The festival - Beautiful Star

Series of Classical Dramas at the Olympic Theater
A story like no other

Since 1585, the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza has been the oldest covered theater in the history of Western culture. Due to its marvelous Palladian architecture, the Theater has been included by UNESCO in the list of World Heritage Sites. Since 1934 it has been home to one of the oldest, most significant and continuous "cycles of classical performances", a program of theatrical performances dedicated to the classical theatre. As part of the "Cycle of Classical Shows" the stage of the Teatro Olimpico has always hosted the greatest national and international performers and directors of the 20th century.


Beautiful Star, the title of the 76th Series of Classical Dramas at the Olympic Theater is therefore in itself the statement of a challenge and of its no longer postponable resolution; the war of wars masterfully represented by Mishima becomes the critical motif inside and outside the Classic and the question on which this new edition of the Classical Shows at the Olimpico is shaped, directed by Giancarlo Marinelli. The question is whether the strength of the Myth is to emerge from the Text, and to pass into the Text of someone else, who then declines it according to the times and methods of History, or whether its power is inseparable from whoever first handed down to us, and without him no representation of the sacred and the classic is possible. And the metaphor of preserving the Text also becomes the need to save the Earth, as the Artistic Director explains: “What should we do? Save it or destroy it? Maybe that by preserving it (the Text, like the Earth) we are slowly drying them out? And then by destroying them, once and for all, would we give away a new creation of his? Or is a third way possible? An upward mediation? But is there a compromise worthy of the wonder of the Promised Land?”.