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ROME - The Vatican has disclosed plans for a daring rock, punk and jazz opera version of Dante's Divine Comedy with a soundtrack written by an avant garde priest.
Monsignor Marco Frisina uses rock music as background for the Inferno, Gregorian chants for Purgatory and lyrical and symphonic classical and modern music for the advent of Paradise in the musical.
After a premiere in a leading Rome theatre sponsored jointly by the Vatican and Italy's two houses of Parliament, the extravaganza will tour other major Italian and European cities "to bring back the attention of the widest public to Dante's immortal poem", Riccardo Rossi, director-general of Nova Ars, the company producing the opera, told La Repubblica.
Frisina, who has written the screenplays for Italian television films on the lives of Popes John Paul I and John Paul II, is dedicating the unusual work to Pope Benedict XVI.
- INDEPENDENT
