Actor Kevin Spacey read a poem about an exhausted and dejected boxer during an unexpected performance Friday night at a museum in Rome, weeks after a sexual misconduct criminal trial against him broke down in Massachusetts.

Spacey’s appearance at the National Roman Museum was not publicly announced in advance. The museum had posted a cryptic notice on its website that said a two-time Oscar winner would read works by Italian poet Gabriele Tinti during a rare evening event – but did not give the person’s name.

During the reading, Spacey stood next to an ancient Greek bronze statue of a stricken fighter while he recited Tinti’s “The Boxer”. The poem is about a fighter who was left bleeding on the ring and thrown aside despite previous fame.

Anyone who knows the rapid decline in the career of the former “House of Cards” actor after allegations of sexual misconduct was brought against him in 2017 will easily find meaning between the lines.

Video clips published in Italian media and on the US news site The Daily Beast show Spacey intoning the verse dramatically, including a reading: “The more you are wounded, the bigger you are. And the emptier you are. You. You.” used me for their entertainment. She lived on shoddy stuff. Life was over in a moment. “

Barbie Latza Nadeau, correspondent for The Daily Beast in Rome, said four journalists had been invited to the reading and promised interviews with Spacey, but they didn’t materialize.

“Everyone in the tiny room was speechless by Spacey’s uncompromising performance. When it was over, a larger crowd had gathered outside and he read them the whole poem again, ”said Latza Nadeau wrote.

She said the most poignant parts of the reading came towards the end when he read the lines “You must suck a hero’s heart while it is beating” and “I shook the country, made the arenas vibrate, tore my opponents to shreds” . I lit up the darkness, collected insults, forced applause. Not everyone knew how to do that. “

Tinti, the 38-year-old poet, works with museums to write poems in homage to certain works of art, and he wrote the poem Spacey, read in homage to the Greek statue the actor stood on Friday, “Boxer at Rest” .

Tinti wrote “The Boxer” several years before sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood crystallized into the scandal that cost Spacey and others their work and reputation. The poet told The Daily Beast that he sent the poem to Spacey through a friend but never expected it to give a public reading.

The poem has already been read in museums, by actor Robert Davi in ​​the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and by Italian actor Franco Nero in the National Roman Museum.

Massachusetts prosecutors dropped a lewd attack and battery charge against Spacey last month after the prosecutor asserted his Fifth Amendment right not to testify over text messages that the defense alleged had been erased. The man had accused the actor of getting him drunk and groping him while he was an 18-year-old busboy in a restaurant in Nantucket.

The former “House of Cards” star is still under investigation in London and Los Angeles on multiple charges and is facing a federal lawsuit alleging he assaulted a massage therapist.