Rai's new drama season kicks off with Leopardi. The poet of infinity, in prime time on Rai1

It will be Leopardi. Il poeta dell’infinito, directed by Sergio Rubini, who is signing his first television direction, to inaugurate Rai’s new fiction season in 2025. The miniseries, airing on Rai1 in prime time Tuesday, Jan. 7 and Wednesday, Jan. 8, is a co-production of Rai Fiction, IBC Movie, Rai Com and Oplon Film, with the support of Apulia Film Commission and Marche Film Commission. Starring Leonardo Maltese in the title role, it recounts the life of Giacomo Leopardi, exploring his human and historical story.

The cast also includes Alessio Boni as his father, Count Monaldo Leopardi; Valentina Cervi who plays his mother Adelaide Antici; Giusy Buscemi as Fanny Targioni Tozzetti; Cristiano Caccamo will be Antonio Ranieri, the friend who supported him to the end; Fausto Russo Alesi as mentor Pietro Giordani; and Alessandro Preziosi as Don Carmine.

The narrative unfolds from the poet’s adolescence and his extraordinary education through his travels to cities such as Florence, Milan, Bologna, Rome and Naples, where he died prematurely. The narrative highlights Leopardi’s desire to emancipate himself from his family and establish himself, despite difficulties related to frail health.

The miniseries, which offers an unprecedented yet historically consistent portrait of the great poet, alternates between moments of fragility and determination, recounting the profound bond with Antonio Ranieri, a key figure in his life. Filmed in Recanati, the Marche, Bari, Puglia, Mantua, Turin, Rome, Naples and Bologna, Leopardi. The Poet of Infinity is presented as a large-scale costume production designed to bring new generations closer to the figure and legacy of Giacomo Leopardi.

“It is the irrepressible love of life that is the driving force behind Leopardi and his poetics; and his pessimism is the result of a constant search for happiness denied by an incomprehensible universe deaf to the desires of men,” says the director. “The poet’s continuous tension toward life is manifested through a yearning for freedom, love and beauty, at the cost of questioning every established order, from the family to the conformity of his contemporaries. It will be the search for love that will push Leopardi beyond the gilded enclosure of his father’s home, and it will be love for a woman, the bewitching aristocrat Fanny Targioni Tozzetti, that will become his reason for living, as well as to occupy an important space in his literary production; just as once again it will be in the love for his faithful and Apollonian friend Ranieri that our poet will succeed in bridging the limits of his own physicality. A visionary genius behind whom beats the heart of an eternal boy, misunderstood by the men of his time, Leopardi is more interested in addressing the generations of the future, in whom he has continued to find a listening ear to this day.”

Rai's new drama season kicks off with Leopardi. The poet of infinity, in prime time on Rai1

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