Anna A.

"In the terrible years, the years of terror, I spent seventeen months in line in front of the prisons of Leningrad": so Anna Akhmatova, one of the most important poetic voices of the twentieth century, recalls the anguish for her imprisoned son. The Soviet regime had already taken from her a first husband, executed by firing squad, and a second, sentenced to the gulag. And yet, Akhmatova did not leave the country as many artists and intellectuals persecuted by the regime did. On the contrary, by staying she became, during the war, a symbolic voice of the resistance of Leningrad, with her famous radio address to the "mothers, wives and sisters of Leningrad." From this extraordinary human and artistic story comes the work commissioned by Teatro alla Scala from Silvia Colasanti, with a libretto by Paolo Nori. Through memories, poems, and figures who crossed paths with the writer's life, Anna A. traces the destiny of a woman who chose to stay, to bear witness, and to transform pain into art. What emerges is a profound reflection on the relationship between art and power, on solidarity among women, and on the courage of those who continue to create when every freedom seems denied. A work that, looking at twentieth-century history, also speaks to the present and to the power of the poetic word: fragile only in appearance, but capable of standing against violence, preserving memory, and giving voice to an entire people.