A riveder le stelle - 7th December 2020

eleonora Buratto Foto Dario Acosta

Soprano. Born in Sustinente, near Mantua, Eleonora earned a diploma from the L. Campiani
Conservatory of Mantua and continued her studies under Luciano Pavarotti. She debuted in 2007
as Musetta in La bohème at the Teatro Lirico Sperimentale in Spoleto, winning the Adriano Belli
competition. Her international career began in 2009 with the role of Creusa in Demofoonte by
Jommelli at the Salzburg Festival, Palais Garnier, and the Ravenna Festival, with Riccardo Muti on
the podium. Again with Muti she sang Susanna in I due Figaro by Mercadante, Norina in Don
Pasquale, Amelia in Simon Boccanegra, Alice in Falstaff, and the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro.
In 2015 she was Corinna in Il viaggio a Reims in Amsterdam and Micaela in Carmen with Mehta
at Teatro San Carlo in Naples. She has debuted a number of additional roles since 2016 that have
come to distinguish her repertoire, such as Mimì and Luisa Miller in Barcelona, Donna Anna at the
Aix-en-Provence Festival, Elettra in Idomeneo in Madrid. She is a regular guest in concert halls,
performing such works as Mahler’s Second Symphony, conducted by Daniele Gatti at Maggio
Musicale Fiorentino, Rossini’s Stabat Mater with Ivor Bolton and Verdi’s Requiem with Daniel
Oren at Santa Cecilia, the Vier letzte Lieder of Strauss with Michele Mariotti in Naples, and the
Petite messe solennelle by Rossini in Luxembourg and Vienna. On 28 June she sang in the com-
memorative concert for the victims of COVID in Bergamo before the President of the Italian
Republic. In the autumn of 2020, she debuted in Parma as Elvira in a concert format of Ernani con-
ducted by Mariotti during the Verdi Festival.
Her upcoming engagements include a debut as Desdemona in Otello in Barcelona and as Cio-Cio-
San in Madama Butterfly at the Metropolitan.
eleonoraburatto.com

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Giuseppe Verdi Renato
Un ballo in maschera Arise; there is your son,
I permit you to see him. In the darkness
Renato and the silence, there,
hide your blushes and my shame.
Alzati! Là, tuo figlio It is not she, nor her breast
a te concedo riveder. Nell’ombra that I must strike.
e nel silenzio, là, Another’s blood must wash away the sin!
il tuo rossore e l’onta mia nascondi. Your blood!
Non è su lei, nel suo and my dagger,
fragile petto che colpir degg’io. avenger of my tears,
Altro, ben altro sangue a terger dessi shall draw it from your traitor’s heart!
l’offesa... Il sangue tuo! It was you who stained that soul
E lo trarrà il pugnale that was the joy of my own,
dallo sleal tuo core: you who inspired my trust, then
delle lacrime mie vendicator!
Eri tu che macchiavi quell’anima, [loathsomely
la delizia dell’anima mia; poisoned all life for me.
che m’affidi e d’un tratto esecrabile Traitor, who in such a way regarded
l’universo avveleni per me! the faith of your dearest friend!
Traditor! Che compensi in tal guisa Oh sweetness, lost; O memory
dell’amico tuo primo la fe’! of a heavenly embrace,
O dolcezze perdute! O memorie when Amelia, in her pure beauty,
d’un amplesso che l’essere india! lay on my breast, in the warmth of love!
Quando Amelia sì bella, sì candida All is finished: only hate
sul mio seno brillava d’amor! and death live in my widowed heart!
È finita: non siede che l’odio
e la morte nel vedovo cor!

Eri tu

With the impartiality of great dramatists,
Verdi thus confronts us with the suffering of
one who feels betrayed by the people dearest
to him; but shortly afterwards, he takes us
into the private rooms of the tenor where we
are able to fully gauge the nobility of his
soul.

E.F.

Alessandro Focosi. Frontespiece of the piano and
vocal score of Un ballo in maschera. Lithography.

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George Petean Foto Florina Petean

Baritone. George Petean was born in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, where he earned a diploma in piano
and trombone at the local Music Conservatory, studying voice at the Gheorghe Dima Academy of
Music and honing his technique with Vicente Sardinero and Giorgio Zancanaro. In 1997 he debut-
ed in the title role of Don Giovanni at the Romanian National Opera in Timişoara and in 1999 he
won first prize at the Hariclea Darclée Competition in Romania. The following year marked his in-
ternational debut as Marcello in La bohème at the Teatro dell’Opera of Rome. He sang with the
Hamburg Staatsoper from 2002 to 2010 and returns there regularly to perform. As well as the great
Verdi baritone roles, such as Ezio (Attila), Miller (Luisa Miller), Rigoletto, Giorgio Germont (La
traviata), the Conte di Luna (Il trovatore), Anckarström (Un ballo in maschera), Guy de Montfort
(Les Vêpres siciliennes), Don Carlo di Vargas (La forza del destino), Posa (Don Carlo), Simone
(Simon Boccanegra), Iago (Otello), and Ford (Falstaff), his repertoire also includes Belcore
(L’elisir d’amore), Enrico Ashton (Lucia di Lammermoor), Ernesto (Il pirata), Sir Riccardo Forth
(I puritani), Malatesta (Don Pasquale), Silvio (Pagliacci), Figaro (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Valentin
(Faust), the title role in Donizetti’s Duc d’Albe, Sharpless (Madama Butterfly), Rabbi David
(L’amico Fritz), and Carlo Gérard (Andrea Chénier). He recently sang in Il trovatore in Chicago,
Les Vêpres siciliennes and Un ballo in maschera in Munich, Andrea Chénier, Lucia di Lammer-
moor, Pagliacci, and Macbeth in Vienna, Carmen in Muscat, La traviata in Zurich and London,
and Nabucco in Amsterdam. In 2019 he was Ezio in Attila directed by Davide Livermore with
Chailly on the podium to inaugurate the La Scala season.

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Giuseppe Verdi
Un ballo in maschera

Riccardo Riccardo
Perhaps she has reached home
Forse la soglia attinse, and is safe at last. Honour
e posa alfin. L’onore and duty have destroyed the abyss
ed il dover fra i nostri petti han rotto between us. Ah yes, Renato
l’abisso. Ah sì, Renato will return to England, and his wife
rivedrà l’Inghilterra... e la sua sposa with him. Let the great ocean divide us,
lo seguirà. Senza un addio, l’immenso with no farewell... and let the heart
oceàn ne sepàri... e taccia il core.
[keep silent.
Esito ancor? Ma, o ciel, non lo degg’io? I still hesitate? But O Heaven, must I not?
Ah, l’ho segnato il sacrifizio mio! Ah, I have signed my sacrifice!
But if I must lose you
Ma se m’è forza perderti forever, light of my life,
per sempre, o luce mia, my love will reach you
a te verrà il mio palpito wherever you may be,
sotto qual ciel tu sia, once the memory of you
chiusa la tua memoria is locked inside my heart,
nell’intimo del cor. and now what dark misgivings
Ed or qual reo presagio assail my heart,
lo spirito m’assale, with the fatal desire
che il rivederti annunzia to see you once again...
quasi un desio fatale... as if this were the last hour
come se fosse l’ultima of our love!
ora del nostro amor!

Riccardo Forse la soglia attinse…
Ma se m’è forza perderti
Filippo Peroni.
A sketch for Un ballo in maschera To stanch this impossible love, Riccardo has
(Milan, Museo Teatrale alla Scala). decided to part with Amelia forever. In the
aria Forse la soglia attinse… Ma se m’è
forza perderti, opening the final scene in
the opera, we see him signing the document
promoting his friend in rank and sending
him back across the ocean with his wife to
England. Between passions and pangs, his
voice nearly vanishing in an incredible
ppppp, Riccardo bids farewell in his heart to
his beloved, in an aria that is left hanging yet
fully integrated into the scene, in the manner
of a mature Verdi who continually
reconceives ‘old’ forms in a new way.

E.F.

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Francesco Meli Foto Victor Santiago

Tenor. Born in Genoa, Francesco studied under Norma Palacios at the Niccolò Paganini Conserva-
tory in his hometown and later with Vittorio Terranova. He was twenty-three years old when he de-
buted on Piermarini’s stage in 2004 in Dialogues des Carmélites with Muti on the podium, return-
ing over the years for some twenty different productions. In 2005 he inaugurated the Rossini
Opera Festival in Pesaro with Bianca e Falliero. In 2009 he began moving away from Bel Canto in
favour of increasingly dramatic roles with a preference for Verdi: after I Lombardi alla prima cro-
ciata, Werther, and Un ballo in maschera in Parma, he performed in Rigoletto at the Royal Opera
House in London and at the Metropolitan in New York, Simon Boccanegra in Vienna, Il trovatore
in Venice, London, Amsterdam, and Monte Carlo, I due Foscari in Los Angeles and London, Don
Carlo in Milan (La Scala), and Carmen in London and Madrid. He sang under conductor Muti in
Simon Boccanegra in Rome and in Nabucco in Salzburg to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Ver-
di’s birth in 2013, in Macbeth in Chicago, and Aida in Salzburg. He has performed in three season
premieres at La Scala (Idomeneo in 2005, Giovanna d’Arco in 2015, and Tosca in 2019), and at the
inaugural concerts for the Turin Winter Olympics in 2006 and for EXPO 2015 in Milan. When the-
atres opened again in the summer of 2020 he was on stage for Ballo in maschera in concert form at
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, followed by concerts in Piacenza, Venice, the Martina Franca Festi-
val, and the Arena of Verona. He was soloist in Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, dedicated to the victims
of COVID-19 with the La Scala Orchestra and Choir conducted by Riccardo Chailly in Milan,
Bergamo, and Brescia. He was Radamès in a concert version of Aida at La Scala and in December
he will be Jacopo in I due Foscari, also in concert form, at the Monte Carlo Opera. He has won nu-
merous prizes, including the Premio Abbiati in 2013 for his interpretation of Verdi roles.
www.francescomeli.it

67

Laura Marinoni
I went down, giving you my arm, at least a million steps
and now that you are gone, each step is a void.
And so too our long journey has been short.
Mine still goes on, I no longer need
connections, reservations,
pitfalls, the humiliation of he
who thinks reality is what he sees.
I went down millions of stairs giving you my arm
not because perhaps four eyes see better than two.
I went down with you because I knew that between us
the only real pupils, though clouded, were yours.
Eugenio Montale, Ho sceso, dandoti il braccio,
almeno un milione di scale, 1967

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Jules Massenet which was much more repressed in
Werther (1892) Goethe, compromises the characteristic
existential isolation of the protagonist.
(Libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet Critics objected to this betrayal of the
and Georges Hartmann) source, but the audience has always
applauded Massenet’s melodic vein, full
Staged for the first time in 1892, more bodied orchestration, and lyricism.
than a century after the publication of Die Debussy wrote, with a hint of scorn: ‘All
Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Paris rises every day with the melodies
of Young Werther) by Goethe (1774), of Werther on their lips’.
Massenet’s drame lyrique was an
immediate hit in Paris. Werther and A.M.
Charlotte, in spite of their mutual feelings
for one another, find themselves separated
by a promise of marriage predating their
encounter. But the distance is unbearable
and the young man shoots himself to put
an end to his sufferings.
In the hands of Massenet and his two
librettists (Paul Milliet and Édouard Blau)
the text symbolizing Sturm und Drang
lost many of its distinctive characteristics:
in particular, Charlotte’s avowed love
(which leads to the final declaration),

Jules Massenet

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Jules Massenet Werther
Werther
Werther Translate!
Traduire! Ah! Many’a time my dreams soar’d in air
Ah! Bien souvent mon rêve s’envola upon this winged verse,
sur l’aile de ces vers, it was you, noble poet,
et c’est toi, cher poète, and yours the verse that told all that I dared
qui bien plutôt était mon interprète! not.
Toute mon âme est là! All my soul is there!
Pourquoi me réveiller, ô souffle du
Why do you wake me, sweet breath of
[printemps? [spring?
Pourquoi me réveiller?
Sur mon front, je sens tes caresses, Why do you wake me?
Et pourtant bien proche est le temps I feel your caresses on my brow,
Des orages et des tristesses! yet I know that terrible storms
Demain dans le vallon viendra le of sadness are approaching!
Why do you wake me, sweet breath of
[voyageur,
Se souvenant de ma gloire première, [spring?
Et ses yeux vainement chercheront ma Tomorrow, a traveller will come into this
valley.
[splendeur, He will remember me in my first glory,
Ils ne trouveront plus que deuil et que in vain his eyes will search for my lost

[misère! [splendour:
Hélas! he will find only misery and despair!
Alas!

Pourquoi me réveiller

(Perché destarmi)

This is the aria on Ossian’s verses that
Werther sings to Charlotte in Act III of the
opera. She gives him the text and he finds it
violently compelling, speaking of solitude,
spring breezes driven off by the storm, pain
and misery. The stage directions mention
‘inspired sorrow’ that transmutes into
‘despair’. The harp vaguely alludes to the
legendary tones of Ossian’s poetry and
troubadours of old while the orchestration
explodes into the corporeal fullness of the
main melody, evoking Werther’s
uncontainable passion.

A.M.

Playbill by Eugène Grasset
for the premiere in Paris, Junuary 16, 1893.

70

Benjamin Bernheim Foto Christian Clavadetcher

Tenor. Born in Paris, Benjamin studied with Gary Magby at the Conservatory of Lausanne, later
refining his technique with Giacomo Aragall and attending the Carlo Bergonzi Verdi Academy in
Busseto. He began his career with Opernstudio and later the ensemble of the Zurich Opera, where
he sang in Salome, Les contes d’Hoffmann, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Shostakovich,
Mathis der Maler by Hindemith, and Peter Grimes by Britten. At the Opera of Lyon he was Ed-
mondo in Manon Lescaut and Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi; he later sang Malcolm in Macbeth at
the Théâtre de La Monnaie of Brussels and Cassio in Otello in Bordeaux. After his Salzburg debut
in 2012 as Spakos in Massenet’s Cléopâtre, he took part in several productions during the Festival,
including Il re pastore, Fierrabras, Manon Lescaut, Thaïs, and Otello. He was Tamino in Die Za-
uberflöte, Erik in Der fliegende Holländer and Matteo in Arabella by Richard Strauss at the Sem-
peroper of Dresden. He debuted at La Scala in 2016 in Der Rosenkavalier, conducted by Mehta,
returning to Piermarini’s stage in 2019 for La traviata with conductor Myung-whun Chung. He
was recently Tebaldo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi by Bellini and Ismaele in Nabucco in Zurich,
Lensky in Eugene Onegin in Berlin, Laerte in Hamlet by Thomas in Lausanne, the title role in
Faust in Riga and Chicago, Piquillo in Offenbach’s Périchole, Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore in Vi-
enna, Duca di Mantova in Rigoletto in Munich, and Des Grieux in Massenet’s Manon in Bordeaux
and Paris. He interpreted Rodolfo in La bohème in Zurich, London, Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, and
Alfredo in La traviata in Zurich, London, Paris, Berlin, and Bordeaux. In 2020 he was named
‘Opera Singer of the Year’ at Les Victoires de la Musique Awards.
benjaminbernheim.com

71

Maria Chiara Centorami
Alessandro Lussiana
Marouane Zotti

It was the smell of my skin changing, it was
getting ready before class, it was running
home from school and, after having worked
in the fields with my father – because we
were ten siblings – walking those two
kilometres to dance school. […] And when I
was there, with the smell of camphor,
wood, tights, I was an eagle on top of the
world, I was poet of poets, I was everywhere
and everything. […] The only thing that stays
with me is my dance, my freedom of being. I
am here, but in my mind I am dancing, I leap
beyond my words and my pain. […] If we
pity our bleeding feet, if we only chase the
goal and do not comprehend the pleasure,
full and unique, that is movement, we do
not grasp the deep essence of life, where
meaning is in becoming and not in
appearing. Everyone should dance their
entire life.
Do not be a dancer, dance.
Rudolf Nureyev, Letter to Dance, 1993

72

THE POETRY OF THE BODY

Waves Magical rhymes with technological

Choreography by Massimiliano Volpini An arm rises, a revolving green and blue
Music by Davide Boosta Dileo cone of myriad beams of light moves
and erik Satie across the stage until it encounters a
Light Designer Valerio tiberi statuary body. The body flees, the light
follows him, passes over him, and
Massimiliano Volpini encloses him in a cone of smoke. The
body opens his arms seeking to loosen that
virtual grip and seems to succeed, but then
suddenly the cone broadens and becomes
oblique. Before this powerful bare-chested
creature in white tights, now seen from
behind, we glimpse the thousand
glimmering lights of La Scala. Is the body
free? Not yet. He lowers his arms and is
again prisoner, this time in a pyramid of
light that hugs his every movement and
resists his attempts to push it away from
him; it follows every rapid step, every
gyration. No matter how he twists and
turns, the pyramid, now a cone, confines
the leaps and even the kneeling/crawling
escape attempts of its prey, who is
hounded also by music that often
transforms into an insistent ticking.
Whether near or far from the eye of the
virtual spectator, the dancer is continually
forced to struggle against the impalpably
insistent laser beams. At times they seem
to trick him, driving the wrestler to his
knees in prayer to be freed of their
magical yet constrictive power. But then
the struggle seems to be over and an ideal
second part begins. The music changes as
a solitary green beam stretches out toward
the seated body, accompanied by Erik
Satie’s unmistakable Gymnopédie No. 1.
The light warms, we discern the loges
overlooking the stage at La Scala. Now it
is the dancer who chases his former cage,
which moves on a serpentine or
punctiform base. The body masters space,
crossing it in great leaps or remaining in
tendu croisé en demi plié with the arms in
third position, outstretched in a quick
cambré en arrière. The light has become a
carpet and backdrop to a graceful dance,

73

no longer darting or fiercely thrusting. The second part – debuted on 9 July 2019 at
body has gained poetic liberty and seems the Baths of Caracalla. That same month it
it could whirl endlessly… but, in a triumphed on two consecutive days in a
heartbeat, a green cone has entrapped it packed Arena of Verona, echoed by the
again. In the end we see only his hand, waves swelling around the tiers. It was
which will finally capture the green ray. Is then shown on screen at the United
it he who created the seven minutes of Nations Headquarters this past 22 October
Waves – with the allusion to an extremely to celebrate the organization’s 75th
rare optical effect that may be observed anniversary. The birth of the project is
when the sun rises or sets –, is it the interesting: an impromptu decision and
great Roberto Bolle, Italy’s and the just one weekend to put the music
world’s best-loved divo, who has designed together. Fortunately, Volpini – a danseur
this immersion in a future that is already at La Scala until 2014 and close
here? Yes, of course! But not he alone. collaborator with Bolle since 2000, author
Thanks to the inventiveness of of creations staged all over the world and
Massimiliano Volpini and the soundtrack in his television programmes – had
by Davide ‘Boosta’ Dileo, the keyboardist already created his laser-light
for Subsonica, here in company with choreography. And so it was relatively
Satie, Waves – a title Volpini sees as easy for Davide ‘Boosta’ Dileo, a sci-fi
evoking both the electromagnetic nature buff with a penchant for cybernetic
of light and the encompassing ‘sea’ of the organisms, to perfectly synchronize his

music with the movements of the
laser, leaving Satie the honour of
conferring the green ray into
Bolle’s hand. And it is Roberto to
have the final word: ‘Technology
can bring academic dance into
the contemporary age. It is an aid
in reaching a very broad
audience. I always seek a
technological expedient to add
something more to the show, but
also for me, to experiment, to
continue on this exploratory path
where dance, always new and
changing, can go beyond itself’.

M.G.

Foto Andrej Uspenski Roberto Bolle in Waves.
74

Roberto Bolle Foto Brescia-Amisano

A graduate of the La Scala Ballet School, named principal dancer étoile of the La Scala Corps de
Ballet in 2004, Roberto has danced in the world’s premier theatres with the most prestigious ballet
companies, including American Ballet Theatre, the Royal Ballet, the Corps de Ballet of the Paris
Opera, the Bolshoi, and the Mariinsky. On the first of June 2002 he performed at Buckingham
Palace for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth, an event shared live in a BBC world broadcast.
In February 2006 he danced at the opening ceremony of the Turin Winter Olympics, which was al-
so broadcast around the world.
In 2008 he began touring as Roberto Bolle & Friends, taking dance to places it had never been,
and to enormous acclaim. He has performed against the backdrop of the Coliseum and the Baths of
Caracalla in Rome, in the Valley of Temples near Agrigento, at the Certosa of Capri, the Boboli
Gardens in Florence, Torre del Lago, and in St. Mark’s Square in Venice. Since 1999 he has been
Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, which he supports in travels all over the world. Since 2007 he
has worked with the Italian National Trust (FAI) and in March 2009 he was chosen as Young Glob-
al Leader for Italy by the World Economic Forum of Davos. After the rousing success of his debut
at the Metropolitan Opera in 2007, he was named Principal Dancer by the American Ballet Theatre
in 2009. In 2012, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano named him Knight of the Order of Merit of
the Italian Republic, in virtue of his work in the field of culture. In 2014 he was awarded a medal
by UNESCO in Paris in ‘recognition of his contribution to the promotion of the ideas of UNESCO
through dance’.

75

Verdi Suite Verdi Suite in brilliant lightness

Estratti dai ballabili da One, two and five. After a solo and a pas
I Vespri siciliani, Jérusalem, de deux, the magnificent evening of 7
Le Trouvère December, wonderfully titled ‘…a riveder
Choreography by Manuel Legris le stelle’ (to gaze anew at the stars), could
Music by Giuseppe Verdi, only conclude the ballet portion with a
Costumes by Luisa Spinatelli larger troupe of dancers guided by Manuel
Legris, the charismatic future director of
the La Scala Corps de Ballet, who thus
presents himself to the world audience. He
was one of the most technically perfect and
versatile stars in France, and
internationally, open to any of his
generation’s modern ballet repertoires
before he left the stage to take up the reins
of the Vienna State Ballet in 2010. After
the triumph of his ballet Sylvia at La Scala,
chosen by his predecessor, Frédéric
Olivieri, to open the 2019-2020 Ballet
Season, Legris has now created something
energetic, brilliant, and joyous to
contrast – as he himself underscores – the
dark, pestilential times we are all living
through. Verdi Suite is a sort of
divertissement. In the little time available
for rehearsals, Legris chose to embrace the
music of Giuseppe Verdi, a composer very
dear to him, and an unquestionable
emblem of ‘Italian-ness’. We know that the
‘swan of Busseto’ was not particularly
fond of dance; he felt it broke up the
dramatic flow in his operas. It is thus
somewhat paradoxical that he wrote music
that so beautifully accompanies movement.
Legris took it from Les Vêpres siciliennes
(I vespri siciliani), a grand opera that
debuted in Paris in 1855 with a third Act
embellished with the so-called Four
Seasons’ Ball (and here Legris has chosen
The Spring), from Jérusalem, an 1847
opera tailored to the French capital as a
remake of I Lombardi alla prima Crociata,
and also from the danceable parts
of Le trouvère (the French version of
Il trovatore), staged in Paris in 1857, with
the songs and dances of the gypsies
enlivening their work in Act II

76

Foto Brescia/Amisano

Manuel Legris at the end of Sylvia, December 2019.

77

(La gitana). With this scintillating, director. The two Principal Dancers
animated material, entrusted to the baton Martina Arduino and Claudio Coviello and
of Michele Gamba, the La Scala Ballet the two Soloists Marco Agostino and
Director immediately discarded the idea of Nicola Del Freo had danced for him in
weaving a narrative or following an Sylvia, and Legris was already familiar
inspirational theme – and heaven forbid with the qualities of Principal Virna Toppi,
taking cues from the choreographers who who had not taken part in that production.
had already looked to Verdi, such as So here they are on stage, following the
George Balanchine or Kenneth MacMillan order of a true divertissement: a collective
(just to mention the most famous)! The entrée (composed of a pas de deux and a
former staged the Ballo della Regina in pas de trois), a variation for the ballerinas,
1978 for his New York City Ballet, a a variation for two danseurs, a second
collection of variations set to ballet music variation for the ballerinas, a variation for
(titled La Peregrina) that the composer cut the danseurs, and a full-troupe finale, with
from Act III of the original version (1867) no scenery other than Piermarini’s stage.
of his Don Carlos. The latter had The costumes are borrowed from the
choreographed a ballet based on the four ‘home company’, and there is certainly no
seasons of the abovementioned Vespri harm in revealing that they belong to Act II
siciliani in 1975 and then, in 1982, an of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, especially
extended pas de deux for Elisabetta since they are the work of the more-than-
Terabust and Peter Schaufuss set to the accomplished Luisa Spinatelli. Legris felt
first movement of the Quartet in B Minor, that the colours, the rich but never
which he titled Variazioni Verdi, later overstated elegance, and the beauty of the
incorporating it into Quartet, for Sadler’s fabrics well suited his new choreography.
Wells Royal Ballet. For Legris, who And so it is. Verdi Suite also had to account
considers himself a choreographer with a for the current health regulations – thus
still rather small repertoire, the top priority distancing. The dancers move in orbits,
in this seven-minute adventure was never touching: just one fleeting lift for a
showcasing the performers and fostering a couple who are already a couple in life. It
dialogue that would incite them to give it may be that this constraint transforms into
their best. The qualities of the five something else; and here the creative
dancers – talent, eagerness, and stamina stimulus, the different note for this small
during the intense and hectic rehearsals – gem meant as an homage to life, a dance
were already well known to their new that dances in brilliant lightness.

M.G.

78

Martina Arduino Virna toppi

Born in Moncalieri (near Turin), Martina began Born in Desio, Virna began her studies in 2003 at the
studying dance in Turin. In 2007 she was admitted to La Scala Academy Ballet School, taking part in
the La Scala Academy Ballet School, graduating in Academy performances and in a number of produc-
May 2015. She joined the La Scala Corps de Ballet tions of the La Scala Corps de Ballet. In 2011, imme-
and took part in numerous productions, including diately after earning her diploma, she was engaged
The Sleeping Beauty (the Lilac Fairy, the Diamond by the Dresden Semperoper, where she danced in
Fairy) and Swan Lake (Odette, Odile) choreographed ballets choreographed by
by Ratmansky, Cinderella (Fairy Godmother) and George Balanchine, Aaron Watkin, and William
Progetto Händel by Mauro Bigonzetti, The Nutcrack- Forsythe. In 2012, she joined the La Scala Corps de
er (Columbine) by Nacho Duato, Don Quixote by Ballet, becoming a soloist in 2014 in such roles as
Rudolf Nureyev, Il giardino degli amanti (étoile) by Odette/Odile in Swan Lake by Rudolf Nureyev; Kitri
Massimiliano Volpini, Romeo and Juliet (lead) by and the queen of the Dryads in Don Quixote; Clara
Kenneth MacMillan, Symphony in C and A Midsum- in The Nutcracker by Nacho Duato; Light, Civiliza-
mer Night’s Dream by George Balanchine, Onegin tion, and an Indian Moor woman in Excelsior; and
(Olga) by John Cranko, The Lady of the Camellias the title role in Mauro Bigonzetti’s Cinderella. She
by John Neumeier, the Goldberg Variations by Heinz headlined Il giardino degli amanti by Massimiliano
Spoerli, Petit Mort by Jiří Kylián, and Boléro by Volpini with Roberto Bolle and Nicola Del Freo. She
Maurice Béjart. In 2018 she was named Principal took part in Le sacre du printemps by Glen Tetley, in
Dancer at La Scala, expanding her repertoire to in- the Goldberg Variations by Spoerli, Mahler 10 by
clude Le Corsaire (Gulnare and Medora) by Anna- Aszure Barton, Petite Mort by Jiří Kylián, and de-
Marie Holmes, The Sleeping Beauty and Don buted in Boléro by Béjart. In April 2018 she was
Quixote (Kitri) by Nureyev, Manon by Kenneth named Principal Dancer, dancing in Le corsaire by
MacMillan, Woolf Works by Wayne McGregor, and Anna-Marie Holmes, The Sleeping Beauty by
Adagio Hammerklavier and Sarcasmen by Hans van Nureyev, and in Woolf Works by Wayne McGregor
Manen. She interpreted the title role in Sylvia by (Becomings and Tuesday). In the 2019-2020 season
Manuel Legris, which inaugurated the 2019-2020 La she was Prima ballerina at the Bayerisches Staats-
Scala ballet season. In September 2020, she was ballett in Munich in Spartacus by Grigorovič, The
among the winners of the 48th edition of ‘Positano Nutcracker and The Lady of the Camellias by John
Premia La Danza’ – Léonide Massine. Neumeier, Borderlands by Wayne McGregor, and
Coppélia by Petit. In 2017 she won the ‘Positano
Premia la Danza’ – Léonide Massine Prize, and in
2018 the ‘Danza&Danza’ Prize.

Foto Brescia/Amisano
Foto Brescia/Amisano

79

Claudio Coviello Marco Agostino

Born in Potenza, Claudio moved to Rome in 2002, Marco graduated from the La Scala Academy Ballet
where he began his dance studies at the Ballet School School in 2007 and joined the La Scala Corps de Bal-
of the Teatro dell’Opera, graduating in 2009. In 2010 let the following year. His notable roles include the
he joined the La Scala Corps de Ballet. In December peasant pas de deux and Hilarion in Giselle (Chau-
2012 he became a soloist and in December of the fol- viré), the Firebird and the Phoenix in The Firebird
lowing year he was named Principal Dancer. His (Béjart), Espada in Don Quixote (Nureyev), Romeo
repertoire includes Notre-Dame de Paris by Roland in Romeo and Juliet and Des Grieux in Manon
Petit, Swan Lake by Nureyev, and Romeo and Juliet (MacMillan), Bernard de Ventadour in Raymonda
and Manon by MacMillan. He has danced the leading (Petipa), Lensky in Onegin (Cranko), and Phoebus in
roles in Russian Seasons, The Sleeping Beauty, and Notre-Dame de Paris (Petit). He was named soloist
Swan Lake by Ratmansky, Jewels (Emeralds and Ru- in 2013 and added numerous titles to his repertoire:
bies) and Symphony in C by Balanchine, Pink Floyd Concerto DSCH, The Sleeping Beauty, and Swan
Ballet and Le Jeune Homme et la Mort by Roland Pe- Lake by Ratmansky, Diamonds, and Symphony in C
tit, Don Quixote and The Sleeping Beauty by by Balanchine, Swan Lake, Don Quixote, and The
Nureyev, The Nutcracker by Nacho Duato, Cello
Suites and the Goldberg Variations by Heinz Spoerli, Sleeping Beauty by Nureyev, The Nutcracker by Na-
Il giardino degli amanti by Massimiliano Volpini, cho Duato, and Cello Suites and the Goldberg Varia-
and The Lady of the Camellias by John Neumeier. He tions by Heinz Spoerli. He is Obscurantism in Excel-
was among the lead dancers in Mahler 10 by Aszure sior, the Prince in Cinderella by Bigonzetti, Ferrando
Barton, Woolf Works by Wayne McGregor (I now, I in Il giardino degli amanti by Volpini, and Albrecht
then, and Becomings), and Le Corsaire by Anna- in Giselle. He also dances in Le sacre du Printemps
Marie Holmes. He headlined Sylvia by Manuel by Glen Tetley, Petruška by Fokin, Shéhérazade by
Legris, inaugurating the 2019-2020 La Scala Ballet Eugenio Scigliano, Petite Mort by Jiří Kylián, Boleŕ o
Season, Sarcasmen by Hans van Manen, and Le com- by Béjart, Le Corsaire by Anna-Marie Holmes
bat des anges by Petit. (Lankendem and Conrad), Don Quixote by Nureyev
In September 2013 he was named ‘Italian Dancer of (Basilio), Winterreise by Angelin Preljocaj, and
the Year’ at the 41st edition of ‘Positano Premia la Woolf Works (Becomings) by Wayne McGregor. He
Danza – Léonide Massine’. He performed at the Bol- interpreted Aminta and Orione in Sylvia by Manuel
shoi in 2014 as the sole Italian at the Benois Dance Legris, inaugurating the 2019-2020 La Scala ballet
Prize. season, and later performed in Adagio Ham-
merklavier by Hans van Manen and Le combat des
anges by Petit.

Foto Marco Brescia

80

Foto Brescia/Amisano nicola Del Freo

Born in the Tuscan city of Massa, Nicola studied at
the John Neumeier Ballettschule of Hamburg from
2005 to 2010. From 2010 to 2014 he danced with the
Berlin Staatsballett to choreographies by John
Neumeier, John Cranko, Patrice Bart, Mauro
Bigonzetti, Itzik Galili, Vladimir Malakhov, Heinz
Spoerli, Maurice Béjart, Alexei Ratmansky, Kevin
Haigen, Vasilij Medvedev, and Boris Eifman. In 2015
he joined the La Scala Corps de Ballet, becoming a
soloist in April 2018. Notable titles in his repertoire
include Giselle, Cello Suites by Spoerli, Excelsior
(the Slave), The Sleeping Beauty, and Swan Lake
(Siegfried) by Ratmansky, Manon and Romeo and
Juliet by Kenneth MacMillan, Cinderella and Proget-
to Händel by Bigonzetti, The Nutcracker by Nacho
Duato, Il giardino degli amanti by Massimiliano
Volpini, and Le sacre du printemps by Glen Tetley. He
was in the cast of Symphony in C, A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, and The Nutcracker by Balanchine; he
was Lensky in Onegin by Cranko, and Des Grieux in
The Lady of the Camellias by Neumeier. He danced in
The Sleeping Beauty and Don Quixote by Nureyev,
Goldberg Variations by Spoerli, Mahler 10 by Aszure
Barton, Petite Mort by Jiří Kylián, Boléro by Béjart,
Le Corsaire by Anna-Marie Holmes, Woolf Works by
Wayne McGregor (Becomings), Adagio Ham-
merlavier and Sarcasmen by Hans van Manen, and Le
Jeune Homme et la Mort by Petit. He was Eros and
then Aminta in Sylvia by Manuel Legris, which inau-
gurated the 2019-2020 La Scala Ballet season. In
2017 he won the ‘Positano Premia la Danza –
Léonide Massine’ and the ‘Danza&Danza Prizes’.

81

Giancarlo Judica Cordiglia
Copying the truth might be a good thing,
but inventing the truth is better, much
better. There might seem to be a
contradiction in these three words: invent
the truth. Ask Father, ask William
Shakespeare. It may be that he, Father, has
encountered some Falstaff, but unlikely
that he has met a wicked man as wicked
as Iago. It’s Shakespeare, it’s humanity;
that is, a part of humanity: the ugly […]
Jago with the face of a gentleman! I can
picture this priest! That is, this Jago with
the face of a good man!
Giuseppe Verdi, Letters, 1876

82

THE ABJURE

Giuseppe Verdi original. There are only two significant
Otello (1887) variations: the elimination of the act in
Venice, which would have made the opera
(Libretto by Arrigo Boito) too long for the prevailing tastes at the
time, and the addition of Jago’s Credo,
Arrigo Boito’s offbeat baroque lexicon which is not found in the Bard’s work.
did not please all, but it was thanks to him
and his talents as a librettist and dramatist E. F.
that Verdi composed his two final
masterpieces, Otello and Falstaff, the
culmination of a lifelong passion for
Shakespeare. Completed in 1887, Otello
is a very faithful transposition of the

Verdi e l’Otello.
Special Issue of the
Illustrazione Italiana.

83

Giuseppe Verdi Otello
Otello I believe in a cruel God who created

Jago [me in his image
and who in fury I name.
Credo in un dio crudel che m’ha creato From the very vileness of a germ
simile a sé e che nell’ira io nomo. or an atom, vile was I born.
Dalla viltà d’un germe o d’un atòmo I am a wretch
vile son nato. because I am a man,
Son scellerato and I feel within me the primeval slime.
perché son uomo; Yes! This is my creed!
e sento il fango originario in me. I believe with a heart as steadfast
Sì, questa è la mia fe’! as that of the widow in church,
Credo con fermo cuor, siccome crede that the evil I think and that which
la vedovella al tempio,
che il mal ch’io penso e che da me [I perform
I think and do by destiny’s decree.
[procede, I believe the just man to be a mocking
per mio destino adempio.
Credo che il giusto è un istrïon beffardo, [actor
e nel viso e nel cuor, in face and heart;
che tutto è in lui bugiardo: that all his being is a lie,
lagrima, bacio, sguardo, tear, kiss, glance,
sacrificio ed onor. sacrifice and honour.
E credo l’uom gioco d’iniqua sorte And I believe man the sport of evil fate
dal germe della culla from the germ of the cradle
al verme dell’avel. to the worm of the grave.
Vien dopo tanta irrisïon la morte. After all this mockery then comes Death.
E poi? La morte è il nulla And then? Death is nothingness,
e vecchia fola il ciel. Heaven an old wives’ tale.

Credo mephistophelic page in the villain’s
Credo, with mocking trills, sombre basses,
Boito’s youth in the Scapigliatura dissonant sonority, and whistling piccolos.
movement was the probable origin of The baritone voice imperiously dominates
some of the verbal excesses that had long this magma, oscillating between recitative
been a source of tension with Verdi. These and interjective stabs, almost more spoken
roots had left him with a passion for the than sung.
hyperbole of evil reaching back to Sturm
und Drang and gothic literature. In the E. F.
end, Verdi played along, writing a

84

Carlos Álvarez Foto Brescia-Amisano

Baritone. Born in Malaga, Carlos debuted at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid in 1990 and has
gone on to sing in the world’s most prestigious theatres and festivals. As well as being an acclaimed
performer of zarzuelas, he was the Marchese di Posa in Don Carlo with Lorin Maazel at the 1998
and 1999 Salzburg Festivals and at the Opéra Bastille in 2002; Tonio in Pagliacci, with Riccardo
Chailly in Amsterdam in 1999; the title role in Rigoletto at the Arena of Verona in 2003 and 2017;
Iago in Otello in Salzburg with Riccardo Muti, and Don Carlo di Vargas in La forza del destino with
Zubin Mehta on the podium in Vienna in 2008. At the Metropolitan he sang in Un ballo in
maschera, Luisa Miller, and Rigoletto. At Teatro alla Scala he was Sharpless in Madama Butterfly
in 1996, Don Giovanni in 1999 with Riccardo Muti and again in 2006 with Dudamel, the Conte
d’Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro in 2016, and he took part in two season premieres conducted by
Chailly: Giovanna d’Arco in 2015 and Madama Butterfly in 2016. More recently, he sang Andrea
Chénier and Hamlet at the Liceu of Barcelona, Simon Boccanegra and Otello at Covent Garden,
Gianni Schicchi at the New National Theatre of Tokyo, La bohème at the Metropolitan, Carmen,
Samson et Dalila, Tosca, and La fille du régiment at the Vienna Staatsoper, Pagliacci at the Carlo
Felice of Genoa and at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, Otello, La favorita, and Simon Boccanegra at
the Teatro Cervantes of Málaga, and Un ballo in maschera at Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.
He has won numerous accolades and awards, including the Medalla de Oro de las Bellas Artes, the
Premio Nacional de Música, and the Premio Lírico Teatro Campoamor for his interpretation of
Gérard in Andrea Chénier. In 2007 he was awarded the prestigious title of ‘Kammersänger’ by the
Vienna Staatsoper.

85

Massimo Popolizio
I hate the indifferent [...].
Those who truly live cannot help being a
citizen and taking sides. Indifference is lack
of will, it is parasitism, it is cowardice, it is
not life. And so I hate the indifferent.
Indifference is a deadweight on history, it is
the ball and chain on the innovator, it is the
inert mass in which the most splendid
enthusiasms often drown […]. Indifference
has been a powerful force in history. It works
its harm passively, but works it. […] The
things that happen don’t happen so much
because some want them to happen, but
because the great mass of people abdicate,
bow to their will, let things go. They let
things get all tied up so only the sword can
cut through, they let laws be passed that
only a revolt can take down, they let men
rise to power that only mutiny can bring
down. The inexorable fate that seems to
dominate history is nothing other than an
illusion masking this indifference.
Antonio Gramsci, Odio gli indifferenti, 1917

86

THE INDIFFERENCE

Umberto Giordano
Andrea Chénier (1896)

(Libretto by Luigi Illica)

Andrea Chénier is an opera inspired by an concessions beyond a general elegance
actual historical figure, a poet sentenced to and a sporadic evocation of period dances.
death during the most truculent phases of What is truly important in Andrea Chénier
the Terror and promoted, in romantic is its romantic motif, a story that unfolds
imagery, to paladin of the ideals of justice in celebration of the metaphysical power
and liberty, to be defended even at the cost of love. The tenor aria sung by the
of one’s life. Giordano’s opera falls into the protagonist in Act I renders the first
style of eighteenth-century opera – like manifestation of this force in all its power.
Manon Lescaut and Adriana Lecouvreur –
in vogue at the turn of the nineteenth C. T.
century, nevertheless making few stylistic

Advertising poster of th first complete recording of
Andrea Chénier, published by His Master’s Voice in 1921.

87

umberto Giordano Carlo Gérard
Andrea Chénier The enemy of his country?
That’s an old tale,
Carlo Gérard but one that never fails to touch the mob.
Born at Constantinople: an alien!
Nemico della patria?! Student at St. Cyr: a soldier!
È vecchia fiaba And a traitor! Dumouriez’s accomplice!
che beatamente ancor la beve il popolo. A poet? A dangerous man, a sower of sedition!
Nato a Costantinopoli? Time was when I rejoic’d
Straniero! that passions vile could never sway me;
Studiò a Saint-Cyr?... Soldato! Innocent, pure, and brave, I deem’d myself a giant!
Traditore! Di Dumouriez un complice! I’m still a slave! ‘Tis a mere change of masters!
È poeta? Sovvertitor di cuori e costumi! I’m now but the bondsman of infamous passion!
Un dì m’era di gioia passar Worse than that! A sentimental murderer,
fra gli odii e le vendette, puro, innocente e forte! Who while he murders, weeps!
Gigante mi credea! Son of the glorious Revolution,
Son sempre un servo! Ho mutato padrone! when first her cry rang thro’ the world,
Un servo obbediente di violenta passione! to her voice my own then made reply...
Ah, peggio! Uccido e tremo, How have I fallen from my glorious pathway!
e mentre uccido, io piango! Once, like a line of radiant light it lay before me
Io, della Redentrice figlio, pel primo ho udito to cheer up the hearts of all my fellow-comrades,
il grido suo pel mondo to bid the mourner weep no more,
ed ho al suo il mio grido unito… console the weary sufferer,
Or smarrita ho la fede nel sognato destino? and make of this world a Paradise,
Com’era irradiato di gloria il mio cammino! where men should be as gods, divine;
La coscienza nei cuor ridestar de le genti, to bind all comrades in one vast embrace!
raccogliere le lagrime dei vinti e sofferenti!
Fare del mondo un Pantheon!
Gli uomini in dii mutare
e in un sol bacio e abbraccio
tutte le genti amar!

Nemico della patria placing himself at the service of an
infernal machine – the Terror – which
In a room in the Revolutionary Court, forces him to send innocent people to the
under pressure from the Incredible, Carlo guillotine. His recitative, sustained by the
Gérard, who in the meantime has become connective tissue of an orchestra that
one of the leaders of the Revolution, is adheres closely to the images and
about to pen the indictment against Andrea emotional states evoked by his words. It
Chénier: Nemico della patria. He knows erupts and swells with lyrical sonority in
that what he is doing is baseless and vile step with his mounting regrets, thinking
and it gnaws at his conscience. Before back on the pure ideals, now betrayed, that
writing the poet’s name on the list of the had inspirited his youth.
accused, Gérard reflects on his own
condition: once servant to an aristocratic C.T.
family, he has merely changed master,

88

Plácido Domingo Foto Pedro Walker

Baritone. A world famous, eclectic artist, Plácido Domingo is recognized as one of the greatest
performers in the history of opera. His repertoire currently comprises 151 roles – unrivalled by any
other singer – in over four thousand performances. He has made over a hundred recordings, earn-
ing him an impressive 12 Grammy Awards. He has made more than fifty music videos and head-
lined three hit opera films: Carmen, directed by Francesco Rosi, and La traviata and Otello direct-
ed by Franco Zeffirelli. He sang a historic Cavaradossi in the live television broadcast of Tosca,
shot in Rome at the places and times of Puccini’s masterpiece for an audience of over one billion.
For over ten years, starting in 1990, Domingo travelled the world as one of the Three Tenors with
José Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti, attracting a new audience to opera. He presides over the pres-
tigious opera competition Operalia, which he founded in 1993, and nurtures young talents at the
Centre de Perfeccionament Plácido Domingo in Valencia. He has been awarded various honorary
degrees and numerous distinctions for his contributions to music and art. He has performed in
many world opera premieres, including Goya by Gian Carlo Menotti and Il postino by Daniel
Catán. Alongside his work as a singer, he is also an acclaimed orchestra conductor, having con-
ducted over 500 operas and symphonic concerts, recently debuting at the Bayreuth Festival with
Die Walküre. In recent years he has dedicated himself to the interpretation of the great baritone
roles, particularly those of Verdi. In 2017, he revisited the tenor repertoire as Bajazet in Tamerlano
at La Scala.
placidodomingo.com

89

umberto Giordano Maddalena di Coigny
Andrea Chénier
They killed my mother,
Maddalena di Coigny at the door of my room:
she died to save me!
La mamma morta In darkest night I wandered with Bersi,
m’hanno a la porta when suddenly a lurid glare
della stanza mia; lit up the dark path that lay
moriva e mi salvava! before my steps,
Poi a notte alta io con Bersi errava, and I saw my home devour’d by flames.
quando ad un tratto un livido bagliore Thus, I was alone, with nothing around me
guizza e rischiara innanzi a’passi miei but hunger and misery, need and peril!
la cupa via! Then I fell ill.
Guardo! Bruciava il loco di mia culla! And Bersi, good and pure,
Così fui sola! E intorno il nulla! sold her beauty for my sake.
Fame e miseria! I bring misfortune on those who love me!
Il bisogno, il periglio! ’Twas in such sorrow
Caddi malata! that Love came to me!
E Bersi, buona e pura, In accents sweet, he murmur’d:
di sua bellezza ha fatto “You must live on! I am life!
un mercato, un contratto per me! In my eyes is your Heaven!
Porto sventura a chi bene mi vuole! You are not alone! I will gather
Fu in quel dolore your tears, I will walk with you
che a me venne l’amor! and sustain you!
Voce piena d’armonia Smile and hope! I am Love!
e dice: “Vivi ancora! Io son la vita! Everything around you is blood and
Ne’miei occhi è il tuo cielo!
Tu non sei sola! Le lagrime tue [mire?... I am divine!
io le raccolgo! Io sto sul tuo cammino I am oblivion!
e ti sorreggo! I am the God
Sorridi e spera! Io son l’amore! who descends onto Earth from the firmament,
Tutto intorno è sangue e fango?... Io son divino! and turns the Earth into Heaven! Ah!
Io son l’oblio! I am Love, I am Love!”
Io sono il dio
che sovra il mondo scende da l’empireo,
fa della terra un ciel! Ah!
Io son l’amore, io son l’amor!”

La mamma morta

Maddalena has gone to Gérard, her former tune, Bersi, to support her. Maddalena’s vocal
servant, now a revolutionary leader, to ask line is initially static, as if she is still stunned
him to spare her beloved Chénier from the by the nightmare. But when she speaks of
death sentence. Gérard confesses that he has love, the only light amidst such horror, the
always loved her and ardently desires her. tone brightens; her impassioned peroration
He promises to save the poet in exchange fills with swelling melodic harmonies sus-
for her body. Maddalena, ready to make the tained by the full orchestra and is marked by
sacrifice if that is the price to be paid for unrestrained singability. Her words will have
Chénier’s life, tells him her tragic story: the the power to make Gérard repent and cease
violence of the revolutionaries, her mother his repugnant purpose: he will defend
slain at the doorstep to her room, the palace Chénier – albeit in vain – before the
set afire, the poverty, hunger, illness, and the Revolutionary Court.
sacrifice made by her companion in misfor- C.T.

90

THE INVOCATION Foto Javier Del Real

Sonya yoncheva

Soprano. Born in 1981 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, Sonya studied piano and voice in her hometown under
the guidance of Nelly Koitcheva, later earning a master’s degree in voice from the Conservatory of
Geneva with Danielle Borst. She attended Le Jardin des Voix, the academy of William Christie’s Les
Arts Florissants ensemble, where she developed a particular affinity for the Baroque repertoire. She
has won numerous international competitions, including the First Prize and the CulturArte Prize at
Plácido Domingo’s Operalia in 2010. Her favourite roles include Violetta (La traviata), that she sang
at the Metropolitan, the Berlin Staatsoper, Palau de les Arts in Valencia, in Monte Carlo, at the Bay-
erische Staatsoper in Munich, in Zurich and in Paris; Norma, that she sang at The Royal Opera
House Covent Garden in London, where she also interpreted Micaëla in Carmen and Antonia in Les
Contes d’Hoffmann; and Tosca, that she sang in a new production at the Metropolitan Opera, in
Berlin and in Munich. In 2013 she debuted at the Metropolitan as Gilda in Rigoletto and since then
has been invited back to the prestigious New York theatre on a regular basis: she inaugurated the
2015-2016 season as Desdemona in Otello and sang Iolanta, Luisa Miller and La bohème. In 2017
she debuted at La Scala as Mimì in La bohème, returning soon after as Imogene in a new production
of Il pirata. Her recent engagements include L’incoronazione di Poppea at the Salzburg Festival with
William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, Iolanta and Otello in New York, Il Pirata at the Teatro Re-
al in Madrid, Tosca and Médée in Berlin, La bohème in London, and La traviata in Florence.
Her future engagements include Siberia by Giordano (in the role of Stepahana) at the Maggio Mu-
sicale Fiorentino, Tosca in Vienna, Aida and La traviata at the Arena in Verona, Don Carlos in
New York, in addition to several concerts.
sonyayoncheva.com

91

Caterina Murino
If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow’s rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime’s argument
That nothing comes from violence
And nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are.
Sting, Fragile, 1987

92

Giacomo Puccini ‘contrivance of facts’ (Giacosa) revolving
tosca (1900) around the singer Floria Tosca, loved by
the libertarian painter Mario Cavaradossi
(Libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa) and lusted after by Baron Scarpia (Chief of
Police and ‘licentious bigot’), covers some
The second opera written by Puccini in sixteen hours prior to the Battle of
collaboration with Illica and Giacosa, Marengo (14 June 1800) and takes place
based on the homonymous pièce by the entirely in the Church of Sant’Andrea
French playwright Victorien Sardou, della Valle, Palazzo Farnese, and Castel
Tosca debuted at the Teatro Costanzi of Sant’Angelo, symbols of clerical and
Rome on 14 January 1900. The Eternal temporal power located in close proximity.
City, under the overbearing power of the
Bourbonic police during the war raging R. P.
between Napoleon and the anti-French
coalition, is the setting for this historical
melodrama in three acts, in which time
and space are unusually precise,
documented, and circumscribed. The

Tosca by Giacomo Puccini.
Cover of the libretto,
G. Ricordi & C, Milano
1899 (Milan, Museo
Teatrale alla Scala).

93

Giacomo Puccini Cavaradossi
Tosca And the stars shone and the earth was

Cavaradossi [perfumed.
The gate to the garden creaked and a
E lucevan le stelle...
e olezzava la terra, [footstep
stridea l’uscio dell’orto rustled the sand to the path...
e un passo sfiorava la rena. Fragrant, she entered
Entrava ella, fragrante, and fell into my arms...
mi cadea fra le braccia... Oh, soft kisses, oh, sweet abandon,
O dolci baci, o languide carezze, as I trembling
mentr’io fremente unloosed her veils and disclosed her beauty.
le belle forme disciogliea dai veli! Oh, vanished forever is that dream of love,
Svanì per sempre il sogno mio d’amore... fled is that hour...
L’ora è fuggita... and desperately I die.
e muoio disperato! And never before have I loved life so much!
E non ho amato mai tanto la vita!

Leopoldo Metlicovitz. Tosca and Cavaradossi. E lucevan le stelle
Advertising postcard published by Ricordi,
1900 (Private Collection). Cavaradossi sings e lucevan
le stelle roof of Castel
Sant’Angelo at the beginning
of Act III while awaiting his
imminent execution.
Overwhelmed by ‘a flood of
memories’ of Tosca and
sustained by the timbre of the
clarinet, the painter begins an
emotional crescendo evoking
the lights and scents of a night
of loving, reliving every step,
fragrance, kiss, caress, and the
beauty of his beloved. He powerfully
conveys all the despair and attachment to
the world of a non-believer who has
spurned the comfort of religion and
celebrates for the last time the life that is
about to be torn from him.

R. P.

94

Roberto Alagna Foto Simon Fowler

Tenor. Born in Clichy-sur-Bois to Sicilian parents, he made his debut as Alfredo in La traviata in
1988, after winning the Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competition. It was the beginning of
a brilliant international career, over which he has added over sixty roles to his repertoire. Along
with the major tenor roles such as Alfredo (which he has sung more than 150 times), Cavaradossi,
Turiddu, Canio, Don José, Manrico, and Calaf, he loves to rediscover lesser-known or long-forgot-
ten works of the French repertory, such as Cyrano de Bergerac by Franco Alfano, Le jongleur de
Notre-Dame by Massenet, Le Roi Arthus by Ernest Chausson, Fiesque by Édouard Lalo. Even two
contemporary operas have been composed especially for him: Marius et Fanny by Vladimir Cos-
ma and Le dernier jour d’un condamné by his brother David Alagna. His impressive discography
bears witness to the breadth of his repertory: complete sets, duets, oratorios, operas, anthologies of
great works, sacred music and songs. His most recent albums are Caruso 1873, a tribute to tenor
Caruso, and Le Chanteur, dedicated to the great French chanson. Seduced by every aspect of
singing, he has made regular incursions into popular music. His success in this area has made him
an artist loved by an ever-increasing public. Over the last three years, he took on several new roles,
e.g. Des Grieux, Éléazar (in Halévy’s La Juive), Samson. In 2019, he sung his 100th performance
both at the Parisian Opera in Otello and at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in Andrea
Chénier. In December 2020 he will tackle a German-language opera for the first time, making his
debut as Lohengrin at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin.
In 2008 he was named a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur.

95

Maria Chiara Centorami
Alessandro Lussiana
Marouane Zotti
‘What is hope?’
Aristotle was once asked.
‘Hope? Hope is the dream
of a waking man.’

96

Giacomo Puccini HOPE
Turandot
Calaf
Calaf No one must sleep!
Nessun dorma! You, too, O Princess,
Tu pure, o principessa, in your cold room
nella tua fredda stanza look at the stars, that tremble
guardi le stelle with love and with hope!
che tremano d’amore e di speranza! But my mystery is shut within me;
Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me, no one will know my name!
il nome mio nessun saprà! No, I will say it on your mouth
No, no, sulla tua bocca lo dirò, when the daylight shines!
quando la luce splenderà! And my kiss will break the silence
Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio that makes you mine!
che ti fa mia! Vanish, o night! Set, you stars!
Dilegua, o notte! Tramontate, stelle! At dawn I will win!
All’alba vincerò!

Nessun dorma Piotr Beczała Tenore

nessun dorma!, the aria sung by Calàf at
night in the first part of Act III, begins
with the words of Turandot’s menacing
command, spread by her heralds to every
corner of terrorized Peking: no one may
sleep until the identity of the unknown
prince has been revealed. Although he had
triumphed in the trial of the three enig-
mas, he generously put his life in the
princess’s hands by challenging her to dis-
cover his name. Immersed in the languid
music of the orchestra, the tenor sings ‘as
if no longer in the real world’. As certain-
ty of victory gradually rises within him
(‘Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me’ –
‘But my mystery is shut within me’)
along with a burning desire for a kiss
from Turandot, his voice overwhelms the
instrumental theme that underscored his
proposition to the princess at the end of
Act II, lifting it into an impassioned
melody culminating in a fortissimo per-
oration, before leaving the orchestra trail-
ing in its wake.

R. P.

Caramba. Sketch for Calaf’s costume.

97

Giacomo Puccini Cio-Cio-San
Madama Butterfly One fine day we’ll see
a wisp of smoke arising
Cio-Cio-San over the extreme verge of the sea’s horizon,
and afterwards the ship will appear.
Un bel dì, vedremo Then the white ship will enter the harbour,
levarsi un fil di fumo sull’estremo will thunder a salute. You see?
confin del mare. He’s arrived!
E poi la nave appare. I shan’t go down to meet him.
Poi la nave bianca No, I shall stand there
entra nel porto, romba il suo saluto. on the brow of the hill and wait,
Vedi? È venuto! and wait a long time, and I shan’t find
Io non gli scendo incontro, io no. Mi metto the long wait wearisome.
là sul ciglio del colle e aspetto, e aspetto And from the midst of the city crowd
gran tempo e non mi pesa a man, a tiny speck,
la lunga attesa. will make his way up the hill.
E uscito dalla folla cittadina Who can it be? And when he arrives,
un uomo, un picciol punto what, what will he say?
s’avvia per la collina. He’ll call, “Butterfly!” from the distance.
Chi sarà? Chi sarà? Not answering, I’ll remain hidden,
E come sarà giunto partly to tease, and partly so as not to die
che dirà? Che dirà? at the first meeting. And, a trifle worried,
Chiamerà Butterfly dalla lontana. he’ll call, he’ll call
Io senza dar risposta “My dear little wife, fragrance of verbena”,
me ne starò nascosta the names he used to call me
un po’per celia... e un po’per non morire when he came here.
al primo incontro, ed egli alquanto in pena And this will happen,
chiamerà, chiamerà: I promise you.
Piccina mogliettina, Keep your fears;
olezzo di verbena, with unalterable faith I shall wait for him.
i nomi che mi dava al suo venire.
Tutto questo avverrà, te lo prometto.
Tienti la tua paura: io con sicura
fede lo aspetto.

Un bel dì, vedremo the sight of ‘a wisp of smoke arising over
the extreme verge of the sea’s horizon’ and
Is sung during the scene where Cio-Cio- culminating in his first sweet words when
San reaffirms her enduring faith that he reaches the crest of the hill where she
Pinkerton will return, unwilling to listen to awaits. The aria ends with Cio-Cio-San’s
the doubts of her maid Suzuki. It is a ‘unalterable faith’ and the dynamic climax
strange aria – a bit prophecy, a bit ecstasy, of the entire piece in B flat fortissimo:
a bit acting, a bit propitiatory rite – in ‘l’aspetto’ – ‘I shall wait for him’.
which Butterfly envisions an ardently
awaited ‘fine day’ when she will see her R. P.
naval officer once again, beginning with

98

Marina Rebeka Foto CDari Acosta

Soprano. A native of Riga, Marina began studying voice in the Latvian capital before moving to
Rome to study at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory, where she earned her diploma while also attending
the International Summer Academy in Salzburg and the Rossini Academy in Pesaro. After her debut
at the Salzburg Festival in 2009 under Riccardo Muti, she has gone on to perform in the world’s
foremost theatres and concert halls under preeminent conductors. She commands a broad repertoire
ranging from Baroque to Bel Canto and such composers as Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Massenet, Gounod,
and Bizet. Much sought-after as Violetta, she has headlined La traviata at the Vienna Staatsoper, the
Paris Opera, the Metropolitan in New York, at La Scala, at Covent Garden in London, and in Valen-
cia, Madrid, Chicago, Tokyo, and Osaka. She sang the title role in Luisa Miller in Munich, Amelia
in Simon Boccanegra in Vienna and at the Salzburg Festival, Giovanna in Giovanna d’Arco in Dort-
mund, Leila in Les pêcheurs de perles in Chicago, the title role of Thaïs in Salzburg, Marguerite in
Faust in Monte Carlo and Madrid, and the title role in Norma at the Metropolitan, Toulouse, and
Hamburg. She debuted at La Scala in 2009 in Il viaggio a Reims, returning in 2019 and in Septem-
ber 2020 for La traviata. Quite active as a soloist, she has sung the War Requiem by Britten, Ein
Deutsches Requiem by Brahms, Stabat Mater and the Petite messe solennelle by Rossini. More re-
cently, she was a soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Barcelona with the Mahler Chamber Or-
chestra. Her future engagements include Otello (Desdemona) with Mehta at Maggio Musicale
Fiorentino, Thaïs in Monte Carlo, Il trovatore (Leonora) in Paris, Anna Bolena in a new production
in Amsterdam, and Pagliacci (Nedda) at the Arena of Verona.
marinarebeka.com

99

Davide Livermore
1946: Toscanini reopens La Scala Theatre,
rebuilt in record time, with the Liberation
concert. It was May 11th. Everyone wanted
to be there, the Milanese had been queueing
since early morning to get a seat. The
audience erupted in applause when the
Maestro appeared, many cheeks were lined
with tears. Italy was finally out of the war
and life was beginning again. The fear,
terror, and pain having passed, everyone
gathered at the theatre. Because that was
a concert for everyone. The concert for
the rebirth of the city and the entire nation.
The concert of hope.
Because then, as now, La Scala is a symbol:
a symbol of the Art, the Theatre,
and the Culture that brings us forth to gaze
anew at the stars.

100

THE REBIRTH

Gioachino Rossini European musical theatre. A compendium
Guglielmo tell (1829) and coronation of Rossini’s oeuvre having
all the trappings of a comedy with a
(Libretto by Victor-Joseph-Étienne de Jouy serious, heroic subject, the opera
and Hippolyte-Louis-Florent Bis, transposes the peaceful assertion of
traduzione italiana di Calisto Bassi) independence by a conservative people
and the psychology of a father-son
Based on Friedrich Schiller’s play relationship into the realm of nature,
Wilhelm Tell, the four-act opera Guillaume folklore, and the picturesque.
Tell, with libretto by Étienne de Jouy and
Hippolyte-Louis-Florent Bis (Paris Opéra, C.F.
3 August 1829), is Gioachino Rossini’s
last. Of grandiose conception, filled with
spectacular scenes, choral episodes, and
choreographic action, the opera is the
prototype of the new genre of grand opéra
which would be of enormous importance
in nineteenth-century French and

Gioachino Rossini, 1820

101

Gioachino Rossini Guglielmo
Guglielmo Tell edwige
Guglielmo Jemmy
edwige Arnoldo
Jemmy Matilde
Arnoldo Gualtiero
Matilde Leutoldo
Gualtiero Chorus of Swiss Confederates
Leutoldo Everything here changes and grows in
Coro di Svizzeri
Tutto cangia, il ciel s’abbella, [grandeur!
l’aria è pura, il dì raggiante, What pure air!
la natura è lieta anch’ella. What a radiant day!
Può allo sguardo un solo istante In the distance what a boundless horizon!
or nuovo il mondo rivelare! Yes, before our eyes nature
E in ogni cor pel santo evento unfolds its magnificence!
alzi un grido al ciel tonante: The happiness that I feel in me
di tuo regno fia l’avvento the soul cannot explain.
sulla terra libertà, o libertà.
Tutto cangia,
Guglielmo Tell il ciel s’abbella
Woodprint by Ruff,
Zurich 1545 The finale of Guglielmo Tell
is a sort of majestic and
compelling anthem of a new
world of peace, serenity, and
hard-fought liberty,
symbolized by the clearing
sky and the harmony
between man and nature. The
phrases of Guglielmo,
Edwige, Jemmy, and Arnoldo
that follow upon one another
over the course of the opera
are joined by the choir in a
powerful crescendo of
recurring motifs that elevates
the vocal and orchestral weave in a
grandiose, Olympian and ethereal effect,
which is all the more impressive because
of the economy of compositional means
used to achieve it.

C.F.

102

elena Buratto, Rosa Feola, Marianne Crebassa,
Juan Diego Flórez, Luca Salsi, Carlos Álvarez
Mirco Palazzi

Bass. Born in Rimini, he began studying piano at a very young age and then devoted himself to
singing, graduating from the ‘G. Rossini’ Conservatory in Pesaro under the guidance of Robleto
Merolla, and later of Bonaldo Giaiotti. A fine interpreter of the Italian and Mozart’s bel canto
repertoire, since his debut as Don Giovanni in 2001 he has been invited to perform in the most
prestigious venues, including La Scala, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Barbican
in London, La Fenice in Venice, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Philhar-
monie in Cologne, the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Tchaikovsky Hall
in Moscow, the Liceu in Barcelona, the Washington Opera, and in the most popular festivals, such
as the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, the Edinburgh and Wexford Festivals, the Festival of the
Two Worlds in Spoleto. During his career he has collaborated with directors of the like of Claudio
Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Myung-whun Chung, Valerij Gergiev, Antonio Pappano, Gianandrea
Noseda, Alberto Zedda, and with directors such as Luca Ronconi, Pier Luigi Pizzi, David Alden,
Denis Krief, John Pascoe, Robert Carsen. His repertory includes Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro), Don
Giovanni and Leporello (Don Giovanni), Don Basilio (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Alidoro (La Cener-
entola), Maometto II, Lord Sidney (Il viaggio a Reims), Assur (Semiramide), Raimondo (Lucia di
Lammermoor), Alfonso (Lucrezia Borgia), Giorgio Talbot (Maria Stuarda), Enrico VIII (Anna
Bolena), Sir Giorgio (I puritani), Count Rodolfo (La sonnambula), Roger (Jérusalem) and Ban-
quo (Macbeth). In concert he has sung Mozart’s Requiem, Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Petite
Messe Solennelle, and Verdi’s Messa da Requiem.
www.mircopalazzi.it

103

Orchestra e Coro del Teatro alla Scala.
104

105

Foto Marco Brescia

106

Foto Brescia - Amisano

Riccardo Chailly

Appointed Music Director of Teatro alla Scala in January 2017, since
November 2015 he has been the Principal Conductor of the Filarmonica
della Scala, with which he has programmed a dense calendar of interna-
tional tours and recording sessions.
Born in Milan, he studied music in the Conservatories of Perugia, Rome
and Milan, finishing his studies at Accademia Chigiana in Siena with
Franco Ferrara. His first position as Music Director was with the Berlin
Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1980 to 1988. In 1988 he took on the
role of Principal Conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in
Amsterdam, a position he held for sixteen years. During the same period,
he was Music Director of the Municipal Theatre of Bologna and of the
Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra of Milan.
He has been 11 years long, until 2016, Kapellmeister of the Leipzig
Gewandhaus Orchestra. In August 2016 he was appointed Music Direc-
tor of the Orchestra at the Lucerne Festival, taking over from Claudio
Abbado.
He has conducted all major European orchestras, including the Wiener
Philharmoniker, the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Symphonieorchester des
Bayerischen Rundfunks, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Or-
chestre de Paris. In the United States he has collaborated with the New
York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra
and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
In the opera field, he collaborates with major theatres apart from La
Scala, such as the New York Metropolitan, the Chicago Lyric Opera, the
San Francisco Opera, Covent Garden in London, the Munich Bayerische
Staatsoper, the Vienna Staatsoper and the Zurich Opera. He regularly fea-
tures at leading international festivals including Salzburg, Lucerne and the
London Proms.
For over thirty years he has had an exclusive recording contract with Dec-
ca. The revolutionary recording of Beethoven’s Nine Symphonies with
Gewandhaus earned him the prestigious ‘Echo Klassik’ award as Best
Conductor of 2012. 2013 saw the publication of, among other oeuvres,
the complete cycles of the Symphonies of Brahms with the Gewandhaus
Orchestra, which won the Gramophone Award as Disc of The Year, and
Viva Verdi, produced with the Filarmonica della Scala on the occasion of
the Verdi bicentennial.
He is a Grand Officer of the Republic of Italy and a member of the Royal
Academy of Music in London. In 1998 he was made Knight Grand Cross
of the Republic of Italy; in the same year the Queen of the Netherlands
vested him with the title Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion. In
2011 he was appointed Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the
French Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand.

107

108

Foto Matteo Carassale

Michele Gamba

Born in Milan, Michele studied piano and composition at the Giuseppe Verdi Con-
servatory in his hometown and earned a degree in philosophy from the University
of Milan, going on to do postgraduate work in voice accompaniment and orches-
tra conducting at the Musikhochschule of Vienna, the Accademia Chigiana in
Siena, and the Royal Academy of London. After beginning a brilliant career as pi-
anist, performing solo in such prestigious venues as Wigmore Hall in London and
the Gasteig in Munich, in 2009 he debuted as orchestra conductor at the Royal
Festival Hall in the Foyle Future Firsts programme of the London Philharmonic
Orchestra. He later accepted a position as musical assistant at the Staatsoper of
Hamburg. In 2012 he began working with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden
in London, then becoming assistant to Antonio Pappano, and Jette Parker Associ-
ate Conductor. Works conducted in London include Bastien und Bastienne and the
Folk Songs of Berio. In 2015 he was invited by Daniel Barenboim to be
Kapellmeister and his assistant at the Berlin Staatsoper, where he collaborated on
numerous productions and conducted the music for Le nozze di Figaro, directed
by Jürgen Flimm. After his debut at La Scala in 2016 with I due Foscari, he has
returned to the podium in Piermarini’s auditorium for Le nozze di Figaro, Il ratto
dal serraglio per i bambini, and L’elisir d’amore. He later conducted Le nozze di
Figaro at the Hamburg Staatsoper, Armida by Rossini at the Montpellier Opera,
L’occasione fa il ladro at Teatro Fenice in Venice, La sonnambula at the Stuttgart
Staatsoper, Norma at the Sferisterio of Macerata, Andrea Chénier at Teatro
Petruzzelli in Bari, the Requiem of Mozart at the Verona Filarmonico, and Rigolet-
to at the Rome Opera.
In the symphonic realm, Michele has conducted major orchestras such as the
Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the RAI National Symphonic Orchestra, the Orches-
tras of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Pomeriggi Musicali, the Verdi Orchestra,
the Duisburger Philharmoniker, the Berlin Staatskapelle, the Orchestre National
de Montpellier, and the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse.
Michele continues his activity as pianist, recently performing Beethoven’s Diabel-
li Variations in Milan and with an engagement this coming winter at the Vienna
Staatsoper.
He recently conducted Idomeneo in Tel Aviv, La bohème in Stuttgart, L’elisir
d’amore in Turin, Rigoletto in Berlin, Il barbiere di Siviglia at Maggio Musicale
Fiorentino and at the Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg, Macbeth in Toulouse,
and La traviata in Lisbon. His future engagements include Il barbiere di Siviglia
in Florence and Savonlinna, Carmen in Hong Kong, symphonic concerts in Turin
with the RAI National Symphonic Orchestra and in Florence with the Tuscan Re-
gional Orchestra, Cavalleria rusticana and Aleko in Tel Aviv, Rigoletto in Dres-
den, and Die Zauberflöte in Dresden and Toulouse.

109

Davide Livermore

Turin-born Davide Livermore has forged his outstanding career both on the main
stages of Europe and at smaller theatres in his native country, Italy, during which
time he has been stage director, stage designer, costume and lighting designer,
singer, dancer, actor, scriptwriter and teacher. As a pupil of Carlo Majer, he
strongly defends public theatre and culture as a social promoter. He has worked
together with artists such as Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, José Carreras,
Zubin Mehta, Mirella Freni, Luca Ronconi, Andrei Tarkovsky or Zhang Yimou.
He has worked as stage director for the main Italian theatres: Maggio Musicale
Fiorentino, Teatro Regio in Turin, Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Teatro Carlo Fe-
lice in Genoa, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, and the Rossini Opera Festival of Pe-
saro. Outside Italy, he has worked at the opera houses of Philadelphia (USA),
Montpellier and Avignon (France), as well as the Bunka Kaikan Theatre in Tokyo
and the Seoul Arts Center. In Spain, his productions have been staged at the Opera
House in La Coruña, the Teatro Arriaga in Bilbao and the Teatro de la Zarzuela in
Madrid.
Since 2002, he has been artistic director of the Teatro Baretti in Turin, where he
has devoted his time to experimental music theatre. His most significant produc-
tions in Turin include and Carlo Goldoni’s Impresario delle Smirne for the Teatro
Stabile di Torino; Bure baruta by Dejan Dukovski, La vergine della tangenziale,
fairytale in music by Silvio Cocco, and Canti dall’Inferno by Ramón Sampedro,
Beatriz de Dia, Luigi Chiarella and Roberta Cortese, for the Teatro Regio in co-
production with the Teatro Baretti. His production of I vespri siciliani, with which
the Regio in Turin celebrated the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy, was
chosen by Musical America as one of the ten best shows of 2011. He celebrated
the 200th anniversary of Il barbiere di Siviglia’s premiere with a new production
for the Opera di Roma, broadcast live on Rai 5. From 2015 to 2017 he was the
general manager and artistic director of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valen-
cia. Between 2013 and 2017 he was also artistic director of the Centre de Perfec-
cionament Plácido Domingo, Palau de les Arts young artists program, which he
was able to combine with his new post at the Valencian arts centre. He has been
responsible for some of the most successful performances in the brief history of
the Palau de les Arts: La bohème by Puccini conducted by Riccardo Chailly, and
the Verdi operas Otello and La forza del destino, both conducted by Zubin Mehta,
for which he was awarded the first Premio Lírico Teatro Campoamor in 2014.
More recently, the Valencian audience has enjoyed his new productions of Belli-
ni’s Norma, Mozart’s Idomeneo, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and Verdi’s
Vespri siciliani. Under his guidance, the Centre de Perfeccionament Plácido
Domingo made his debut in Austria, at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music,
with Narciso by Scarlatti. He has already staged L’incoronazione di Dario, Ju-
ditha Triumphans, Canti dall’Inferno, and The Turn of the Screw with the young
singers.
As regards television, he has worked for the Televisione della Svizzera Italiana as
scriptwriter and actor in W Verdi, Giuseppe and in the series Livermore sciò, for
which he was nominated to the Rose d’Or award in Montreux. He opened the
Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro with Ciro in Babilonia in 2013, L’italiana in Al-
geri in 2014 and Il turco in Italia in 2016. His most recent productions include Un
ballo in maschera at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and Manon Lescaut at the
Teatro di San Carlo. His production of Adriana Lecouvreur opened the 2017-2018
Season of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, winning the Prix de la Critique de l’Europe
francophone. In December 2017 he staged a new production of Tamerlano, his
first direction for La Scala, followed by Don Pasquale, conducted by Riccardo
110

Chailly in March 2018. In 2018 also, his production of Aida at the Sydney Opera Foto Francesco Maria Colombo
House begun a long-term collaboration with that theatre. For the Teatro alla Scala
he has also directed Attila, opening title of the 2018-2019 Season, and Tosca,
which opened the 2019-2020 Season. His upcoming productions include Rigoletto
in Florence, Otello in Bari, Manon Lescaut in Genoa, Maria Stuarda in Sydney,
Lakmé in Beijing, Aida and La bohème in Rome. In
2017 he created and directed The Opera!, the first musical about the opera, for the
Royal Opera House in Muscat (Oman). In October 2018 he published his first
novel, Mozart e il violino di Lucifero, written with Rosa Mogliasso.

111

Manuel Legris

Born in Paris, Manuel Legris trained at the Paris Opéra ballet school and joined
the Paris Opéra Ballet in 1980. In 1986 he was appointed danseur étoile by Rudolf
Nureyev, who was the Ballet Director of the Paris Opéra at the time. He danced
the great roles of the classical and modern repertoires and appeared in numerous
premières. In May 2009 he gave his farewell performance as danseur étoile of the
Paris Opéra His repertoire at the Paris Opéra Ballet included leading roles in the
classical productions and in works by Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, John
Cranko, Nacho Duato, Mats Ek, Michail Fokin, Harald Lander, Serge Lifar, Ken-
neth MacMillan, Rudolf Nureyev, Roland Petit, Angelin Preljocaj, Jerome Rob-
bins, Antony Tudor, Rudi van Dantzig and other prominent choreographers. Im-
portant choreographers have created roles for him: Twyla Tharp (Rules of the
game), Pierre Lacotte (Paquita), Maurice Béjart (Arepo, Phrases de quatuor), Tr-
isha Brown (O Złożony / O Composite) William Forsythe (In the Middle, Some-
what Elevated, Woundwork), Jiří Kylián (Doux Mensonges, Il faut qu’une porte),
John Neumeier (Magnificat, Sylvia, Spring and Fall, Cinderella Story), Patrice
Bart (Coppélia). Recent appearances include Die Fledermaus in Beijing with the
National Ballet of China and in Japan, the pas de deux from Onegin in Tokyo in
the Tokyo Ballet’s 50th Anniversary Gala, further appearances at Shanghai Grand
Theatre, and in the annual Nureyev Gala in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016
and 2018, dancing ballets by Roland Petit Petit, John Cranko, John Neumeier, An-
gelin Preljocaj, and creations by Patrick De Bana.
From 2010 to 2020 he was the Director of the Wiener Staatsballett and the Artistic
Director of the Wiener Staatsoper Ballet Academy. In Vienna he staged Pierre La-
cotte’s La Sylphide and several productions by Nureyev: Swan Lake, The Nutcrack-
er, Raymonda, and Don Quixote, which he later staged also for the National Ballet
of China and the Hamburg Ballett. In March 2016 he presented his first full-length
story ballet at the Wiener Staatsoper, Le Corsaire, which later went on tour to
Madrid and Japan and entered the repertoire of the Latvian National Opera and Bal-
let, and of the Polish National Ballet in Warsaw. In 2018 he created for the Staatsop-
er his own version of Sylvia, in co-production with the Teatro alla Scala, where it
opened the Theatre’s Ballet Season in December 2019 as, achieving great success
and the ‘Danza&Danza’ Award as best classical production of the year.
Since December 2020 he has been appointed Ballet Director of the Teatro alla
Scala, where he has often performed throughout his career, starting in 1987, the
year in which he danced Basil in Rudolf Nureyev’s Don Quixote alongside Elisa-
betta Armiato. In 1989 he was James in Pierre Lacotte’s La Sylphide with
Monique Loudières and the Tokyo Ballet. He starred in Nureyev’s Sleeping Beau-
ty (in 1994 with Viviana Durante, then with Alessandra Ferri in 1995 on tour in
Tokyo and in 1996 at La Scala) and in L’histoire de Manon (in 1994 and 1998),
again with Alessandra Ferri, with whom he also danced MacMillan’s Romeo and
Juliet (in 1996 on tour at the Teatro Regio in Turin), Carmen and Notre Dame de
Paris by Roland Petit (in 2001 and 2002 respectively).
His prizes and awards include the gold medal at the Osaka Ballet Competition
(1984), the Prix Nijinsky (1988), the Benois de la Danse (1998), the Nijinsky
Award (2000), the Prix Léonide Massine (2001); he is Chevalier des Arts et Let-
tres (1993), Officier des Arts et Lettres (1998), Chevalier de l’Ordre National du
Mérite (2002), Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur (2006), Commandeur des Arts et
Lettres (2009). In 2016 he received the Public’s Prize for his performance as Ul-

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