THE LEGENDARY JOURNEY OF „EDIPO RE“
In 2011 the Righetti family saved the historic boat which had once belonged to the ever-famous poet and director Pier Paolo Pasolini: today the boat continues to sail and to be the protagonist of new tales
There are many different lives that can unravel from a common point, it all comes down to starting a journey, staying in constant motion and finally always finding a push to change. This way, even a wooden boat can transcend its materiality and become a legend, a catalyst for stories and emotions. This is the case of the Edipo Re (Oedipus Rex), a historic boat whose name in itself is already mythological and legendary. The boat has been brought back to life time and again, it has risked running aground forever, only to make a comeback and be once again at the center of new tales and adventures. Originally conceived as a fishing boat, this seventeenmeter hull craft was built between 1942 and 1943 at the Pula shipyards. Its initial name “Rapido” was very telling about its destiny. The “Rapido”, in fact, would soon be at the center of the rescue operations of hundreds of people fleeing from
Slovenia, Croatia, Dalmatia and Venezia Giulia during World War II. Restoration works carried out at a later time would have brought to light this boat’s courageous nature, by revealing the bullet holes on its side, war injuries, testifying to stubbornness and hope. This would already suffice to remark the “Rapido’s” extraordinary nature which, once peace was restored, changes identity and turns to the feminine by becoming
“Emanuela”. Except that, towards the end of the 1950s, after an illustrious career at war, and after having sailed the seas from coast to coast offering safety to people on the run, thus opening the way to the possibility of a new life for them, the boat was purchased by the painter Giuseppe Zigaina, a close friend to the poet and director Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Together, the two artists would transform that boat, tried by many vicissitudes, into a magical venue, beating heart of encounters, influences and creative epiphanies. Son of the river Tagliamento, Pier Paolo didn’t love the sea, nevertheless Zigaina persuaded him to get on board, and makes him fall in love with the beaches of Grado, a lagoon town in the region Friulivenezia Giulia. As narrated in the book “The Scent of India”, Pasolini returns from his trip to India only to find out that his friend Giuseppe had charted a new heading for the “Emanuela” naming it, “Edipo Re “, at last, and just like the film the director is making in 1967. Traditionally, only Navy vessels have the right to a masculine name, but the Edipo Re, with its ancient oak keel, breaks all molds. It became a symbol of freedom, beauty and a syncretism of plural stimuli, to the extent of inducing the Divine One, Maria Callas, to
The Edipo Re, a historic boat whose name in itself is already mythological and legendary. The boat has been brought back to life time and again, it has risked running aground forever, only to make a comeback and be once again at the center of new tales and adventures
abandon Aristotle Onassis’ yacht, the Cristina O, and join Pasolini on board. Power, wealth and ostentation on the one hand, and immense creative vitality on the other: in 1969, Pasolini and Zigaina’s boat returns to Grado and its white beaches, to shoot the film “Medea”. Here the Divine One, the new cinematographic Medea, immensely beloved muse to the Italian poet and director, would walk barefoot. An impossible love is the one between Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini love. It takes place on two different levels, yet it is no less intense, passionate, stimulating and all-consuming. He would gift her with a ring and she would gift him with a necklace which had a Greek coin, a pledge to that shared journey: a journey that is destiny, epiphany, and a creative urgency that changes and shapes history as well as the world. In the 1970s the death of Pasolini and Callas also marks the decline, and seemingly the end, of the boat which had seen them united in a golden age that seemed destined to disappear forever. The Edipo Re is then bought by an Austrian couple, after which any trace of it is lost until 2011, when Angelo Righetti, psychiatrist of the school of thought of Franco Basaglia, finds it reduced to a wreck in a Croatian port. Righetti then entrusts it to the care of his daughter Sibylle, who leads the boat towards its rebirth with help from her brother Riccardo, Vanni the “Carpenter”, Captain Enrico Vianello, the boys from the Don Orione Center and Marina Fiorita, bringing it once again back to being a vehicle capable of creating connections and of transporting people, projects and ideas. A shipwright in Goro (a fishing port in the Emilia Romagna region) was able to restore the lifeblood of the Edipo Re , which had been numbed under the impertinent coating of time. Today this boat’s symbolic cargo is more manifest than ever before, as it continues to sail carrying a message of amazement about the world and its possibilities, of valorization of the territory and of a tourism that is ethical and sustainable. Silvia Jop, Basaglia’s niece and Sibylle’s childhood friend, brought back on-board artists of all kinds, actors, musicians and writers, thus reviving the atmosphere of the Pasolini years. An atmosphere which also reverberates in events such as Oedipus Island, a yearly artistic and cultural event brought about with the collaboration of the Venice International Film Festival (which is somewhat of a Social Food Festival dedicated to art, social issues and environmental protection) and in experiential itineraries like discovering Venice’s secrets, flavors and traditions. In short, the beating of many hearts is contained in the wood of Edipo Re, a treasure trove of experiences that change the course of things and are reborn every day to renew a passion that knows no end.