ENRICO IV / HENRIK IV

The scenography describe the place where the opera is located: a psychiatric clinic. Scenic elements shift and interlock, reconfiguring the space with every scene. This is not decoration; it’s a machine designed to destabilize.

The video-camera onstage is the true weapon. It captures live action and transforms it into something else—documentary becomes optical illusion, reality becomes dream. But more crucially: it breaks the theater itself. When an actor speaks to his double, when the same performer becomes both character and Pirandello watching from the wings, when Enrico IV addresses the actors by their real names—the stage ceases to be a stage. The fourth wall doesn’t fall; it simply was never there.

By the finale, there is no distinction left between Enrico’s fractured mind and ours. The scenography has done its work: it has convinced us that the boundary between the role we play and the freedom to step out of it is an illusion we live inside every day. The space becomes a mirror, and we are forced to ask if we are any more sane than he is.

Adaptation: Lorenzo De Iacovo / Marco Lorenzi
Director: Marco Lorenzi
Assistant director: Lorenzo De Iacovo
Set designer: Diana Ciufo
Assistant set designer: Ivan Botički
Costume designer: Manuela Paladin Šabanović
Video: Edoardo Palma / Emanuele G. Forte
Lighting designer: Predrag Potočnjak
Sound design: Marin Butorac
Cast: Aleksandar Cvjetković, Leonora Surian Popov, Mirko Soldano, Ana Marija Brđanović, Ivna Bruck, Giuseppe Nicodemo, Andrea Tich, Serena Ferraiuolo, Stefano Maria Iagulli, Deni Sanković, Ana Marija Brđanović
Subtitles: Lovro Mirth
Stage manager: Marin Butorac
Produced by: Italian Drama of Rijeka (Dramma Italiano di Fiume)
Foto: Dražen Šokčević, Diana Ciufo