As per tradition, the new season at Milan's La Scala kicked off yesterday evening, the feat of St. Ambrosius in Milan. Usually this is a glamorous event with celebrities and guests arriving to show off their attires and jewelry (throughout the decades it also became a moment of tension between guests in lavish furs and animal rights activists).
Yet yesterday things went very differently: due to Coronavirus there were indeed no guests, but the show must go on and La Scala opted for an event directed by Davide Livermore revolving around art, opera and dance broadcast live on the Internet and on different channels all over the world.
The show was entitled "A riveder le stelle", a quote from Dante's Inferno (Canto 34), from the Divine Comedy, "E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle", meaning "And so we emerged to see - once more - the stars" (also translated as "thence we came forth to rebehold the stars") and it was conceived as an homage to the cultural, creative and performance arts sectors that suffered a lot during the pandemic.
Rather than focusing on one opera, the programme, featured extracts from Giuseppe Verdi's "Rigoletto" and "Don Carlo", Gaetano Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" and "Elisir d'amore" and Giacomo Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" and "Turandot", just to mention a few.
Just like Coronavirus prompted many designers to cancel their runway shows, allowing us to refocus on the clothes, in this case the protagonists were the singers, dancers and the orchestra (all the members and the conductor as well had to wear masks, while the woodwind instrument players were separated by plexiglass screens), but there was also a touch of high fashion.
We didn't see any celebrities and wealthy guests on the red carpet outside the theatre, but fashion moved on stage: a group of Italian designers dressed the actresses presenting the interludes between one musical number and the other and created unique gowns and tuxedos for the singers. The role of fashion in the show was to serve the singers, pay homage to art and remind us about all the skilled artisans working in this industry.
In some numbers there were also extras, dressed by costume designer Gianluca Falaschi (for example "La donna è mobile da Rigoletto" featured six actresses in glamorous gowns in the style of the '50s).
The first moment of high fashion came courtesy of Pierpaolo Piccioli at Valentino: for Elina Garanca singing "O don fatale" from Verdi's "Don Carlo", the fashion house created an antique rose long gown encrusted with pink crystals.
Armani provided a grand black gown embroidered with pearls and crystals for Lisette Oropesa who sang "Regnava nel silenzio" from Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" on a backdrop inspired by Jack Vettriano's "The Singing Butler" (that was actually a bit of a faux pas as it didn't go that well with the opera).
The Italian designer also created a beautiful dark blue velvet gown with a matching embroidered silk tulle cape for soprano Kristine Opolais, who sang Puccini's "Tu, tu piccolo Iddio" from "Madama Butterfly" and a bright red gown with a fitted bodice and a layered ruffled skirt for Marianne Crebassam who interpreted Carmen's "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" (better known as the "Habanera").
The French mezzo-soprano shone in the bright red gown, singing on a wooden platform that floated on a flooded stage with a backdrop that featured a digital projection of blue and lilac flowers, while Armani's black dress for Crebassam on the finale taken from Rossini's "Guglielmo Tell" was more streamlined and minimalist, with just a fringe of beads around the shoulders.
There was a '50s vibe in Rosa Feola's Dolce & Gabbana white dress with black polka dots for Gaetano Donizetti's "So anch’io la virtù magica" from "Don Pasquale".
The designers, who have often been inspired by opera in their collections, also designed Aleksandra Kurzak's floral gown (she sang "Signore, ascolta" from Puccini's "Turandot") that was matched with grand jeweller, and a backdrop inspired by John Everett Millais' painting of Ophelia drowning, a statuesque gold draped gown with a damasked cape for Eleonora Buratto ("Morrò, ma prima in grazia" from Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera") and a classic black gown for Sonya Yoncheva ("La mamma morta" from Umberto Giordano's "Andrea Chénier", performed three years ago at La Scala as you may remember from a previous post) with a tableau vivant recreating Delacroix's "La Liberté guidant le peuple". D&G's pale green gown with blooming lilac violets for Marina Rebeka who sang "Un bel dì vedremo" from Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" created a striking contrast with the blood red cherry trees in the background.
The male opera singers also opted for Dolce & Gabbana or Armani tuxedos, while Marco De Vincenzo, Curiel, Dolce & Gabbana, Gianluca Capannolo and Valentino created the looks for the actresses in the interludes. Italian writer Michela Murgia commented for example about the condition of women in opera in a minimalist black Valentino gown, reminding us about those fragile, beautiful and lonely heroines often dying or committing suicide.
There were no notable fashion collaborations in the dance number, but Roberto Bolle broke with the classical tradition looking like a futuristic Vitruvian man as he danced inside geometrical figures formed by laser beams.
Towards the end of the show Piotr Beczala singing "Nessun dorma" from Puccini's "Turandot" under a dreamy stellar stream was a very apt representation of the title of the gala night. But it was the finale that brought hope: Eleonora Buratto, Rosa Feola, Marianne Crebassa, Juan Diego Flórez, Luca Salsi and Mirko Palazzi sang "Tutto cangia" from Rossini's "Guglielmo Tell" on an aerial backdrop with a drone flying over Milan with its skyscrapers, the Duomo with the Madonnina spire, the Sforza Castle, Corso Sempione and Piazza La Scala, rising like a phoenix .
The city is in Lombardy, the Italian region hit hardest by the first wave of Coronavirus last March and Guglielmo Tell's words in the opera - "Everything here changes and grows in grandeur!" - were a message of hope juxtaposed to the images from just a few montsh ago that have sadly become part of Italian history of coffins being transported by army trucks as some graveyards and cremation sites couldn't cope with the high number of dead people.
As vaccines are arriving in different countries and with many places coming out of a second lockdown but still preparing for a sober Christmas, the aria brought back hope in a tragic year of darkness, wishing us all to return to see the stars once more, through the beauty of arts and culture.
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