La Scala’s Far West ‘Carmen’. Nearly every solution or off-the-mark innovation seemingly failed to captivate us as there was little sympathy for the personages as perceived, and they were surprisingly almost always projected through excessively old-fashioned stock mimic gesturing. This was especially so for the chorus who were never present in their prescribed roles, and were often asked to carry out bizarre, invented scenarios, unrelated to the main flow of action and with total regard to the words they were singing. In Carmen, they are essential characters inserted within the plot and must remain so.
Tag: Damiano Michieletto
La Clemenza di Tito. Tito’s audience chamber, or office, was correspondingly presented as a sober corporate interior with a large desk and matching furniture. Entirely superfluous, meanwhile, was the stage business during his aria ‘Del più sublime soglio’, when, in the manner of classic Regietheater, several suited men climbed through a gap in the mahogany wall, unwound strips of celluloid from film reels, and draped them over the head of the kneeling Tito as he sang. Quite what this was meant to signify remained wholly obscure; more to the point, it felt studied and inert.
When, a few weeks ago, commenting on Il pirata, we wrote that it is a…