11 February 1858, Lourdes.
Bernadette Soubirous is a 14 year old girl and lives in poverty.
She lives with her family in the cachot, an old converted prison. She suffers from asthma and cannot read or write.
That day she goes to look for wood and, surprised by a gust of wind, she turns her head towards the Massabielle cave, on the banks of the Gave.
That's when she sees a "Lady in White".
She "she had a white dress-she will say-a white veil, a blue belt, and a yellow rose on each of her feet, the same color as her rosary chain."
Bernadette calls her "the Lady" and to those who ask her who she is she speaks of "Aquero", "that one over there" in the Occitan language.
Her life changes forever in that moment.
For the rest of the world it is the beginning of a great leap of faith.
More than one hundred and sixty years later, the story of little Bernadette has become a musical and on the occasion of the 2025 Jubilee she is preparing to arrive in Italy for the first time, after having conquered France with more than 200 thousand spectators.
The debut will be on 16 January 2025 at the Auditorium della Conciliazione in Rome, with stops also in Bari, Naples, Milan and Florence (tickets already on sale).
Produced by Roberto Ciurleo and Elenoire De Galard, creators of great shows in their homeland such as The Three Musketeers, Saturday Night Fever and Robin Hood, the show has a book and direction by Serge Denoncourt and comes to us thanks to the Italian producer Fatima Lucarini, with the adaptation by Vincenzo Incenzo and Gaia Di Fusco protagonist.
In the cast, there is David Ban, who also plays his father in the original version, and then Chiara Luppi in the role of his mother, Fabrizio Voghera as Abbot Peyramale and Christian Ruiz as the skeptical Inspector Jacomet.
"It took more than ten years to create the show - say the producers - It was born in Lourdes and is now filming in France, Poland and will go to Broadway".
"When they called me - smiles director Serge Denoncourt - I immediately replied 'no', I'm not interested in Lourdes, nor Bernadette, nor the project. Then they took me there, I touched the cave, I saw the room. And nothing. So we went to the archives and I saw Inspector Jacomet's notebook. That was my 'sign': he didn't believe that Bernadette had really seen the Madonna and the musical's libretto was born from his notes."
Following her investigation, the scene is in fact the five months in which Bernadette goes to the cave, despite her prohibitions, attracted by something beautiful and irresistible.
She will perform unusual gestures, scratching the earth in the cave with her fingers to reveal muddy water.
The Lady will appear to her 18 times, finally introducing herself as the Immaculate Conception and asking for a procession and a chapel in that very place.
Bernadette is interrogated, visited by doctors, scrutinized by the parish priest,
scolded by her mother and supported by her father.
"It's not the story of a saint - continues the director - but of a little girl who goes straight down her path: a Joan of Arc without armour".
On 4 July 1866 Bernadette left the city of Lourdes to enter the congregation of the Sisters of Charity in Nevers.
She died at the age of 35 and was canonized by Pope Pius IX in 1933. "At a time when many young people are sucked into the current towards standardization and single thought - adds Incenzo - here a little girl wins who does not go towards the sea but towards the source. It is a necessary, even urgent show, in an era in which there are no more models. And it can open a door to an audience, the young one, not accustomed to going to the theater."
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