Porzia

A Renaissance tragedy set in Naples on the day of its protagonist's wedding. Porzia, beautiful and trapped, weds Rizzio di Rossi, a scholar and leader of the Literati whose dangerous ideas have drawn the Inquisition's watchful eye. But as the celebration unfolds, accusations of heresy lead to Rizzio's arrest, and the celebration curdles into something far darker. Osio, Rizzio's brother, harbors obsessive love for Porzia and offers her protection she neither wants nor trusts. When tragedy strikes and dark revelations of infidelity surface, the play builds toward its devastating conclusion. Rice writes in lush poetic drama that captures the collision between intellectual freedom and religious authority, between desire and repression, in an era when thinking the wrong thought could mean death. This is Renaissance tragedy at its most emotionally suffocating: a world where love cannot escape the machinery of power.