A dinner with Pietro Querini

The project ‘A cena con Pietro Querini’ (At dinner with Pietro Querini) is the brainchild of Paolo Francis Quirini, who also serves as director. This unique show combines theatre and gastronomy, offering an immersive experience centred on the story of Pietro Querini and his epic journey, while guests enjoy a dinner of stockfish.

Director’s notes.

The story is told in the form of a dialogue between three of the survivors, the Doge and two of his advisors. In order to adapt it to an evening with dinner based on bacalà, the tale is divided into 5 episodes which are interspersed between one course and other. After all, as the main subject is the tasty dish derived from the dried cod, it was not kind to speak about it the whole evening without letting the guests smell and taste it.

To make the story more understandable, some images taken from pictures, paintings, drawings and photographs are projected, so they help to understand what is told. That’s because, having taken the dialogues from Pietro Querini’s and his scribe’s original writings, which have been kept till today, the language is very archaic and sometimes difficult to understand. For this reason, in the drawing up of the dialogues, the way of speaking has been a bit sweetened and some words, which are not used today and therefore incomprehensible, have been translated, trying anyway to keep, where possible, the original linguistic and grammatical style.

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