La Divina Commedia

I’ve listened to half a dozen *Divina Commedia* audiobooks, and Carini’s stands alone—not because it’s the most ‘academic’ or ‘faithful,’ but because it’s the most *alive*. His performance in the *Inferno* is particularly stunning: the way he voices Farinata’s arrogant booming or the weeping, guttural moans of the sodomites in the seventh circle doesn’t just describe damnation—it *enacts* it. The pacing is deliberate, almost cinematic; he lingers on the most grotesque images (the flayed skins of the barrators, the frozen tears of the traitors) just long enough to sear them into your mind. That said, his *Paradiso* occasionally feels *too* serene—Beatrice’s lines sometimes drift into a monotone that softens the section’s intellectual fireworks. A touch more edge in the heavenly spheres would’ve mirrored the text’s paradox: bliss that’s *earned*, not passive. The production is flawless in its simplicity. No distracting ambient noise, no overdone reverb—just Carini’s voice, recorded with such clarity that you can hear the shift from a whisper to a snarl in a single breath. My only real critique? The lack of chapter markers for each *canto* makes navigation clunky if you’re studying or revisiting passages. But that’s a minor gripe for an audiobook that turns a 700-year-old poem into something urgent, even dangerous. This isn’t a ‘classic’ to check off a list; it’s a dark mirror held up to the soul. If you’re ready to be unsettled, enlightened, and occasionally exhausted by beauty, this is your Virgil.