“Hilde, perché senza amore non è vita?”

Diversamente da celebri archetipi femminili che risolvono l’assenza di amore con il suicidio (Hedda Gabler, Emma Bovary, l’Ophelia shakespeariana…), Hilde decide di tenere botta e proseguire nel matrimonio: la giovane operaia di Pirna, in Germania, pur nella sua incapacità di ritrovare l’amore per il marito – che rientra dalla guerra mondiale nel ’46 – riversa il suo affetto sulla figlia e sull’amica e compagna di linea ai telai in fabbrica. “Mi sono data da fare col tran-tran di tutti i giorni, in fabbrica e in casa, tutto in ordine – un posto per ogni cosa e ogni cosa al suo posto – ogni giorno, senza pensare a niente.”

Sommessamente Hilde sottolinea che i drammi e le vite insoddisfatte non sono appannaggio esclusivo della borghesia, ma investono anche la vita di persone appartenenti come lei alle classi subalterne: le quali, detto tra noi, costituiscono almeno il 70% delle popolazioni. In Hilde si scorge però una grande energia, magari radicata nelle sue origini sociali.

Why “Hilde-Living Without Love (you cannot)”?

Very differently from those well- known female archetypes, who solve the absence of love in their lives by resorting to suicide (Hedda Gabler, Emma Bovary, Ophelia…), Hilde chooses to stay with her husband. even if she no longer loves him when he returns in 1946, after fighting in World War Two. In this one-person play this young working-class woman from Pirna, Germany, transfers her affections on her daughter and on her best friend, who works, like her, on an assembly line in a factory, making parachutes: “I’ve always kept myself busy. You know, the daily grind, at work and at home, everything tidy – a place for everything and everything in its place – every day, thinking of nothing”. She softly, but with self-confidence, underscores that tragedy and dissatisfied lives aren’t the prerogative of the upper and middle classes, but they also belong to ordinary working-class people like her. We shouldn’t forget that the latter represents at least 70% of the world’s population. Moreover, in Hilde we glimpse a special strength, possibly deriving from her working-class roots.

Marlene Dietrich was an important icon in the collective imagination of Europeans and American in the 20^th century and a myth which still lives on today. It is the women characters, then, in Dietrich’s songs, that unwittingly animate the happenings in Hilde’s everyday life and provide the vital sap for her resilience. 

What’s more, Hilde seems to warn us that Love is among the innocent victims of war.

Pianist Daniele Bettini accompanies actress-singer (“cantattrice”) Cristina Ferrajoli, who thanks to her outstanding international experience, superbly interweaves Hilda’s story with Dietrich’s songs, performing in Italian and singing in German (surtitles in English). She thereby offers us a truly stunning variety of musical theatre.