Casa Testori, June 22, 6:30 PM
Opening of the exhibition “Construction Site for the Cathedral”
Meeting with Giovanni Agosti, Stefano Boeri, and Luca Doninelli
Greeting by Enzo Pesce, President of the Maurizio Fragiacomo Foundation
Two important archival finds are the subject of a meeting and an exhibition that will open at Casa Testori on Monday, June 22. The finds concern a passionate correspondence of one-sided love, addressed to a young man from the Milanese upper middle class, Maurizio Fragiacomo. That experience, which took place between 1972 and 1974, later became the thematic core of a novel, The Cathedral, published at the end of that story. Coinciding with this discovery, the Foundation to which Maurizio Fragiacomo entrusted the management of his estate has decided to donate the manuscript of the novel (three notebooks, enriched by numerous drawings by the writer) and the books with Testori’s dedications to the boy to the Testori Association. The exhibition will also feature some of Testori’s drawings, still owned by the Foundation.
The cathedral is clearly Milan’s Duomo, a sort of magnet for Testori’s imagination, both the geometric center of the city and a pulsating architecture that allows itself to be invaded by the tumult of life around it. The Duomo repeatedly returns in his writings, whether literature, theater, poetry, or art criticism.
For this reason, the meeting accompanying the opening of the exhibition will feature architect Stefano Boeri and writer Luca Doninelli, both profound experts on Milan, who will be invited to reflect, in dialogue with Giovanni Agosti and Giuseppe Frangi, on this dimension of the Duomo as the genetic center of the city.
The meeting will be preceded by a presentation by Enzo Pesce, president of the Maurizio Fragiacomo Foundation, and a presentation of the archival findings by Giovanni Boccardo, professor at the University of Pavia.
The Letters
39 letters ranging in length from a single sheet to 27, all handwritten and accompanied by floral drawings.
The letters were written between October 8, 1972, and May 5, 1974.
The Manuscript
Three red-covered notebooks containing the manuscript of the novel La Cattedrale.
The notebooks contain dozens of drawings.
The Dedications
Nine volumes published between 1971 and 1981, each with a dedication from Testori to Maurizio Fragiacomo.
In order: Il dio di Roserio (1971, reprint), In your blood (1973), The Cathedral (1974), Macbetto (1974), Passio Laetitiae et Felicitatis (1975), Oedipus (1977), Interrogatorio a Maria (1979), The meaning of birth (1980), Factum est (1981).