MILAN, Italy — We live in times of cultural and operatic rediscovery, as an increasingly copious number of forgotten works are being revived with the aim of enriching both the present and our understanding of musical history. A thoroughly twentieth-century programme was at the heart of the events held at La Scala last month, when Music Director Riccardo Chailly conducted the theatre’s Orchestra and Chorus.
150° anniversario della nascita di Arturo Toscanini | Coro e Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala | Direttore: Riccardo Chailly Maestro del Coro: Bruno Casoni Tenore: Francesco Meli
The centrepiece of the programme was Arnold Schönberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, written for narrator, male choir, and orchestra. It made for an intense symphonic experience, first performed in 1948, and was presented together with the Variations, Op. 31, by the same composer; Gustav Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder, performed by Christiane Karg; and the Fugue (Ricercata) for Six Voices. These works recount, through music, the many different souls of what Eric Hobsbawm called the “short century” — the twentieth century — between world wars and avant-garde movements.
The concert opened with a masterpiece of orchestration, the Fugue (Ricercata) for Six Voices, a work in which Anton Webern offered an unprecedented conception of orchestral colour while giving new three-dimensionality to music that was not originally intended for any instrumental or vocal ensemble.
On the other hand, La Fille du régiment — with a libretto by Jean-François-Alfred Bayard and Jules-Henry Vernoy de Saint-Georges — also returned to La Scala. It is not a classic Italian opera but an opéra-comique, in which Donizetti sought to adapt himself to the rules of a profoundly French genre, based on a lively balance between sung and spoken parts.
150° anniversario della nascita di Arturo Toscanini Coro e Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala Direttore: Riccardo Chailly Maestro del Coro: Bruno Casoni Tenore: Francesco Meli
150° anniversario della nascita di Arturo Toscanini Coro e Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala Direttore: Riccardo Chailly Maestro del Coro: Bruno Casoni Tenore: Francesco Meli
The subject of the regimental vivandière had already inspired numerous popular comedies performed in the theatres of Paris and had also left its mark on literature. Donizetti alludes to the new Parisian middle class: the story of the foundling of noble origins who escapes an unhappy arranged marriage strikes a chord with the Orléanist bourgeoisie, which remained in power in France at least until the Third Republic.
The regiment that takes in the orphan represents an ideal of social integration and harmony, typical of a class that welcomes the lower orders and promotes individual advancement, in contrast to the rigid hierarchy typical of the aristocracy defeated by the revolution of 1830. Laurent Pelly sets the opera amid the First World War, transposing the story, originally set in Tyrol in 1805, to the twentieth century.
Riccardo Chailly. Photograph: Brescia Amisano
The theatre also presented La Forza del Destino, a 90-minute documentary on the 2024 Season Premiere, directed by Anissa Bonnefont. La Forza del Destino — produced by Federation Studios and MDE Films — is the first documentary co-produced as part of a new partnership between Rai Documentari and France Télévisions.
The feature film, made with the support of Rolex, was broadcast by RAI and France Télévisions. The film documents the production of Verdi’s masterpiece La Forza del Destino from the first rehearsals to the fateful raising of the curtain on opening night, as director Anissa Bonnefont and her crew take us on a journey behind the scenes.
by Chidozie Obasi