Marlene's dream with Paola Quattrini, written by M. Bertasa, Director O. Castagna, E. Salmeggia Chamber Orchestra , soloist: Karin Schmidt, G. Trovesi, E. Soana; Musical direction by M. Gioventù, arrangements by B. Tommaso

The title of this performance embodies all the mystery of a great Hollywood star Marlene Dietrich: in Italian the expression "the dream of Marlene" leaves the impression of the diva as both the object and the subject of the dream. This is perhaps the essence of star worship: the relationship between the desires that the audience projects onto the actor and what the actor actually imagines to be or expects from her destiny.
Perhaps a diva is not only a helpless player in the machinations of a powerful Hollywood studio, but the result of a lucky coincidence between two desire structures, that of the audience and that of the diva herself. How could this idea be depicted through theatrical action? The playwright chose a point of view from the bottom, a fictitious glimpse of human relations through which to observe a diva's and her audience's dreams. A purely invented monologuing character: Ethel Schein, a modest makeup artist, seamstress, girl Friday, who works in a Berlin theater of the 1920s. A friend of Marlene Dietrich, thus far unnoticed by any great movie maker, despite years of working her way up between theater, song and cinema.
Ethel - played by Paola Quattrini, guided by the direction of Oreste Castagna, and accompanied by a few songs from Dietrich's famous repertoire revisited by the Enea Salmeggia Orchestra and its prestigious soloists - tells the story of the diva's rise to fame: the reactions of her audience, the realization of a common dream, the misunderstandings and jealousies between the two women, ending in the breakup of an intimate friendship.
Marlene, a divorced mother of a legitimate daughter, flies to Hollywood in 1930 and with her first movies makes America - slowly rising out of the Great Depression - dream again. She works the same magic in war-torn Europe, giving concerts to the boys of the American troops. Ethel, with an illegitimate daughter and a constantly feuding family, stays in Germany, suffering its contradictions and tragedies. She comes out of the war with a ruined career and the sensation that making something of her life in the future will require great sacrifice.
Some of great historical events of the 20th century serve as backdrop for the protagonists' lives; from one continent to another, these events indelibly mark the existence of these two women - their secrets, their confidences, their vision of the future as women, mothers and professionals.
But though they live on different sides of the ocean, Marlene and Ethel face the same challenges: the former overcomes the crushing, inhumane force of the star system she has embraced, while the latter refuses to succumb to the consequences of dictatorship and war, and will at last find the professional success she has so longed for.
The story offers a very private, yet serene, glimpse at Marlene Dietrich's final years, spent in a small Paris apartment, where she takes refuge in 1975. Two worlds and two cultures, American and European, came together in her career, which, nonetheless, faded out in a suggestive setting. Only the power of our imagination can bring to life Ethel's final years: Will the two elderly ladies finally rekindle their lost friendship?

Mario Bertasa