Sul caso J. Robert Oppenheimer al Piccolo Teatro di Milano

In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer at the Piccolo Teatro of Milan (349-361) The first Italian performance of In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Heinar Kipphardt is preceded by growing interest and considerable controversy. The show debuts on November 30th, 1964, at the Piccolo Teatro of Milan in via Rovello with remarkable success. The physicist Oppenheimer is played by Renato De Carmine. The direction is collective: translation and adaptation are edited by Luigi Lunari, the film screenings by Cioni Carpi, the scenic device by Luciano Damiani and Enrico Job, the music by Fiorenzo Carpi. The directors of the play are Virginio Puecher and Fulvio Tolusso, supervised by Giorgio Strehler. The show takes place in the same scene where Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht was staged in April 1963, and is a milestone in the frame ‘theatre – science – power’ that even today, fifty years later, is a main line in the programming and artistic direction of Piccolo Teatro. Paolo Grassi himself strongly wanted and supported the staging of In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, to which he dedicated time and energy, and assigned, above all, a ‘strategic function’: the beginning of the so-called theatrical decentralization. Over the months following its première in Milan, from 27th December 1964 to 26th February 1965, the show’s increasing success was surprising: forty-three times in different cities in the North, Centre and South of Italy and in Lugano, Switzerland, as well.