The Musical The Reawakening of the Gods: A Conversation with Marco Savatteri Plus a...Divine Performance

Composer and director Marco Savatteri has defined his creative trajectory with site-specific shows, mostly inspired by Greek mythology. He will talk about the decade-long story of his enchanting immersive musical, Il Risveglio degli Dei/The Reawakening of the Gods, set in the UNESCO site of the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento (Italy), and about the embracing company he has created bringing people from different parts of Italy and even from abroad to a small Sicilian town on Mediterranean Sea. On its 10th anniversary, the show has gone viral (young people are singing the Faun's ballad in Poland as well as Japan!), while it has already lived in an international dimension thanks to a two-year collaboration with Montclair State University. 

On stage, Montclair State University students will recount their experience as performers in Sicily through an Inserra-Chair-supported internship moving into its third edition, as translators of the script from Italian into English for a public reading aiming at a full production, and as Musical Theatre majors taking Italian classes or minoring in Italian on campus.  

On Oct. 11, The Reawakening of the Gods company artists visiting from Italy will perform some excerpts from the musical along with students involved in its March 2026 English-language Public Reading. The selection presented will include songs in English and Italian to reflect the multi-cultural nature of the collaboration.

Sponsored by the Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies, this event is part of an international multi-year project developing across colleges (CART and CHSS), departments (Musical Theatre in the Theatre and Dance Department; Italian Program in the Global Cultural Studies Department; Voice Program in the Cali School of Music) and offices (International Academic Initiatives) on campus, as well as a collaboration with the independent company Savatteri Produzioni.