With ‘La Tragédie de Carmen’ in the iconic twentieth-century version of Peter Brook staged by a young all-female team, the ’21 / ’22 season of the Teatro Verdi in Pisa has begun that until April will present one opera a month: in December ‘Maria de Buenos Aires’ by Astor Piazzolla in co-production with the Ravenna Festival and Teatro Comunale di Ferrara; in January it will be the turn of Massenet’s ‘Werther’ in collaboration with Lombardy and Emilia Romagna while in February the new all-Pisan staging of Handel’s ‘Giulio Cesare’, then closing Nino Rota’s ‘Napoli Milionaria’ in an entirely Tuscan co-production.
After the Verdi festival in September, dedicated to the Popular Trilogy and focused on absolute novelties, such as the speed of ever lighter productions – two weeks per title, very young cast with only one star per opera – which earned Verdi the public applause of the ministry della Cultura for the ethical and economically advantageous approach revives a more traditional season but with a decidedly original billboard, with popular titles, but rare on Italian stages, perfectly in line with the genius loci of a university city, which thrives on research , cultural formation and tension towards the future.
The Bizet rethought in the 1980s by the iconic director Peter Brook for theater and auteur cinema, Astor Piazzolla in a work that made the history of the 20th century on the occasion of its centenary, but also the great French nineteenth century by Massenet, therefore the very popular Rota. In the heart of the season the great Baroque party with Handel’s ‘Julius Caesar’, the only totally Pisan production for which in these days, on the model of the Trilogy, auditions are underway for young baroque players with whom to embody the minor roles, leaving the protagonists of a work to be presented to the real authority of the repertoire. I publish all the vocal palette between the 17th and 18th centuries, from the coloritura soprano to the agility contralto, to the countertenor and finally the agility baritone in the role of Julius Caesar, returning to the lesson of Fiescher-Diskau in the recording of Karl Richter.
More than 200 young baroque artists from all over the world showed up for the auditions, thus enriching the archive of 1,700 early career entries created during the auditions held during the ’21 lockdown and this working model will also be maintained for the season. summer at the Giardino Scotto, confirming the Verdi Theater in Pisa as the true forge and living hope of all the talents under 30 in the world, as well as an authentic test and experimentation of the challenges that the sector will necessarily have to face in the decades to come. Even the staging of ‘Giulio Cesare’ will be young, with the confirmation of the Viareggio set and costume designer Giacomo Callari, and will seek in physical lightness that virtuous agility praised by the ministry, together with a visual richness that will evoke the theaters of Verzura or Verdi, so well present in the villas of the Tuscan territory, continuing in the project to tie each new setting more and more to the peculiar beauty of the city and the region.
Tells Enrico Stinchelli, historical voice of RadioRai, director and for the first time in his long career, to the test as artistic director: “I am happy with this season, which I find balanced but without shyness in looking for titles that are not obvious after having presented in the summer months true columns of the great tradition even in an experimental guise. I believe that Verdi’s new soul should be clear by now: a balanced balance between continuity and innovation, but above all an absolute priority to young people, their training, new job and career opportunities, a stage that should become their home , a real springboard, young cast and young people on the podium “.
And he concludes: “An all-round ethical position, which respects the vocation of the city, its public of historical subscribers and aspires to become a stage for experimentation, but without tearing. In this sense, even the lightness of the preparations will become a stylistic figure of the theater, a project that can bring pleasant surprises in a panorama instead of notable static, which rarely takes into account the continuous challenge to which we are called by the new multimedia languages, in which the eyes of young people are forming, that is the public to whom we must undoubtedly look to keep our great opera tradition alive “.
Source-www.adnkronos.com