casini disappears from Palmi.
No one will see her again. Her body will never be found, and she will be recognized as a victim of the 'Ndrangheta. The long and moving final applause is also for her, for this love that lives on, even more strongly today.
