PIER LUIGI PIZZI a Decade of Stage Design and Artistic Direction

PIER LUIGI PIZZI a decade of stage design and artistic direction From Baroque theatre to an erudite journey of Masonic initiation rite through transgression and reason, exoticism, myth and fable. Text by Ivana D’Agostino The decade of stage design and artistic direction here considered is done so through a sampling of works regarded as significant in supporting the theory introduced by the title: that is, the passage from the exhilarating, grandiloquent opulence of the scenery and the abundance of “surprise elements” inherent in Baroque theatre to the essentiality of the message, albeit rich in symbolic citations, expressed in the erudite journey of the Masonic initiation rite, the overall theme for the operas billed for the 2006 edition of the Sferisterio Opera Festival, annually held in Macerata, Italy. A refining process of the visual language that conforms to the nobility of meanings implicit - expiation-redemption, catharsis, extreme sacrifice in the pursuit of absolute values - themes previously touched upon in two productions: The Magic Flute for the Rome Opera House and Tancredi for the Rossini Opera Festival, respectively staged in 2001 and 1999. If the 2001 staging of The Magic Flute appears greatly different from the Sferisterio edition in that the sacredness of the priests who, at Macerata, subject Tamino to a philological initiation rite of the firstdegree, in Tancredi the solemn monumentality of the scenic apparatus corresponds to the ideals of Enlightenment contained in Voltaire’s text; of which the tragic finale was revived at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, contemplated at Brescia in Rossini’s version, in the archive of Count Luigi Lechi. The death of Tancredi, rendered yet more dramatic by the raked platform on which it occurs, in the appreciation of the love for one’s country as an end superior to his love for Amenaide, considers directing and design solutions relative to the rigours of Enlightenment antecedent to those adopted at Macerata. The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Direction, sets and costumes by Pier Luigi Pizzi Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, 2001. Tancredi by Gioachino Rossini Direction, sets and costumes by Pier Luigi Pizzi Pesaro, Rossini Opera Festival, 1999 But the path towards superior levels of knowledge presented at Macerata from the underlying theme programmed for the 2006 season at the Sferisterio, including operas such as The Magic Flute, Aida and Turandot, a repertoire of lyric opera in which, as a counterpoint, appear Ferruccio Busoni’s Thamos König in Ägypten and Turandot, regards musicians whose works were written between the end of the eighteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century. A chronological span amply diversified and full of stylistic and literary suggestions alluding to the rigours of Enlightenment, and to Egyptian and Chinese exoticisms, contiguous to pastoral dramas often combined with Baroque manoeuvres: an eclectic repertoire of the late-eighteenth century, that the successive Universal Exhibitions of the nineteenth century opened up to new exotic cultures, to fresh mysteries and fantastic subjects. Those same subjects that, reinterpreted by decadent symbolism between sensuality and sin, were often radically modernized by new, more ironically transgressional texts of twentieth-century theatre. This was a period of time which nevertheless stretched beyond the limits of 1926, the year in which Puccini’s Turandot was staged with Invitation au voyage, the recital held at the Lauro Rossi theatre, which closed the Festival season at Macerata. Invitation au voyage, as interpreted by the Sferisterio’s artistic director Pier Luigi Pizzi, is a compendium, an epitome of music and literature on the lines of Baudelaire’s Parnassian poetry, from which it takes its title. From the pieces of music selected by maestro Pizzi together with the baritone Alfonso Antoniozzi, an ideal fusion of the arts is traced; with Duparc-Baudelaire as the starting-point, through Rossini-Metastasio, Bizet, Poulenc, Satie and Cole Porter we are taken on a full-scale exotic and spiritual journey, certainly consistent with the 2006 Festival of Macerata project, not least with Pizzi’s concept of the all-round planning and design of a stage production: a concept already prevalent in Baroque theatre, having found fresh impetus in the syncretism among the arts of the late-nineteenth century, then imbued with a markedly radical vigour as it evolved into the avant-garde of the twentieth century. Aida by Giuseppe Verdi Direction, sets and costumes by Massimo Gasparon Macerata, Sferisterio Opera Festival, 2006 Turandot by Giacomo Puccini Direction, sets and costumes by Pier Luigi Pizzi Macerata, Sferisterio Opera Festival, 2006 Within this logic, and following a lengthy collaboration with Strehler, De Lullo and Ronconi, Pizzi’s directorial achievement, already well-established by 1977, was not incidental. Channelled through one individual’s interpretation of the drama, the production thus conforms to a stylistic unity, endowing it with a precise reading - of both text and scene - such as to render it consistent in all its parts and recognisable in its singularity. In this sense the choice of a technical team is vital: the visual effects on stage would not be so if it were not for Sergio Rossi’s lighting, the costumes would not drape properly if Pizzi were not supervising the selection of fabrics and the costumes were not built by long-established houses such as Rome-based Tirelli, the wardrobe department of the Arena di Verona or the atelier of Elvia Mengoni, who supervised the costumes for Aida designed by Massimo Gasparon. Choreography, of such relevance in Baroque and avant-garde theatre, contrary to the current tendency to consider dance a “minor event” in theatre, also assumes a just prominence in Pizzi’s artistic direction. George Janku’s choreography for Aida, Egyptian-style with a dancer’s twirling of veils à la Loie Füller in the triumph of Radamès in the second act, as well as his choreography for Turandot, are preceded by those for the 1997 Macbeth and for the 2005 production of La Gioconda, both staged at the Arena di Verona. Just as prominent, Janku’s choreography for Thaïs, Le domino noir and Les pêcheurs de perles, at the Malibran in Venice, staged respectively in 2002, 2003 and 2004 (Thaïs is also programmed for La Fenice for the 2006-2007 season), further underline Pier Luigi Pizzi’s readiness to give due prominence and validity to dance, where appropriate, as an integral part of a production. The importance attributed to the lighting and to the use of the body to express inner moods, coupled with the creation of texts that are ever more radically irreverent and unconventional, can be traced back to the undeniable theatrical experience of the twentieth-century avant-garde. Along these lines moves La pietra del paragon billed at the Rossini Opera Festival in 2002. The party atmosphere populated by guests in elegant seventies-style dress, who mingle in the Rationalist villa and its grounds, cast Rossini’s sophisticated light opera in a modern context, using modern directing techniques, mediated by twentieth-century painting. Paintings by Burri hung in the villa belonging to Count Asdrubale reflect Pizzi’s taste for cultural and aesthetic appreciation that is not confined to antiquarianism, a predilection already evident in the exposition of his collection of contemporary art, at Bibbiena in 1996 (1), which includes works by Casorati, Sironi and Manzù. The choices made at the Lauro Rossi theatre during the 2005 Macerata season, however, were more radical, partly for the adoption of texts from avant-garde theatre, such as Cocteau’s Le bel indifferent, and Les mamelles de Tirésias by Francis Poulenc – who took inspiration from the text of the same title written in 1903 by Apollinaire. The inclusion of these two productions in the 2006 programme clearly represents a kind of warm up to the innovative Turandot by Ferruccio Busoni: a musician of European scope not by chance esteemed by artists of the avant-garde. Umberto Boccioni, who was a friend of his, painted his portrait in 1914, and Feininger, one of the most sophisticated experts on Bach, at the Bauhaus in Weimer around 1920, loved to play “ll clavicembalo ben temperato” on the organ in his studio, in the version by Bach that Busoni had given him. Macerata with Busoni worthily continues the openings on twentieth century theatre begun in 2005. These choices indicate Pizzi’s ever expanding horizon towards new objectives in research, as he already showed previously with the adaptation of the text of Le bel indifferent, the fruit of his collaboration with the musician Marco Tutino. Les Pêcheurs de perles by Georges Bizet Direction, sets and costumes by Pier Luigi Pizzi Venice, Teatro Malibran, 2004 Pizzi teaming up with Tutino evidently creates a precedent in the above-mentioned recent collaboration between Pizzi and the baritone Antoniozzi, for the selection of musical passages from Invitation au voyage. Thus the principle of a creative unity between theatre, music, painting, melodrama and dance increasingly finds a basis: a programme comprised of a synthesis of genres, leading to a fusion of the arts largely between Baroque theatre, late nineteenth century culture and the more extreme frontiers of the European avant-garde, can also be put into act today, on condition that there is a sharing of ideas to set inmotion the means for renewal. The development of the analysis on Pizzi’s work in a decade of theatrical productions, as this essay is unable to view the work of this maestro in its entirety, is a basic prerequisite in appreciating that the Sferisterio Opera Festival di Macerata 2006 season is the result of successive phases, productions and artistic direction embracing multiplicity, geared towards an increasingly whole and unifying method of staging a complete production, impossible to achieve or at best realized only in part without the coordination of the various expressive languages governed by the single project.

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