The image of Mia Grizzuti’s smiling face covered by white make-up and marked by tears sums up her two-month experience as a summer intern at the Savatteri musical theater company in Italy. Her stage attire and the gold-colored columns of the 5th-century BCE doric Temple of Concordia behind her after the first show of Il Risveglio degli Dei/The Reawakening of the Gods reflect the history and art that enveloped Mia during her stay in Agrigento, Sicily, while rehearsing and performing for a unique modern musical about ancient Greek mythology. Her tears speak of the emotional impact this internship has had on her: “This has been a truly transformative experience as a musical theater student in terms of growth in the performing arts, but also as a person living abroad for the first time, in the country my ancestors came from, and in a town with a majestic archeological heritage that moved me.”
Mia performing at the Temple of Concordia, Agrigento
Mia Grizzuti, undergraduate student in the Musical Theatre at Montclair State University, was one of the winners of a paid international internship that took her to the Southern tip of Italy — the World Heritage site of The Valley of the Temples in Agrigento – to perform in a musical presented in July and August 2025 for several days at dawn (see recap). She also performed in Scopri il teatro! and Cavalleria Rusticana, the latter presented at the Teatro Classico of Taormina.
Mia performs in Scopri il teatro, an interactive show about the history of the local theater entitled to Noble-Prize-winning writer Luigi Pirandello, originally from Agrigento (Photo by Colin Keys)
Marco Savatteri, creator and director of Risveglio, remarked: “Mia brought an established experience in singing, acting, and dancing along with a working knowledge of Italian that allowed her to smoothly transition into the company. Mia is a truly musical performer/artist, despite her young age: her skills, already able to impress and move the audience, are bound to grow further. Thanks to her perseverance mixed with humility she overcame any challenge and successfully. Her interpretation of Fate, a complex piece included at the end of the show, was extraordinary,”
Prof. Teresa Fiore, designer and co-organizer of the internship program with Prof. McCann, coordinator of the Voice program at MSU, was particularly pleased to see Mia’s insatiable curiosity towards the cultural aspects of the experience. “Mia was like a sponge, always ready to explore parts of the region, whether Roman villas, Medieval churches, or remote beaches, but also to attend cultural events and mingle with locals to improve her Italian,” Fiore stated. This internship is the perfect example of how an interdisciplinary collaboration supported by donors (thank you, Mr. Inserra, along with Angelo and Marie Cali) can provide enriching experiences in the area of the humanities to students majoring outside of CHSS and inspire them to focus on foreign language acquisition.”
Mia with Prof. Fiore in the town’s historical center
Mia took classes in Italian at MSU prior to this experience, but it is the summer stay abroad that opened up a new perspective on language acquisition. “When you study the language abroad, you feel the challenge, it’s as if the language owns you and you are subjected to it. But once you use it abroad and become comfortable with it, the feeling is that of owning the language,” Mia commented.
Video: Footage and editing by Colin Keyes
Marco Savatteri is about to visit our campus this Oct. to relay the Summer 2025 internship experience with Mia and other students, and present the Summer 2026 edition as well as a Reading on campus designed to acquaint students with Il Risveglio (see program of events), while students such as Mia and Brianna Coppolino are involved in the translation of Risveglio, as part of a Translation class taught by Dr. Marisa Trubiano in view of the Spring 2026 Reading.
Short link: tinyurl.com/MiaMSUAG
This internship is the perfect example of how to “combine business with pleasure,” or as the Greeks would put it τὸ χρήσιμον καὶ τὸ ἡδύ (to chrēsimon kai to hēdy), which in Italian is “l’utile e il dilettevole” (MSU students – Brianna Coppolino, Emma Mason, and Mia Grizzuti – at the Temple of Concordia with MSU professors Lori McCann and Teresa Fiore, along with Maestro Savatteri, and then at the natural park beach of Torre Salsa with Prof. Fiore)