Catalogue
English

Teatro alla Scala, ''Simon Boccanegra''

Milan

Plácido Domingo returns on the stage, thw 16th of April of 2010, after the fears consequent to the diagnosis of cancer and the surgical intervention to which he had been submitted.The initial duet in which Simone Boccanegra finds again his daughter that held lost is accompanied ...
View all
... by the slow descent of four cypresses, that symbolize the mourning, but also the eternal life after the death.The cypresses go and take root among the angular parallelepiped of granite defeating their hostility.
The roots of the cypresses, underlined by the back-lighting on the Rear-illuminated backdrop realized with the film RNO - Notturno, bring to the mind in a symbolic way the unaware return to the origins of the two protagonists, that the destiny eradicated from their family bond ...
... and that, at a distance of years, it brings them together again.The colour temperature of the backlight changes from the initial dark and cold one to a warmer and more serene gradation.
A transparent drapery made of white HSE - Tempesta silk seems to create a bond among the symbol of an impossible terrestrial purity - the source in the center of the stage - and the celestial transcendence.The representation of the Genoa of the fourteenth century is filtered ...
... through the eyes of the English '800, for the precision through the aesthetical conception of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, that inspired the scenographer Pier Paolo Bisleri.
The cobalt blue cloth in the foreground, which colour and undulations are another symbol of the sea, is realized with a cut of HSE - Tempesta silk expressly dyed.
The small boat that swings in the fountain, together with Caspar David Friedrich picture that overhangs the stage in the end, is among the numerous symbolic calls to the sea, that it is present in an uncontrollable way in the score by Verdi, but that is never openly shown by the scenes, that prefer not to trace the music in an explanatory way.
Melodrama in a prologue and three acts
Music
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
Libretto
Francesco Maria Piave
from the drama Simón Bocanegra by Antonio García-Gutiérrez
First night
Venice, Teatro La Fenice, 12/3/1857

Scenography
Pier Paolo Bisleri
Costume design
Giovanna Buzzi
Stage direction

Staging
Season
2009 / 2010

Materials used in this production

ATT - Sceno Teatro

Muslin and canvas

BGO - Gobelin

Scrim and bobbinet fabrics

BIT - Italiano

Scrim and bobbinet fabrics

HSE - Tempesta

Silks and satins

Rear-illuminated backdrops

Vinyl backdrops: typologies

RNO - Notturno

Rear-projection films

Information on data processing