Federica Luna Vincenti is "Sissi the Empress": a powerful and irreverent portrait of a timeless icon at the Campania Teatro Festival on July 13th.

After the extraordinary success of audiences and critics, the highly anticipated play Sissi l'empress arrives at the Campania Teatro Festival , starring Federica Luna Vincenti , nominated for best leading actress at the Nastri d'Argento and Globo d'Oro 2025 for her performance as Marta Abba in Michele Placido's film Eterno Visionario . On July 13th at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples, you will be able to witness the extraordinary journey of discovery of one of the most famous women of all time, Empress Elisabeth of Austria , who we all know by another name, Princess Sissi, thanks to the films. Her life is not only a true fairy tale complete with golden carriages, jewels, and court balls, it is also in reality the emblem of the struggle of an independent woman in contrast with the conventions of her time . Her story is intertwined with that of an empire destined to disappear, but which will show the world its splendor and its claws until the very end.

The show is the surprising story of Elisabeth of Austria , a woman who, saved from holography thanks also to the publication of her diaries, appears to us in a disruptive and irreverent guise that cannot fail to fascinate and deeply affect us.

A charismatic and rebellious figure, a nonconformist, perpetually at war with herself and the reality around her: an anti-imperialist empress, close to the working masses, to ethnic minorities, opposed to any form of oppression . Anorexic, in eternal mourning for the senseless deaths of two of her children, she tries to exorcise the pain through exhausting gymnastics sessions, with the infinite care of her body and the combing of her hated hair – "it's as if I were holding a foreign body on my head , I'm a slave to my hair" .

Gifted with a ferocious sarcasm, she castigated the Habsburg court and the nobles—" a depraved race "—without mincing words. She did not spare even herself all the bitter irony she was capable of, a way to hide her vulnerability, the fragility of her soul. A soul that sought in every way to find solace by taking refuge in poetry: a lover of Heine and Baudelaire, she composed poems herself.

An incredibly multifaceted personality, tireless in her constant and contradictory search for what she could do to improve the world and, at the same time, how to escape from reality. Perhaps the synthesis of this duality lies in her final will, to donate the proceeds of the posthumous sale of her diaries and poems to political refugees and their families, entrusting this task to a hypothetical future soul , but not before sixty years after 1890. A spiritual testament that, long censored due to harsh criticism of the Viennese Court, was only fulfilled in 1980, when, upon its first publication, the royalties were donated to the Relief Fund of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the proceeds from the subsequent edition were donated to Amnesty International, thus respecting the Empress's wishes.

Sissi the Empress unfolds across several panels, each examining a specific aspect of her character and thought: from philosophy to sex, from politics to art . A journey in which, without hesitation, Sissi speaks to us about herself, her worldview, in the crude, cynical, and pain-filled way she expressed herself— "True tears cannot be shed, and those that are shed all flow in vain," she often repeated. She felt abandoned, alone in a cruel world where wars were a condemnation for all mankind. Until her death, she had always harbored a fierce sense of guilt for her children, a sense of guilt that, even if in fact it had no basis, had always consumed her throughout her life, leading her to real ravings, in which she poured out words full of acidity, contemptuous of everything and everyone, even the Emperor himself: " My husband, where are you? What kind of man are you if you deny your wife the chance to be a woman?"

Sissi the Empress is a text where the “cries” of the unfortunate Sissi, empress in spite of herself, but an unrepeatable woman, whose soul, however, seems to be part of all of us, are loud.

The cast was carefully chosen to emphasize the vastness of the Habsburg Empire, while also creating a microcosm that symbolically represents our current "empires." The script and direction are by Roberto Cavosi , who directs a talented company. Paola Marchesin is in charge of costumes, while Gerardo Buzzanca is in charge of lighting design. The original music is composed by the duo Oragravity . Executive production is by Daniela Piccolo, with general organization by Valentina Taddei.

Federica Luna Vincenti 's new production for Goldenart Production , in co-production with Teatro Stabile di Bolzano and Teatro Stabile del Friuli Venezia Giulia, aims to propose a new and original approach to the theatrical medium: a transversal, wide-ranging and highly ambitious project, in line with the taste of international productions.

“Sissi is the symbol of a doomed world. If it were only a question of her life, her personal existence, it would already be worth dealing with. But it would simply be a coincidence. Sissi, on the other hand, is both a coincidence and a symbol. This is why she cannot be ignored. As a human phenomenon, she was the most fascinating figure of a decadence, of a ruin” (EM Cioran).

Sissi the Empress | Characters and interpreters

SISSI Federica Luna Vincenti

DOCTOR Marco Manca

THE FILER Claudia A. Marsicano

THE HAIRDRESSER Miana Merisi

ACTRESS Maria Giulia Scarcella