Mondays can be dreadful, especially when it comes to inspirations, so let’s get the creative wheels in motion with opera.
Rarely performed, "La Calisto" is just back at Milan's La Scala: this new staging (running through 13th November 2021) features the direction of David McVicar and the musical acumen of Christophe Rousset, his Talents Lyriques and a group of musicians from the orchestra of La Scala, and it is complemented by a talented cast comprising Chen Reiss (Calisto), Olga Bezsmertna (Diana), Luca Tittoto (Giove), Véronique Gens (Giunone) and Christophe Dumaus (Endimione).
"La Calisto", by Francesco Cavalli and with a libretto by Giovanni Faustini, was first staged almost 370 years ago, on 28th November 1651, at the Teatro Sant'Apollinare, in Venice. At the time, it drew limited audiences for its run of eleven performances, even though the theatre was equipped with complex stage machinery intended to impress the audience with a grand spectacle.
The story is based on the myth of Calisto from Ovid's "Metamorphoses". A nymph and a devout follower of Diana, Calisto attracts the attention of Giove (Jupiter) who falls in love with her. To seduce her, the god transforms himself into Diana. When the love story is discovered, Calisto is expelled from Diana’s group and transformed by Jupiter's wife into a bear. She will be eventually set among the stars as Ursa Major ("the Great Bear").
The new staging at Milan's La Scala combines two myths, Giove's seduction of Calisto, and Diana's adventure with Endimione.
Modern audiences will relate to the opera for its boldness, its references to female pleasure, and homoerotic nuances, with gender twists and transformations (Giove as Diana seduces Calisto, but his disguise also attracts the attention of Endimione…), mirrored in the singing styles with the baritone singing in a falsetto voice.
The sets by Charles Edwards feature a celebration of the scientific revolution in the 1600s, with references to philosophy, science and politics. The huge telescope on stage is a symbol of scientific research pointing at the stars: in this representation Endimione the shepherd is actually a thinker and an astronomer who supports independent thought and the only character capable of using the telescope.
The costumes are designed by Doey Lüthi, who studied in Switzerland and the United States, and currently lives and works in Berlin.
Lüthi had to work from scratch as the materials preserved in archives regarding this opera do not include any specific indications about sets and costumes, but only mention the fabrics chosen to make them and the names of the artisans who made them.
As "La Calisto" is a mock-heroic opera, Lüthi created historical costumes with some modern and occasional punk twists that unbalance the historical accuracy of the designs, revealing a profound link with the present and allowing in this way the characters to reach out to modern audiences.
Calisto and the other nymphs in their pale pink corsets with padded hips, may not have been out of place on a Jean Paul Gaultier's runway; Diana the hunter is a Valkyrie-like warrior in an attire worthy of a super heroine, with chainmail skirt and corset, accessorized with an extravagant huge metal moon on her head that reminds us she is a patroness of the countryside, of hunters, and the Moon; Endimione looks like a character in a Frans Hals painting, but he also wears Converse-like sneakers and rather hip socks with prints of chains.
The grotesque and comical Satirino (Damiana Mizzi) wears fur pants, matched with a cropped black jacket embellished with appliqued elements and a gold epaulette, while Silvano is a sort of rag and bone man, his attire made with layered cascades of recycled fabrics in fifty shades of green.
All the characters move around the big telescope that turns into a metaphor in these days in which too many people are still denying the validity of science (and of vaccines…), reminding us all that, well, we may still be lying in the gutter, but we're definitely looking at the stars.
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