Week of the Italian Language in the World: “Io e Marconi” celebrates in the Principality of Monaco the 100th anniversary of Radio in Italy and the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist

The 2025/2026 season begins for the Dante Alighieri Association – Committee of the Principality of Monaco, after the summer break, with an event “that combines storytelling theatre, music, and scientific outreach”, offering an original perspective on Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraphy.

A theatrical performance, held under the Patronage of the Embassy of Italy in the Principality, will take place on October 16 at 6:30 p.m. at the Théâtre des Variétés, as part of the 25th Week of the Italian Language in the World: “Italophony: Language Beyond Borders.”

“Io e Marconi” (“Marconi and I”) is the title of this free-entry event, with text and music by Luca Sgamas Guiducci, in collaboration with Sara Zambotti (host and author of Caterpillar on Radio2) and directed and performed by Francesco Patanè (nominated for the Silver Ribbon Award in 2021 for the film The Bad Poet).

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of radio in Italy and the 150th anniversary of Guglielmo Marconi’s birth, “Io e Marconi” retraces the key moments of the Nobel laureate’s life and the global impact of one of his greatest inventions, the radio, the organizers explain.

After participating in the Science Festivals of Rome, Naples, and Genoa, the Zambotti-Patanè-Guiducci trio will also bring to Monaco the story of this extraordinary man and, in parallel, the discovery of an incredible technology. As Riccardo Chiaberge wrote in his Wireless, Marconi was “the man who, at the end of the 19th century, invented the third millennium.”

The narrative begins in the early 1900s and follows the life of Domenico, a young Italian emigrant (played by Francesco Patanè), whose fictional story unfolds against the backdrop of real historical events. In 1909, the transatlantic liner Republic, where Domenico works as a cook, is rammed at sea, and 1,700 passengers are saved — for the first time in history — thanks to Marconi’s wireless telegraph, a system capable of sending an SOS across miles.

Domenico becomes an admirer of the inventor. During the First World War, wireless telegraphy plays a crucial role in military communication. “Marconi’s later adhesion to Fascism follows,” the text continues, “as does the initial distrust of Mussolini’s regime toward the new medium of radio, which would later become the voice of totalitarian powers. These are moments that Domenico follows from afar — first with enthusiasm and hope, then with disillusionment when the inventor openly supports Mussolini’s regime. Ironically, however, it will be Marconi’s radio that Domenico and his fellow Resistance members use to fight against the regime.”

The performance will thus allow audiences in the Principality to relive the discoveries that shaped a new millennium — one marked by the rapid evolution of technology and artificial intelligence.

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