LeggoDante
  1. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
  2. mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
  3. ché la diritta via era smarrita.

“Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.”

Inferno · Canto I · 1–3

Dante wrote
to be heard.

Not studied. Heard. The Commedia is made of sound before it is made of meaning: the meter that carries a line, the rhyme that closes it, the breath a terzina asks of you. Read it aloud properly and it stops being difficult.

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I About

A life spent reading aloud

Matteo Cima reading Dante's Inferno during a walking performance
Matteo Cima · Actor and interpretive reader

My name is Matteo Cima. I am an actor, interpretive reader and professional voice talent, based in Bergamo. I trained with Claudio Morandi at CUT, the Centro Universitario Teatrale in Bergamo, then worked with Paolo Nani, Pierluigi Cantini and Cristian Di Domenico, alongside diction and dubbing training at CTA, Centro Teatro Attivo in Milan, under Pino Pirovano.

The Commedia has been studied and annotated for seven centuries, and like everyone else I read those commentaries with gratitude. My own work begins a step earlier, with the sound: what the verse does when it is spoken well, and how anyone can learn to do that.

  • 2005 Won the Lauro Dantesco, Italy's national award for best young reader of Dante, reading the Inferno in the church of San Francesco in Ravenna, in front of the poet's tomb.
  • since 2001 Teaching interpretive reading and diction at CUT Bergamo, mostly to university students.

I read in Italian, because that is where the sound lives. I teach in Italian or in English.

II The method

What reading aloud does

Reading the Commedia aloud is not an ornament laid over understanding. It is how the understanding arrives. The meter tells you where the thought turns. The rhyme tells you what belongs together. The end of a line tells you when to wait. Say the verse the way it was built and you have already understood a great deal, before anyone has explained anything.

So the work is technical before it is interpretive: breath, stress, pace, where to let a word land and where to get out of its way. All of it can be taught, and there is a real pleasure in watching someone find it.

III Who it's for

Who I read with

  • Readerswho have always meant to face the Commedia and would rather not do it alone.
  • Studentswho meet Dante on a syllabus and want to hear what the verse is doing.
  • Classes and groupsin schools and universities, where the reading is done aloud together and everyone takes a turn.
  • Actors and speakerswho are after the technique itself: diction, breath, phrasing, tested on the hardest text there is.
IV Introduction

Hear a canto

Inferno XXXIII, the Count Ugolino. One of the darkest passages in the poem, and one where the sound carries almost everything.

Watch the video

V Events

Public readings

I have been reading in public for thirty years: Dante above all, though not only. Theatres, churches, radio, city spaces, and lately more and more often beside a live orchestra.

  • 2026

    Puss in Boots

    Narrator with live orchestra. Auditorium Gavazzeni, Seriate.

  • 2025

    The Betrothed: Renzo's journey to Bergamo

    A walk through words and places for Art2Night, at the Fondaco del Sale. Seven performances in a single day, one every hour.

  • 2025

    Amami Alfredo

    An opera concert drawn from Verdi's La Traviata, with readings from his letters. Texts by Giorgio Appolonia.

  • 2025

    Peter and the Wolf, The Nutcracker

    Narrator with live orchestra. Auditorium Manenti, Crema.

  • 2024

    Dante's Inferno

    A walking production between theatre and dance through the Fondaco del Sale, in the old town of Bergamo, for Art2Night. Two days, thirteen and ten performances of half an hour each.

  • 2024

    Puccini, the opera in brief

    Four episodes for Radio Svizzera, on period reviews of the Puccini premieres.

  • 2023

    Three cantos for Bergamo TV

    Cantos V and XXVI of the Inferno and canto XXXIII of the Paradiso, for the programme Gente e Paesi.

  • 2022

    Peter and the Wolf

    Prokofiev, read with the Destinazione Musica orchestra under Walter Crippa.

  • 2012

    Lectura Dantis of the Purgatorio

    For the UniBergAmo network, at Porta Sant'Agostino, Bergamo.

  • 2007

    La Divina Commedia

    Teatro Comunale, Inzago.

  • 2004

    The path to happiness in Dante's work

    Readings from cantos of the Commedia and from the sonnets of the Vita Nova.