Young Giovanni Ortoleva from Florence, who was an honorable mention in the “Under 30 Directors at the Venice Biennale 2018” directs La dodicesima notte, considered by many critics to be Shakespeare’s best comedy.

On the coast of Illyria love spreads relentlessly. Duke Orsino is in love with Olivia, a wealthy countess who refuses his attentions to honor the memory of her dead brother. When Viola washes up in Illyria, a shipwreck survivor who enters the Duke’s service dressed as a man, she falls hopelessly in love with her master while, for her part, Countess Olivia falls in love with Viola, thus creating an unresolvable love triangle. “O time, thou must untangle this” laments Viola when she realizes the situation; and while the courtiers play cruel jokes on the steward Malvolio, time comes up with a solution.
With La dodicesima notte written just after Hamlet, Shakespeare concluded his series of “pure comedies” before venturing into the “dark comedies” (characterized by their somber tone and the theme of death). In La dodicesima notte the Bard touches on all his favorite themes and characters in a kind of farewell celebration. The text is ambiguous and fascinating, surreal and earthly, deeply melancholic but irresistibly entertaining; an opal, a tiny object that contains whole worlds and in which one can lose oneself observing it.