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Beni Montresor

 

Beni Montresor at the end of the Fifties, when, just a bit more than thirty, after a decade of work in Cinecittà, where it also collaborated with Federico Fellini and Tonino Delli Colli, moved to New York.After the amazing success he immediately reached as an illustrator of books for children in the United States, where he became famous, Montresor debuted as a scenographer in 1964 nothing less than in the Metropolitan ...
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... with The Last Savage by Gian Carlo Menotti.From that moment on, his activity first as a set designer, then also as a lighting designer and theater director, took place in the major theaters of Europe and the two Americas, where he collaborated with some of the greatest personalities of the twentieth century, including composers and conductors like Samuel Barber, Philip Glass, Gianandrea Gavazzeni.
Among the singers he had as interlocutors Renata Tebaldi, Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and, in the field of dance, Rudolf Nureyev, Margot Fonteyn, Paolo Bortoluzzi, Carla Fracci.For Fracci and Bortoluzzi, and with the direction by Beppe Menegatti, he elaborated a scenography for Cinderella by Sergei Prokofiev ...
Arena of Verona, ''Cinderella'', 1973 ... of which this sketch reveals, already in that period, the modernity of Montresor's stage conception that will lead him to that «... work of subtraction, to the search of a honest simplicity, that completely invested him during the last ten years of his aesthetical research», Gaetano Miglioranzi explains in his precious monograph dedicated to the Veronese scenographer.
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, ''The Overcoat'', 1989 The effect of a backdrop made of BSU - Super Gobelin tulle, whose illumination made the gigantic coat appear and disappear suspended on the stage.«In 1974 in San Francisco», tells an anecdote about the use of tulle backdrops always reported by Miglioranzi, «the War Memorial Opera House ...»
Teatro alla Scala, ''A Homage to Picasso'' «... schedules Esclarmonde by Jules Massenet.It is here that Montresor experiments the incorporeal consistence of transparent tulles, that remove the images from the scene in a nebulous world, dense of melancholy and of mystery.Many years before it became a misused fashion ...»
«... while in the theater really they don't speak anything else than ''to break down the fourth wall'', Montresor closes the proscenium with a tulle that separates the stage from the public.It is an open weave cotton mesh that becomes a compact surface if frontally illuminated, but it disappears if behind it some objects are illuminated.To tell the truth it is an ancient expedient, already known by Italian scenographers of the '700 ...»
«... who used it for instant prodigious changes of scene.In America it is called ''Italian tulle'' and it was re-discovered in the musical environments.It is the first one of a series of ''return to the ancient'' by Montresor. The choir goes on strike: ''the public doesn't see us'', they say, then when the contrary is shown: ''we don't see the conductor''. The director, intimidated by the possible reactions of the public ...»
Beni Montresor (Bussolengo, Italy 1926 - Verona 2001), scenographer, stage director, lighting designer and illustrator with an international fame, is amongst the greatest scenographers of opera theater of the contemporary scenography.
The fifty years that the Veronese artist devoted to cinema and theater are nevertheless recalled in a more exhaustive way in From the Colour to the Light. Beni Montresor, a Protagonist of International Theater (Titivillus Publisher, 2004), a book suggested to whom could be interested to deepen the knowledge of Montresor's personality and adventurous life.

Video & Documentation

Teatro Carlo Felice of Genoa: ''Werther'' by Beni Montresor

Paolino Libralato at work 1

Paolino Libralato at work 2

Materials used in this production

Teatro alla Scala, ''A Homage to Picasso''

Dance

Teatro Carlo Felice, ''Werther''

Lyric opera

Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, ''Falstaff''

Lyric opera

Teatro Donizetti, ''Adelia''

Lyric opera

Teatro Filarmonico, ''The Magic Flute''

Lyric opera

Teatro Lirico, ''Die Feen''

Lyric opera

Teatro Real, ''Samson et Dalilah''

Lyric opera

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