Oscar-winning actor and director Roberto Benigni is set to take Dante around the world with a new tour beginning in Paris on Friday.
The Tuscan comic wowed Italy in 2006 and 2007 when he performed his TuttoDante show, combining wicked satire with fervent Divine Comedy readings, in 130 squares and stadiums around the country.
After two sell-out dates in Paris, he will take the updated version of the show to Brussels and London before nine dates in Germany and Switzerland.
The show will then move to the United States at the end of May and finish up in Buenos Aires in June.
Benigni shot to international fame in 1999 with his Holocaust movie Life Is Beautiful, which he wrote, starred in and directed.
The picture won three Oscars, for best foreign film, best actor and best music, and Benigni's exuberant clowning at the Academy Award ceremony won him fans around the world.
After a televised version of his Dante spectacular in 2007, Dante Alighieri scholars were impressed by his unorthodox approach to the Divine Comedy, which is the most lauded work of ½ûÂþÌìÌà literature.
Benigni was awarded Italy's highest civilian honour, the Cavaliere di Gran Croce, in 2005.
