Scavalcamontagne: Breathtaking performances in the Italian countryside

Dhe church clock is going ahead. At ten to nine it strikes the hour. Five minutes later again. Normally no one registers the error anymore. The mountain village of Bertesseno in Piedmont, to which the church with the idiosyncratic chime belongs, only has seven permanent residents. In the summer there are a few more. At the weekends, when the townspeople come from nearby Turin, whose grandparents or great-grandparents, like in other hidden valleys of the Italian western Alps, once answered the call of the industrial employers. They locked up their houses at the time, but did not sell them.

On this evening, however, the bells of Bertesseno are something like a theatrical bell, calling the visitors to their seats. First ten minutes before the start of the performance, and then a second time for the latecomers. Several rows of dark green plastic chairs are lined up in front of the Church of St. Sebastian, and soon 20, 30, 40 people flock there. They want to know what “Cin Ci La” is all about, the title character from the operetta of the same name. It’s supposed to be performed at nightfall. Of course, they are also curious about the actors. To this little band called the Scavalcamontagne. Just like in the old days the actors who walked from one theater to the next came over the mountains into the valleys. Yesterday evening they were four hours of hiking and almost 600 meters away in Mezzenile in the lower Lanzo valley – with a literally breathtaking performance of “Im Weißen Rössl”: twelve roles for five actors, pianist Stefano Nozzoli also took on the musical part as well a speaker part. The others were not content with slipping into two or three figures. Each and every one of them, in a frenzied change of costume, was head waiter Leopoldo, chef Josepha, beautiful Sigismund, lawyer, manufacturer, factory owner’s daughter or lisping Klarchen. Or Emperor Franz Joseph. Tomorrow they will be in Lemie with a setting of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s “Immoral Recipes”.