Festival in Italy will pay tribute to Anita Garibaldi with opera

Brazilian revolutionary Anita Garibaldi (1821-1849), companion of Giuseppe Garibaldi, will be honored this Friday (4) at the 36th edition of the Ravenna Festival, in Italy, through an opera that bears her name.

"Anita", a one-act play by composer Gilberto Cappelli, starring Raffaella Sintoni and Andrea Cappelli, will be performed in a suggestive location: Fattoria Guiccioli, in Mandriole, a part of the municipality of Ravenna, in Emilia-Romagna, where the Santa Catarina native died at the age of 27. The place still preserves the room where she took her last breath on August 4, 1849.

Anita will be played by soprano Chiara Guerra, while baritone Alberto Petricca will play the role of Garibaldi. Both will be accompanied by the Vittorio Calamani Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by maestro Marco Angius.

Cappelli's opera tells the story starting from the end, when the Brazilian woman's body is hastily buried. After sealing Anita's sad fate, the audience is invited to experience eight scenes from the stages of two lives intertwined in the name of the ideals of freedom: the couple's first meeting; the Battle of Curitibanos in Brazil; the birth of their third child; the fall of Rome and the Roman Republic; and, finally, the escape of the revolutionaries and the death of the Brazilian woman, which brings the curtain down.

Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro, who went down in history as Anita Garibaldi, was born in Laguna, Santa Catarina, in 1821. At the age of 18, she met the Italian Giuseppe Garibaldi, who had fled his homeland and arrived in Brazil, where he took part in the Ragamuffin War. Amidst many revolutions in the South American country and in Italy, the couple had four children. Anita died during her fifth pregnancy due to complications from typhoid fever.