THE DIVINE COMEDY

Narrator Edoardo Ballerini takes Clive James’s translation of Dante’s classic and breathes fresh life into it. From Hell to Purgatory to Paradise, Ballerini’s measured performance invites listeners to travel alongside him and compels them to feel the wondering anguish and pained revelations that Dante would have wanted his contemporary audience to experience. One particular benefit of Ballerini’s performance is that his pronunciation of the very little untranslated Italian vocabulary is spot-on, giving listeners the feeling that their experience is both authentic and impressive. Finally, his tone is modulated to match the material: His pensive diction in Purgatory, for example, differs from his account of the events in Paradise. N.J.B. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2015]