Dante Today
Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary and Popular Culture
Performing Arts Archive
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Frasier
http://www.insidepulsemedia.com/columnImages2006/image26335.jpg
In the fourth episode of the eighth season of Frasier (November 14, 2000), Frasier offers to tutor his boss on the finer things in life saying that he will be the Virgil to his boss's Dante.
Contributed by Charlie Russell-Schlesinger (Bowdoin, '08)
Auditions for Romeo Castellucci's "Divina Commedia" (2008)
http://klp.splinder.com/post/15424774
"Get Smart" TV series (1965-1970)
http://www.art.com/asp/sp-asp/_/pd--10103798/Get_Smart.htm
The pilot episode of "Get Smart" (1965) features agent Maxwell Smart trying to rescue one "Professor Dante" who has invented a weapon of mass destruction known as the "Inthermo." At the end of the episode it is revealed that Dante meant to name his invention the "Inferno." (Joe Henderson)
http://www.wouldyoubelieve.com/episodes.html#Season%201
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058805/
Contributed by Joe Henderson (Bowdoin, '10)
Studio Dante, Chelsea, NYC
http://www.studiodante.com/about/
Ethan Coen, writer, and Neil Pepe, director, "Almost an Evening" (plays) (2008)
http://broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=24479
"Like many of the Coen brothers' films, much of "Almost an Evening," nimbly directed by Neil Pepe, is touched by the premise that hell lurks right under the surface of, or just around the corner from, everyday life. Make that Hell, with a capital H, the same piece of real estate charted by Dante and Milton."
Ben Brantley, The New York Times, January 23, 2008
http://broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=24479
"The Divine Reality Comedy" by the Bread & Puppet Theater
http://www.theaterforthenewcity.net/bread.htm
"No Escape From Reality, Even for Magical Horses," by Claudia La Rocco
Dec. 1, 2007, The New York Times
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/theater/reviews/01divi.html?ex=1354165200&en=74674b2d400416c9&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
The "D- Bomb" (Dante Bomb?), dropped by a Marching Band
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~themob/history/archives/TCU-00.htm
"Marching Owl Band Drops the D-Bomb on Todd Graham"
"TULSA, Okla. -- Tulsa has filed a formal complaint with Conference USA over the Rice marching band's performance of 'Todd Graham's Inferno' during halftime of Saturday's football game in Houston. Graham left Rice for Tulsa after just one season... The band's show depicted a search for the former Owls coach through different circles of Hell, based on Dante's Divine Comedy."
http://www.sundaymorningqb.com/story/2007/11/27/174948/40
November 27, 2007
Contributed by George Trone
"Going to Hell with Benigni"
http://www.corriere.it/english/articoli/2007/11_Novembre/30/benigni.shtml
"Actor brings Dante to TV screens but attacks Italian politicians before presenting Divine Comedy.
"MILAN -- Unlike Adriano Celentano, Roberto Benigni did not let Romano Prodi off the hook. Yesterday evening, the Tuscan comic spared no one, although most of his barbs, including the funniest ones, were directed at Silvio Berlusconi and the Centre-right. But there were also jibes at [foreign minister -- Trans.] Massimo D'Alema and [justice minister -- Trans.] Clemente Mastella."
By Maria Volpe, Corriere della sera.it, Nov. 30, 2007
http://www.corriere.it/english/articoli/2007/11_Novembre/30/benigni.shtml
Contributed by Patrick Molloy
Martin Scorsese, "Cape Fear" (1991)
http://www.impawards.com/1991/cape_fear.html
In the film, Robert De Niro's character utters the line:
"I'm Virgil and I'm guidin' you through the gates of Hell. We are now in the Ninth Circle, the Circle of Traitors. Traitors to country! Traitors to fellow man! Traitors to GOD! You, sir, are charged with betrayin' the principles of all three! Quote for me the American Bar Association's Rules of Professional Conduct, Canon Seven."
http://imdb.com/title/tt0101540/quotes
Contributed by Joe Henderson (Bowdoin, '10)
Fritz Lang, "Metropolis" (1927)
http://www.howwastheshow.com/index.cfm/action/reviews.view/reviewKey/315
"At about 80-90 minutes into the film, the Seven Deadly Sins with Death are presented as statues in a church. Death is playing a bone as if it were a flute, and the statues of the Seven Deadly Sins come to life." (Ian Eternick)
Contributed by Ian Eternick (Luther College, '11)
Roberto Benigni's "Tutto Dante"
Contributed by Dorothea Herreiner
John Curran, "The Painted Veil" (2006)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446755/
The 2006 movie, The Painted Veil, based on a novel by Somerset Maugham ultimately derives from the author's fascination with Pia, a character in Dante's Purgatorio. This discussion of the movie quotes from Maugham's preface to the novel:
"The idea for the novel began when Maugham was studying Italian under the tuition of the daughter of his landlady in Tuscany before World War I (he had by then decided to abandon a career in medicine for the life of a writer). While working through Dante's Purgatorio, he came upon this line, spoken by the adulterous wife Pia: Siena mi fe'; disfecemi Maremma. (Siena made me, Maremma unmade me.) Ersilia (for so the tutor was named) explained that Pia was a noblewoman of Siena whose husband, suspecting her of adultery and afraid on account of her family to put her death, took her down to his castle in the Maremma valley, the noxious vapors of which he was confident would kill her off. But she took so long to die that he grew impatient and had her tossed out a window. As Maugham explains in his preface to the novel: "I do not know where Ersilia learnt all this. The note in my own Dante was less circumstantial, but the story for some reason caught my imagination. I turned it over in my mind and for many years from time to time would brood over it for two or three days. I used to repeat to myself the line: Siena mi fe'; disfecemi Maremma. But it was one among many subjects that occupied my fancy and for long periods, I forgot it. Of course I saw it as a modern story, but I could not think of a setting in the world of today in which such events might plausibly happen. It was not till I made a long journey in China that I found this." (Edward T. Oakes, http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=586)
Contributed by Patrick Molloy
Background Image: Domenico di Michelino, Dante and His Comedy, 1465
