Fulvio Cama and Sara Cappello's show will be in the United States from October 6th to 12th. Performances are scheduled in Washington, D.C., Georgetown University, Little Italy, and participation in the Columbus Day Parade in New York.
Before becoming the Lions of Sicily, the Florios had already left. They left Bagnara Calabra, bringing with them knowledge, business skills, and the wealth of experience upon which they would later build, in Palermo, one of Italy's most important entrepreneurial dynasties.
It is this lesser known part of their history that Fulvio Cama and Sara Cappello will bring to the United States with the theatrical and musical show “The Florios of Calabria, Lions of Sicily”.
The tour will start on October 6th from Washington and will end on October 12th in New York, with the participation in the traditional Columbus Day Parade. Between the two dates, the Florios' story will enter schools, universities, places of Italian diplomacy, and spaces frequented by the Italian-American community.
An itinerary that seems to follow the same movement as the story told on stage: from Calabria to Sicily, from Italy to America.
Before Palermo there was Bagnara
The project, presented at the Francesco Cilea Theatre in Reggio Calabria, was born from the meeting between the Reggio musician Fulvio Cama and the Palermo singer Sara Cappello. Two artists with over thirty years of careers, founding members of the Unione Cantastorie for over a decade, who have chosen to unite the traditions of their regions to reconstruct three centuries of history.
The show begins in the second half of the seventeenth century and focuses on the Calabrian origins of the Florio family, preceding their famous rise to prominence in Sicily.
«"The Florio family's history isn't just Sicilian," Cama explained. "They didn't become lions in Sicily: they were already lions in Calabria.".
The reference is to the so-called "Lion Land," the area between Bagnara, Seminara, and the Piani della Corona. Here, the family owned vineyards and wine presses, produced wine, and had developed expertise in the trade and preservation of fish in oil.
Bagnara was then located on the Mediterranean sea routes and maintained relations with Palermo, Genoa, and Marseille. Not an isolated place on the fringes of history, therefore, but a territory traversed by trade and economic relations.
When, after the 1783 earthquake, the Florios left Calabria, they brought to Palermo all they had learned and built up to that point. Sicily offered them the space to transform those skills into a great enterprise.
The Lions of Sicily
In Palermo, the Florios became merchants, shipowners, bankers, and producers. They linked their name to Marsala wine, the tuna fisheries of Favignana, the processing and preservation of tuna, and steamship navigation.
Their activity contributed to changing the economic and social face of the city and ended up connecting Sicily with the United States via transoceanic routes.
Sara Cappello has been studying the history of the family for about twenty-five years and, in the show, she gives voice above all to the Sicilian season and to the figure of Franca Florio, protagonist of an unrepeatable era in the cultural and social life of Palermo.
On stage, the narrative unfolds according to the tradition of "cuntu e cantu," alternating storytelling, theater, and music. Folk songs are accompanied by historical plays and Sicilian puppets: Orlando, Angelica, and a new Franca Florio, created specifically for the show and embellished with her ever-present gems.
Calabria and Sicily are not presented as two separate chapters, but as parts of the same story. The former preserves the origins and expertise; the latter recounts the rise, success, and eventual decline of the dynasty.
The tour between Washington and New York
The US tour will kick off on October 6 in Washington, with a lecture-show at the Harris School.
The October 7th Cama and Cappello will perform at the Italian Cultural Institute of the Italian Embassy. The following day they will be at Georgetown University, where they will meet students and young people through a program dedicated to Sicilian and Calabrian culture, the legends of Colapesce and the epic of Orlando.
The October 9th the show will arrive in New York, at’Italian American Museum in Little Italy. The tour will end on October 12th with official participation in the Columbus Day Parade together with the Comites of New York.
The show is produced by the Calabrese cultural association Fabulanova and from the Sicilian association Construction Sites on Stageand enjoys the patronage of the Municipalities of Reggio Calabria and Palermo and of the Comites of New York.
The project is also supported by the Italian-American cultural network and patronage, confirming a relationship with Italy that goes beyond family memories but continues to generate initiatives and opportunities for encounters.
An Italian story requested by Americans
What makes the trip even more significant is its origin: the tour was not born from a proposal made by the artists, but from an invitation received from the United States.
«It was the Americans who asked us to bring this story to Washington and New York,» Cama said.
The success of the novels about the family and the subsequent television productions have rekindled international interest in the Florios. The show, however, adds a new element: it returns to the period before the move to Palermo and reconstructs the conditions that made the dynasty's future success possible.
The Florio family's story thus becomes a tale of internal and international emigration. It tells the story of those who leave, bringing with them not only nostalgia or need, but also knowledge, work, skills, and a culture destined to transform through encounters with other places.
It's a message that finds a particularly receptive audience in the United States. For many Italian-American families, their origin story isn't something immobile to be preserved, but rather a question still open about their own identity.
Even a novel to tell the "before"“
The tour is accompanied by the publication of the historical novel “The Florios of Calabria”, written by Fulvio Cama together with Maria Cavallo and published by Città del Sole Edizioni.
The volume, due out on September 25th, reconstructs the two centuries preceding the family's Sicilian success. This work seeks to bring to light the "before": the relationships, activities, and wealth of skills developed in Bagnara.
The American trip will also be the occasion to present the project dedicated to the centenary of the birth of Rosa Balistreri, which in 2027 should take Cama and Cappello abroad again with the “Rosa nel mondo” tour.
After the experience in Australia last February, the new tour confirms how local stories can still speak to an international audience, when removed from rhetoric and restored in all their complexity.
From Bagnara to Palermo, from Washington to New York, the Florio family's journey continues. This time, not along the trade routes that contributed to the family's fortune, but through music, theater, and the voices of two artists from the South.
A return to the origins that, once again, passes across the Atlantic.
