Table Read

The cage breaks open. Caravaggio breaks with it.
Chained in a torture chamber beneath the fortress, Caravaggio faces the Grand Master one last time. Faith against flesh. Obedience against desire. What follows is an escape down a fortress wall, a boat in the dark, and a fugitive painter running not toward freedom but toward the only thing he has left.
Act Three is the fall. Brutal. Beautiful. Inevitable.
Sicily. Caravaggio paints like a man on fire. In Syracuse, a burial. In Messina, a nativity. Each canvas more desperate than the last. Each one a confession he cannot say out loud. The genius is still there. The man holding the brush is disappearing.
Back in Rome, the news arrives. Lena. The woman whose face launched his greatest work. Gone. Caravaggio learns what it costs to leave someone behind in a city that devours the unprotected.
Cardinal Del Monte makes his final play. A pardon. A real one. Signed by the Pope himself. But the pardon needs a delivery and Caravaggio needs to stay alive long enough to receive it.
Naples. A prison cell. Malaria. Chains. The Grand Master finds him one last time. Two men who could never say what they meant finally say it. It is too late for both of them.
Then a swamp. Bandits. A boiling sun. A beach. A boy. Two nuns. And the Tyrrhenian coast, where the greatest painter of his generation reaches for the light one final time.
The pardon arrives. The man does not.
Act Three is reckoning. Loss. Grace. The moment the fuse runs out.
What you see in the art, you will find in the artist. What you see in the artist, you will find in the man.
Cast
Dennis Kleinman · Narrator
Craig Parker · Caravaggio
Dan Lauria · Cardinal Del Monte
Bruce Davison · Alof de Wignacourt
Shaan Sharma · Stefano della Croce
Catherine Lidstone · Lena
Sarah Elmaleh · Maria
Brendan Bradley · Annibale Carracci
Noah James · Ranuccio Tomassoni
Josh Sterling · Ottavio Tomassoni
Zeke Alton · Giovan Tomassoni
Nick Monteleone · Mancini
Matt Curtin · Toppa
Bjorn Johnson · Pope Paul V
Ray Abruzzo · Pope Clement VIII
Written by Richard Vetere
Executive Produced by Jack Levy, Shaan Sharma, and Mark Knell
Table Read is a Manifest Media production.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Malta. A fortress carved from rock, surrounded by sea, ruled by warrior monks who pray at dawn and kill by noon.
Caravaggio arrives to paint a portrait. He stays because he has no choice. The Grand Master offers sanctuary, admiration, and something neither man is prepared to name. The Captain at Arms offers suspicion, jealousy, and a locked door every night.
Act Two is the cage. Beautiful. Suffocating. Holy.
Caravaggio paints the Grand Master's portrait and captures more than armor and scars. He captures a man's loneliness. The Knights throw a feast in his honor. He dances on tables. He is knighted with a gold sword. He is watched from every window.
Back in Rome, Cardinal Del Monte fights for a papal pardon while the Tomassoni brothers hire bounty hunters. The Pope dies. A new Pope rises. The Church still cannot decide what Caravaggio is worth.
On the beach, the Turks attack. Knights are nailed to crosses and set on fire, floated into the harbor at dawn. Caravaggio picks up a sword for the first time. He gives water to a dying boy. The boy is killed in front of him.
Flashbacks pull him back to Rome. To Lena. To the night Ranuccio came for him with a blade. To the moment that changed everything.
He paints The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist on a chapel wall and signs his name in the blood flowing from the saint's neck. The only painting he ever signed.
Then he paints a Cupid so grotesque it seals his fate.
Act Two is devotion. Desire. Betrayal. The moment a man realizes that the sanctuary he was promised is just a prison with better art on the walls.
The fuse is burning.
Cast
Dennis Kleinman · Narrator
Craig Parker · Caravaggio
Dan Lauria · Cardinal Del Monte
Bruce Davison · Alof de Wignacourt
Shaan Sharma · Stefano della Croce
Catherine Lidstone · Lena
Sarah Elmaleh · Maria
Brendan Bradley · Annibale Carracci
Noah James · Ranuccio Tomassoni
Josh Sterling · Ottavio Tomassoni
Zeke Alton · Giovan Tomassoni
Nick Monteleone · Mancini
Matt Curtin · Toppa
Bjorn Johnson · Pope Paul V
Ray Abruzzo · Pope Clement VIII

Written by
Richard Vetere

Executive Produced by
Jack Levy, Shaan Sharma, and Mark Knell

Table Read is a Manifest Media production.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Caravaggio, the brilliant outlaw painter whose genius made him famous and whose violence made him a fugitive.
Rome, 1610. The city is loud, corrupt, holy, and dangerous. Caravaggio thrives in it.
Act One drops you straight into the night everything breaks. Inside a dark Roman chapel, Caravaggio confronts his greatest rival and exposes a truth the Church is not ready to control. God does not live in perfection. God lives in flesh, shadow, and brutal light.
Outside the church, Rome answers back. Wine turns into provocation. Desire turns into rivalry. Old grudges sharpen. A debt comes due. What begins as swagger spirals into violence, and by dawn Caravaggio’s life in Rome is over.
Wanted. Hunted. Unforgivable.
A carriage slips through the gates. A boat cuts across black water. Behind him, the city that crowned him now wants him dead. Ahead lies Malta, a fortified island ruled by warrior monks, where faith is enforced with steel and survival demands obedience.
Act One is ignition. Art as rebellion. Faith as power. Genius as liability.
This is where the fuse gets lit.

Cast
Dennis Kleinman · Narrator
Craig Parker · Caravaggio
Dan Lauria · Cardinal Del Monte
Bruce Davison · Alof de Wignacourt
Shaan Sharma · Stefano della Croce
Catherine Lidstone · Lena
Sarah Elmaleh · Maria
Brendan Bradley · Annibale Carracci
Noah James · Ranuccio Tomassoni
Josh Sterling · Ottavio Tomassoni
Zeke Alton · Giovan Tomassoni
Nick Monteleone · Mancini
Matt Curtin · Toppa
Bjorn Johnson · Pope Paul V
Ray Abruzzo · Pope Clement VIII
Written by
Richard Vetere
Executive Produced by
Jack Levy, Shaan Sharma, and Mark Knell
Table Read is a Manifest Media production.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rome. 1610. A painter who sees God in the faces of prostitutes and killers is on the run for murder.
His name is Caravaggio. He drinks too much. He loves recklessly. Men, women, it doesn't matter. He picks fights with swordsmen and screams at the heavens in candlelit chapels. He paints the way other men pray, except his prayers are in defiance. And the Catholic Church can't decide whether to pardon him or let the bounty hunters finish the job.
This screenplay by Richard Vetere, a Pulitzer nominee and Golden Palm winner whose work has been produced by Francis Ford Coppola, follows Caravaggio from the brothels of Rome to a besieged fortress on Malta where a scarred Grand Master offers him sanctuary and something that looks a lot like love. But sanctuary has a price. And Caravaggio has never paid what he owes without bleeding for it.
There are popes making deals in candlelight. Brothers hunting him across the Mediterranean for killing their own. A muse he left behind in Rome who can't wait much longer. A rival painter who despises his work and can't stop staring at it. Knights nailed to crosses and set on fire floating into the harbor at dawn. A prison cell carved into rock like a grave. And an escape across open sea in a fishing boat guided by a boy too afraid to speak.
This is not a quiet period piece. This is Game of Thrones in Renaissance Italy with paintbrushes and rapiers.
Craig Parker, who played Haldir in Lord of the Rings, plays Caravaggio. Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner Bruce Davison plays the Grand Master. Dan Lauria, America's dad from The Wonder Years, plays the Cardinal pulling every string in Rome. Ray Abruzzo, Little Carmine from The Sopranos, plays the Pope. The cast includes Broadway veterans, stars of The Chosen, the voices behind the biggest video games on the planet, and a former Navy test pilot born in Italy playing an Italian swordsman.
Fourteen actors. One genius who painted like God was guiding his hand and lived like the devil was chasing him. Turns out both were true.
This is Caravaggio. This is Table Read. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
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BONUS PARTNER TRAILER
Today we’re sharing a sci-fi audio drama trailer from our friends at Voyage Media, creators of multiple #1 fiction podcasts.
HARD DRIVE stars Priah Ferguson (STRANGER THINGS) as a young woman who inherits a hard drive containing her late grandfather’s memories. As she explores them, she uncovers instructions he left behind and discovers she may be the key to stopping a global population-control conspiracy.
Created by the Neese Twins (UMBRELLA ACADEMY) and produced by Voyage Media (SANCTUARY, ELUCIDITY), HARD DRIVE blends mystery, thriller, and sci-fi with an eight-episode first season available now.
Search HARD DRIVE from Voyage Media wherever you listen to podcasts.
Listen now: https://www.voyagemedia.fm/show/hard-drive/

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