The Magic Mountain

By Guido Vitale

In a brief touring production that included engagements in Italy, the amazing actors of the Slovenian National Theatre of Ljubljana and of the Slovenian Theatre of Trieste presented an exciting new adaptation of Thoman Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain. In this masterpiece of twentieth-century literature, a stunning tableau of the foundational ideas of Western identity and of our identity as contemporary Jews, the role of Lodovico Settembrini – the Italian intellectual whom Mann uses to symbolize freedom of thought – is interpreted by the great actor Igor Samobor. The same actor also recently starred in the film Class Enemy, directed by twenty-nine year old Rok Biček, which following its victory at the Venice Film Festival is now playing in European cinemas. The scene where his character – a strict high school teacher of German – explains to his students the essence of Nazism is one of the most memorable moments among this season’s films.