Paolo Nori with “The Master and Margarita” at Teatro Doglio in Cagliari
On Saturday 14 November 2026, Paolo Nori arrives at Teatro Doglio in Cagliari with The Master and Margarita – Sympathy for the Devil, a story dedicated to the masterpiece by Mikhail Bulgakov that combines reflection, music and literature.
There are novels that belong to their own time and others that, continuing to be reread and reinterpreted, end up transcending it. Il Maestro e Margherita by Russian writer and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov undoubtedly belongs to this second category. First published in censored form between 1966 and 1967, more than twenty years after the author’s death, the novel has gradually acquired a central position in twentieth-century literature, thanks to its ability to blend satire, fantasy, philosophy, love and reflection on power and its role in today’s society.
It is precisely this literary universe that Paolo Nori devotes his show “The Master and Margarita – Sympathy for the Devil” to, scheduled at Teatro Doglio on Saturday 14 November at 9 p.m. The writer, translator and storyteller born in Parma brings his own reading of an immense work to the stage, seeking a form capable of conveying its richness without turning it into a simple summary of the plot. The result is a meeting between literature and theatre in which storytelling becomes the tool for bringing the audience closer to the characters, contradictions and questions that remain open in the novel.
Paolo Nori and Russian literature: a relationship built over time
A writer and translator, Paolo Nori has devoted an important part of his career to Russian literature, translating and editing the works, more or less well known, of numerous authors, from Dostoevsky to Gogol, from Tolstoy to Chekhov, and ultimately Bulgakov himself. In his work, the great Russian authors are not presented as distant figures or as being exclusively connected to academic study, but as voices that are still capable of speaking to the present and entering everyday life through a direct, ironic, and extremely personal narrative language.
Nori’s relationship with The Master and Margarita is therefore anything but occasional. The author has in fact spoken on several occasions about his connection with the novel and with Bulgakov. This familiarity makes the project that will be presented at the theatre on Via Logudoro particularly interesting: Nori does not approach the work solely as an outside interpreter, but as an author who has spent a long time engaging with the language of its author, his characters and his imaginary world. The story thus also becomes a way of sharing a personal reading with the audience, made up of associations, observations, questions and digressions.
The result is a way of approaching a great classic without claiming to contain it within a definitive explanation. Telling the story of The Master and Margarita means, in fact, confronting a novel that eludes simple classifications and can be read from different perspectives: as a love story, as a fantasy tale, as social satire, as a reflection on art and power or, again, as a meditation on good and evil. None of these interpretations, on its own, is sufficient to exhaust its meaning. The narrator’s voice can move precisely within this complexity, choosing to follow certain threads of the novel and bring them into the theatrical dimension through the rhythm of storytelling and the direct relationship with the audience.
It is also in this transition from the page to the stage that one of the most interesting aspects of the event can be found. A work known and studied by generations once again becomes, first and foremost, a story to be listened to, with the possibility of rediscovering its irony, paradox, and depth through a contemporary voice. The theatre thus becomes a space where Bulgakov’s novel and Nori’s sensibility meet, between the Moscow imagined by the author and the perspective of someone who, decades later, continues to find something in those pages capable of questioning the present.
“The Master and Margarita”: how the stories of Bulgakov’s novel intertwine
Telling the plot of Il Maestro e Margherita means entering a book constructed on several narrative levels that proceed in parallel and eventually meet. On the one hand, there is Moscow in the 1930s, where the arrival of an enigmatic stranger, Woland, accompanied by a company of eccentric and unsettling characters, upsets the life of the city. On the other hand, there is the story of the Master, a persecuted and isolated writer after writing a novel dedicated to Pontius Pilate, and that of Margarita, the woman who loves him and embarks on an extraordinary journey to find him again.
Within the novel, a further narrative dimension thus unfolds: the story of the condemnation of Yeshua Ha-Nozri and Pontius Pilate, set in Jerusalem in the 1st century. The two stories, apparently very distant from one another, eventually enter into dialogue, creating a structure in which the Soviet present, religious history and the fantastical dimension continually overlap. Three narrative levels allow Bulgakov to speak simultaneously about truth, responsibility, freedom, fear, and power.
Alongside the protagonists moves a gallery of memorable figures, beginning with the cat Behemoth, one of the most famous and surreal characters in the book. The fantastical element, however, is not merely a narrative device: through the irruption of the absurd into everyday life in Moscow, Bulgakov calls his characters’ certainties into question and, at the same time, observes with irony a society dominated by conformity, censorship and fear.
The strength of Il Maestro e Margherita also lies in its ability to continually change perspective. The theme of the artist confronted with power occupies a central place. The Master is a writer who, after telling an uncomfortable story, is marginalised and eventually gives up his work. In this sense, the novel also reflects the condition of the intellectual in Soviet society subjected to cultural control and censorship.
But alongside the political dimension, it’s possible to find also a more intimate one. The relationship between the Master and Margarita is in fact the emotional centre of the novel: Margarita decides to face the impossible in order to find the man she loves again. Her journey passes through the fantastical and the grotesque, but retains within it a deeply human question: how far are we willing to go to defend what we love?
“Sympathy for the Devil”: the devil, rock and Bulgakov’s imagery
The subtitle Sympathy for the Devil adds a further level of interpretation to the show. The reference to the famous song by the Rolling Stones — which, as confirmed by the band’s frontman, Mick Jagger, was inspired precisely by Bulgakov’s story — recalls one of the most surprising characteristics of the novel: the presence of the devil does not simply coincide with the traditional idea of evil.
Woland and his company arrive in Moscow sowing chaos, fear, and grotesque situations, but their presence also produces a paradoxical effect: by bringing out hypocrisies, greed, and contradictions that are already present in society, they ultimately expose the characters they encounter. The boundary between good and evil, therefore, becomes much less clear than it might seem.
It is also this ambiguity that makes the novel so modern. Bulgakov does not offer simple answers, but constructs a universe in which comedy coexists with tragedy, the sacred with the profane, and the fantastical with an extremely concrete representation of society.
Paolo Nori’s “The Master and Margarita” at Teatro Doglio
The event with The Master and Margarita – Sympathy for the Devil will therefore take place on the stage of the renowned theatre in Cagliari. During the evening of Saturday 14 November, the audience will have the opportunity to return to the pages of a novel that continues to question its readers about the relationship between truth and power, the freedom of artistic creation, the strength of love and the complexity of the boundary between good and evil. A journey into Bulgakov’s Moscow, but also into literature and the questions that, decades later, continue to remain open.
Through a way of storytelling characterised by a language capable of alternating irony, reflection and immediacy, Nori will allow spectators not only to experience that «miracle that everyone must greet with emotion” described in the celebrated review of the novel written by the great Genoese poet Eugenio Montale, but also to grasp new facets and keys to interpreting the story.
Tickets for the show are already available for purchase through the official Box Office Sardegna channels. For more information about Palazzo Doglio or to book a stay, you can instead call 070 64 640 or write an email to info@palazzodoglio.com.
Would you like to attend Paolo Nori’s show and enjoy a holiday filled with charm and elegance? Book a stay at Palazzo Doglio in Cagliari
