"Welcome back to Bari, dear Camilleri": the city pays homage to the writer with screenings, readings, and concerts.

The city of Bari, with "Welcome Back to Bari, Dear Camilleri," will celebrate Andrea Camilleri's centenary with two events, scheduled for October 12th at the Teatro Piccinni and October 13th at the Teatro Petruzzelli. Curated by Gianna Fratta and Felice Laudadio, the events are promoted by the City of Bari and organized by Puglia Culture and the Camerata Musicale Barese. The events are part of the national centenary program, organized by the Andrea Camilleri Fund and the Camilleri 100 National Committee, with SIAE as the main sponsor and RAI as the main media partner.

The initiative was presented this morning at the City Hall.

At the Teatro Piccinni—free admission subject to availability—on October 12th at 6:00 pm, as an event outside of the municipal theater season's season ticket, a high-definition audiovisual recording of Camilleri's latest (and now legendary) play, Conversation on Tiresias , will be screened. The performance, written and performed by Camilleri on June 11th, 2018, at the Greek Theater in Syracuse, was screened before 5,000 spectators, who gave the great writer and playwright a prolonged, warm applause at the conclusion. Camilleri—almost 93 years old and now blind like Tiresias—starts from Homer's Odyssey to recount in his monologue the story and key events of Tiresias's life, which have already been narrated by great writers such as Sophocles, Seneca, Dante Alighieri, Guillaume Apollinaire, Virginia Woolf, Primo Levi, Ezra Pound, and others. Andrea Camilleri chose Tiresias and what literature, philosophy, and poetry have handed down to us about this character, and he uses it as a pretext—as Borges did with many of his favorite themes—to investigate a thought from which to extract traces, or evidence, of his previous life. The infinite manipulations this extraordinary figure has undergone across eras and genres constitute for Camilleri a mirror in which to reflect himself, and through which to reinterpret the ultimate meaning of literary invention.

The event continues on October 13th at 8:30 pm at the Petruzzelli Theatre—with paid admission and tickets available through the Camerata Musicale Barese network—for the inaugural event of the Camerata's 84th 2025-26 concert season, which, for the occasion, is dedicating its opening performance to Camilleri with "Camilleri100. Music, Words, Voices, Faces."

The show combines acting and music, with four outstanding actors—Paolo Briguglia, Maurizio Micheli, Laura Morante, and Lina Sastri—engaging in a four-part interpretation of Camilleri's texts drawn from the Sicilian writer's works and public statements. Jazz, so beloved and frequented by Camilleri, is interspersed throughout the texts. The musical protagonists are two international jazz champions: Omar Sosa and Marialy Pacheco, both Cuban pianists, both known for their fusion of Afro-Cuban rhythms, traditional Cuban music, and contemporary jazz. In their two-piano performance, the two artists will blend their Cuban heritage with European classical music and jazz, creating a passionate and energetic musical dialogue that Camilleri, a great jazz lover, would have appreciated.

That "Welcome Back to Bari" recalls some of Andrea Camilleri's experiences in the city. In the late 1950s, still very young, he served as assistant director to his directing teacher at the National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome, the great Orazio Costa, on a memorable production of T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral , starring some of the greatest names in Italian theater, including Salvo Randone, Andrea Checchi, Elena Cotta, Alessandro Ninchi, and Carlo Alighiero. The show premiered on December 25, 1956, at the Teatro Piccinni, produced by the newly established "Teatro Stabile della Regione Pugliese" directed by Giuseppe Giacovazzo, who later became editor of La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno . Camilleri remained attached to the Teatro Stabile Bari, for which he directed other productions, again at the Teatro Piccinni, including Il topo by Carlo Maria Pensa, Il perfetto amore by Roberto Bracco (both 1957), and L'innocenza di Camilla by Massimo Bontempelli (1958). In April 2014, the Bif&st-Bari International Film&TV Festival—conceived and directed by Felice Laudadio—dedicated a major tribute to Camilleri. On the morning of April 12, in a packed Petruzzelli Theatre, he led a lengthy masterclass exploring past and present. That same evening, again at the Petruzzelli Theatre, he was awarded the Fellini Prize for Artistic Excellence, receiving a standing ovation from the immense audience.