The tradition of "Il Maggio"
The singing of May, still widespread in the Apennines of Tuscany - Emilia in Garfagnana and in other areas of Tuscany, is an expression of traditional cultural importance and originality.
The May is a representative form a tragic theme, but a happy conclusion, almost always based on the name of the struggle between good and evil.
This is a long play in verse, which is entirely sung, composed of "quartine di ottonari a rima incrociata intervallate" in moments of particular dramatic intensity by "ariette (quartine di settenari)" mainly accompanied by musical instruments like the violin and the accordion.
The representation has been developed as a land of ancient rituals associated with the return of spring, which still preserves traces eloquent as the scenic area of a circle in a place with trees, the procession, the disguise, the presence of the Page, singing, the players, the "questua" (act of going door to door to beg for offerings, especially in food) and sometimes dance to end the show.
By Il Maggio it passed a "kind" of theater that expresses the encounter of the most authentic roots of our people and the figures of literature seized, the myth of ancient history from the Bible to the Homeric poems, from the Roman history, the deeds epic novels of medieval knights to the poems and the themes of contemporary history.