Italian Journal 10: Verdi Ever After

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Italian Journal volume 20. number X. 2014

Verdi Ever After

Giacamo Puccini. Courtesy Puccini Foundation.

on the cover Michelet. Giuseppe Verdi directing the rehearsals of Falstaff from the magazine L’Univers illustré, 1894.

Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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Italian Journal

IN THIS ISSUE Editor’s journal 5 publisher’s notebook 6 contributors 7 NOTABLE 10

Verdi Ever After Claudia Palmira Acunto Editor Laura Giacalone Associate Editor Gianluca Marziani Ludovica Rossi Purini barbara zorzoli Columnists Elizabeth Sherwood maria vano Editorial Assistants Mauro benedetti Photography vito catalano Social Journal Photography

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12 VErdi Ever After 14 Verdi by Zeffirelli 16 Zeffirelli 18 Visconti’s Verdi 20 Shared Ideals 24 Otello’s Screen Presence 26 Verdi’s “Most Beautiful” Work 28

Italian journal columns Diario rome-NY: The “Imperfect” Composer 31 CONTEMPORARY ART: To back(stage) or not to back(stage) 33 FASHION: behind the fashion scenes 36 Literature: italian fiction into screenplays 39 Photography: Light on Ancient faces 40 Social journal 42 Face file: Valeria golino 47

For copies of our past issues, please contact editor@italianjournal.it or order online:

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EDITOR’S journal

A Traviata for all time

L

a Scala’s December 7 season premiere of La Traviata made headlines in Italy — large type exclamations of how the director was boo’ed. The director’s intrepid vision was to demonstrate that Verdi’s love story need not be trapped in a 19th century Paris boudoir, but whose characters and emotions resonated in an ultra-chic, 20th-century Milanese apartment of recent years.

The critics were specific: the fault was not in the performers (especially Violetta) but in the so-called unnecessary contemporary context, which was even perceived as an insult to the great composer.

La Scala audiences have always been a tough crowd — even in Verdi’s day. But in 2013, Verdi’s opera was still deeply affecting its audiences: Violetta’s unconventional lifestyle creates social tension, no matter what style chaise she collapses onto. By making it a modern scene between contemporaries — substitute “escort” for courtesan — the director broke wide open the opera’s inherently passionate and deeply moving story. Perhaps this is a true tribute to Verdi’s majestic artistry, a demonstration that it transcends time, costume and backdrop.

In this edition, we present Verdi’s story through his (direct and indirect) influences and interpreters: from Franco Zeffirelli, Shakespeare and Visconti to the generations of musicians who reside in the composer’s self-proclaimed “best work,” his home for the aged, Casa di Riposo. n

German soprano Diana Damrau, in the role of Violetta, second from left in purple gown, performs in the opening act of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata, conducted by Daniele Gatti opening night of La Scala’s 20132014 season, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2013.

Although La Traviata is Verdi’s most popular opera, it hasn’t been performed at La Scala in ten years. (AP Photo/Brescia Amisano, Courtesy of La Scala).

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publisher’s notebook 7

Publisher’s notebook

Thinking about verdi

M

any Minded” is how Homer, the first poet of Western Civilization has been described: “many minded” – it’s Yeats’ expression for the incredible variety, depth and scope of the poet’s work.

We may confidently apply that same epithet to Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Ovid, Virgil and, in modern times, as well, to Verdi for the qualities that are ubiquitous in Verdi’s masterpieces. Verdi achieved a variety and depth, much like that of Shakespeare, and of Hugo, Schiller and the other geniuses whose works were seminal to Verdi’s libretti and to his inspiration.

We celebrate the 200th anniversary of Verdi’s birth with a sense of closeness, familiarity and shared sentiment as with few other creators. For the better part of the past 200 years, ever increasingly, Verdi’s music has become part of our listening vocabulary, part of our spiritual rhythm and an unmistakable part of popular culture. It is no accident that music from Italian opera, particularly Verdi, Puccini and Rossini, has worked its way into movie sound tracks, popular music “knock offs”, TV themes and even the raucous world of advertising. La donna è mobile alone is, in this sense, an eternal “best seller”, and there are so many more: the anvil chorus, the triumphal march, the brindisi, and so on.

I have always found it interesting that people will ask you whether you like Wagner or not, but when it comes to Verdi they will ask which of Verdi’s works do you like the most. Quite a contrast. I recall being interviewed back when I was Chairman of the American Institute of Verdi Studies at NYU and being asked which of Verdi’s works was my favorite. It is an impossible question to answer, so I chose a different tack. I answered the interviewer by saying that I could reduce it to scenes or to themes or I could reduce it to moments all across the spectrum of his operas because the field is so rich, so varied, so engaging. Of these, how could anyone resist the tomb scene in Aida or the father-daughter scenes in Rigoletto, or the opening act of La Traviata, or the council scene in Simon Boccanegra, or Falstaff’s “Quando ero paggio...” which lasts for little more than a minute but sets the listener reeling with its comic intensity, or almost any part of his masterpiece Otello. And then, the “Va pensiero”. It is a supermarket of infinite delights which, to the frequentee, will often seem so familiar that it is taken for granted and yet, like a happy shopper becoming dependant and getting hungrier as he shops, the delights taken from the shelves to be enjoyed again and again and yet again.

Verdi’s place in the world of opera is unmistakable; his place in the world of music, equally unmistakable, his place in the theatre of Western Civilization most enduring and his works’ place in our sensibilities, life-long.

Viva Verdi!

- S. ACUNTO

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contributors

columnists Laura GIACALONE

Laura Giacalone is a journalist and editor-in-chief of the Italian quarterly Filmaker’s Magazine, and works as a contributing editor and editorial consultant for a number of bilingual art magazines and publishing houses. In London she has worked as a writer and editorial assistant for Phaidon Press, contributing to the three-volume book Phaidon Design Classics (2006). She has translated into Italian the American novels Paper Fish (Pesci di carta, 2006) by Tina De Rosa and Shattered (La finestra sul bosco, 2010) by Karen Robards, and a variety of academic papers, screenplays and feature articles for international publications. Her world is made of words, and she loves it.

Gianluca MARZIANI

Critic and curator based in Rome, Italy, Marziani focuses on the visual arts. He is the artistic director of the Palazzo Collicola Arti Visive in Spoleto and the artistic director of the Rocco Guglielmo foundation. He is the curator of the Terna award and participates in the Rai5 television program “Personal Shopper.” For the IED Roma, he runs a visual arts program. He has curated many shows in both galleries and museums, is the author of two theoretical books and numerous catalogs. He writes about art for all media imaginable. His website is www.gianlucamarziani.com.

Ludovica ROSSI PURINI

Ludovica Rossi Purini was born in Rome, Italy. Ms. Purini has built collaborations and concert series with the Italian Embassy in Washington D.C., the American Academy in Rome, the U.S. Embassies to Italy and the Holy See, Stony Brook University, several world-class conductors, orchestras and chamber music groups and many other important cultural institutions and venues. She is founder and president of the not-for-profit cultural association Compagnia per la Musica in Roma, and has been the President of the Honorary Patrons Committee for Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, member of the Executive Board of the Philharmonic Academy of Rome, a Supporting Patron Associate of the Santa Cecilia National Academy in Rome, a Knight of the Keyboard Charitable Trust and sits on the Board of the American Friends of the Budapest Festival Orchestra - among many other appointments. Most recently she became a member of the International Board of the American Foundation Project Rebirth and was appointed as advisor to the Center of Italian Studies at Stony Brook University in New York. She is currently working as creator and director of an international project entitled Rome Rebirth that will take place for the first time in Rome in 2013. Ms. Purini has received notable honors from various cultural foundations and institutions, including a recent award from the City of Rome, in recognition of her commitment to the Arts.

Barbara Zorzoli

Barbara Zorzoli is a journalist and movie critic, radio and TV host, writer... and an actress for fun. She says she lives ‘up in the air’ between Genoa (her birthplace) and London (where she interviews actors/actresses and directors, attends premieres and visits movie sets). She is a contributing editor for Vogue Italia, the Italian Vanity Fair, Film doc and many other cinema magazines. She is a correspondent for the world’s most important international film festivals. She also writes about soundtracks for www.colonnesonore.net. Thanks to her passion for musicals she wrote the booklets for the entire DVD collection dedicated to Fred Astaire (Fred Astaire Collection, Edizioni Master, 2007). As movie critic she gives cinema lessons (in Genoa at Palazzo Ducale and The Space Cinema Porto Antico). This year, she is a member of the Genova Film Festival jury (July 2-8).

To contribute to the Italian Journal, please contact us via our website: www.italianjournal.it

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10 Contributors

contributors Marcia J. CITRON

Marcia J. Citron is Lovett Distinguished Service Professor of Musicology at Rice University in Houston. An expert on opera and film, she is the author of the books When Opera Meets Film (2010) and Opera on Screen (2000), which has a chapter on Zeffirelli’s Otello. Citron received Honorary Membership in the American Musicological Society, a lifetime achievement award.

George W. MARTIN

Born in New York City, which he calls “home”, George Martin practiced law there for five years and then quit to write books full-time. Some of these have been about opera, especially Italian opera, especially Giuseppe Verdi. Of these his most recent is Verdi in America, Oberto through Rigoletto (2011) — on the reception of the operas in the United States; on how opinion formed, sometimes changed, and when, how, and why. Others have touched on New York and U. S. legal history, of which the most recent is CCB, which won the Griswold award of the Supreme Court Historical Society, 2006. See: www.georgewmartin.com.

Fred PLOTKIN

Fred Plotkin is the author of six books on Italian topics in addition to Classical Music 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Opera, and Opera 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Opera, the standard text in America for opera education. He studied Italian history and theater and opera production at the Universities of Wisconsin, Bologna and Pavia and, as a Fulbright Scholar, worked at Teatro alla Scala. He also has a M.S. in journalism from Columbia University. He is a popular lecturer at many institutions, including the Metropolitan Opera, BAM, the New York Philharmonic, the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò of NYU (where he leads a series on Italian opera), the Royal Opera House in London, and the University of Oxford.

Pierpaolo POLZONETTI

Pierpaolo Polzonetti is Associate Professor of music and liberal studies at the University of Notre Dame. He specializes on opera and eighteenth-century music. He is the coeditor of the Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Opera. His book, Italian Opera in the Age of the American Revolution (Cambridge University Press 2011), won the Lewis Lockwood book award and his article on Mozart’s Così fan tutte published in the Cambridge Opera Journal has received the Einstein Award, both conferred by the American Musicological Society. He is writing a book about food, love and opera.

To write for the Italian Journal, please visit

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contributors

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columnists David SCHROEDER

David Schroeder is Professor Emeritus in the Music Department at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, and he holds a PhD from Cambridge University. His books include Haydn and the Enlightenment (1990), Mozart in Revolt (1999), Cinema’s Illusions, Opera’s Allure: The Operatic Impulse in Film (2002), Our Schubert (2008), Hitchcock’s Ear: Music and the Director’s Art (2012), and Experiencing Mozart: A Listener’s Companion (2013).

Federica Troisi

Federica Troisi, formerly a professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Bari, has spent years in various areas of research. Looking beyond the narrow scope of English authors (Metateatro, Troilus and Cressida, comedies of J.R. Planchè, Verdi and Shakespeare, Nietzsche and Shakespeare, Pinter and Magritte), she also focuses on the English-Italian connection (G. Zanella and English literature, E.M. Forster and Italy). She has also been busy conducting the first-known research into the English-Pugliese connection (Shakespeare and Puglia, Shakespeare in the history of Bari, English culture in Puglia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, notes from nineteenth century Puglian travelers to Victorian England).

To contribute to the Italian Journal, please contact us via our website: www.italianjournal.it

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12 notable

Notable Piero Tosi Wins Academy Award Conference Launches “Rebirth”

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n October 14, 2013, Rebirth Rome officially launched with a conference featuring an outstanding panel on the topic of “resiliance”. Rebirth Rome was founded by the renowned proponent of culture (and Italian Journal columnist), Ludovica Rossi Purini. (Photos from this event appear in the Social Journal on page 45).

Held in the prestigious Deputy Chamber, the Rebirth conference presented various perspectives on effecting change. The world premiere of an original video by the studio of Daniel Libeskind was shown in this context. The architect’s impactful and poignant public works include the World Trade Center Ground Zero memorial and the National Art Museum of Berlin.

During the conference, Libeskind paraphrased Freud on Rome and the mind: All the ancient ruins are in sight, but underneath are layers and layers of stories and realities. In this way, Rome, he said, represents all that is both old and new and that can be recovered and rebuilt. n

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enowned costume Death in Venice, 1971. Dirk Bogand set designer arde, Luchino Visconti and Piero Piero Tosi received Tosi, 1971. © Everett Collection the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Academy Award for his outstanding design career. He earned five Academy Award nominations for costume design, in the films La Traviata (1983), La Cage aux Folles (1978), The Leopard (1963), Death in Venice (1971) and Ludwig (1973) – the latter three in collaboration with Italian director Luchino Visconti. He has also twice won the BAFTA Award for Best Costume design.

Tosi, who is now 86, has worked on over 60 films for the past six decades. Clips from the November 2013 awards ceremony will be shown during the 2014 Academy Awards. n

Rossellini and Bergman in Italy

T

he Criterion Collection has published a box-set of three of the films directed by Roberto Rossellini and starring Ingrid Bergman. The collection was announced at Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò during a presentation with panelists Antonio Monda, NYU, Kim Hendrickson and Ingrid Rossellini. The three films take place in post-war Italy: Stromboli (1950), Europe ‘51 (1952) and Journey to Italy (1954). n SD26 19 East 26th Street 212 656 5959 www.sd26ny.com

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notable

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Notable Da Vinci Treasures at the Morgan

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Leonardo da Vinci. Head of a Young Woman (Study for the Angel in the ‘Virgin of the Rocks’), 1480s,.

Metalpoint heightened with white on buff prepared paper. Biblioteca Reale, Turin.

Catacombs of Priscilla Renovated and Reopened

T

he Catacombs of Priscilla in Rome have just reopened after years of restoration. The complex is known as “regina catacumbarum” (queen of the catacombs) because of the great number of martyrs buried inside. The restoration was undertaken by the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology.

The Catacombs comprise a series of tunnels under what was an ancient quarry near Via Salaria, Rome. It is divided into three sections: the arenarium (sandquarry), cryptoporticus (a system of vaults that let in light and protect the catacombs from heat) and the hypogeum (an over-

sized tomb) where the Acilius Glabrio family is buried.

The decorations in the tombs depict many teachings of the New and Old Testaments, especially stories of The Greek chapel of the catacombs of PRiscilla. salvation. Inside the cryptoporticus, the Greek Chapel this noble family, who donated the is particularly exceptional. It is a square land to the Church, the Catacombs chamber with scenes depicting the Last were discovered in the 16th century.

Judgment, the prophet Isaiah and the Since then, many of its inscriptions, Madonna and Child. bodies and sarcophagi were displaced, though the frescoes remain. n Named after Priscilla, a member of

Courtesy www.vatican.va

he Morgan Library & Museum, New York is showing some rare works of Leonardo da Vinci together with some of his followers and peers. The exhibit, entitled Treasures from the Biblioteca Reale, Turin, displays his extraordinary manuscript The Codex on the Flight of Birds and the Head of a Young Woman, one of his most praised drawings, never before seen in New York.

“Who better than Leonardo can present and introduce Italian culture in the US,” said Riccardo Viale, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute. “To have such amazing drawings like the study of the angel for La Vergine delle Rocce or the Codex of Flight is something that makes this event the best for the year of the Italian culture in the US.” The establishment of this exhibition is a result of the collaboration between various Italian and American entities besides the Morgan and Turin: the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Italian Cultural Heritage and Activities, the The Morgan Library & Museum Embassy of Italy in Washing25 Madison Ave ton D.C., the Italian Cultur212 685 0008 al Institute of New York and www.themorgan.org La Fondazione New York. n

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Giovanni Boldini. Portrait of Verdi, 1886.

National gallery of art, Rome.

verdi ever after Vcrdi Ever After, by George W. Martin

page 14

Verdi by Zeffirelli, by Marcia J Citron

page 16

Zeffirelli page 18 Visconti’s Verdi, by Pierpaolo Polzonetti

page 20

Shared Ideals, by Federica Troisi

page 24

Otello’s Screen Presence, by David Schroeder

page 26

Verdi’s “Most Beautiful” Work, by Fred Plotkin

page 28

The “Imperfect” Composer,

by Ludovica Rossi Purini

page 31

16 verdi ever after

Verdi

resounding influence

by George W. MARTIN

A

s he enters his two hundred and first year, Verdi continues to hold the interest of American scholars and the affection of a vast audience.

The scholars, responding to the “Verdi Renaissance,” which began in Germany in the 1920s and reached the United States in the 1940s, after gorging for half a century on Wagner rediscovered Verdi.

Learned articles began to appear, symposiums were held, and world congresses hosted. In 1976 the American Institute for Verdi Studies was founded, a journal started, original material gathered, and the world’s largest archive of microfilmed material on Verdi collected. Then in 1983 the first volume of a critical edition of his works was published. Devoted to Rigoletto, it was primarily the work of American scholars. And all this proceeds apace.

As for the affection of audiences: Though other composers — say Bizet, Puccini, Mozart, or Mascagni — may have one or even two operas that receive more performances in a year than any one of Verdi, none can match his mass. He composed twenty-six operas (twenty-eight if two revisions with changed plot and title are counted), and in mid-summer 2013, when some 100 U.S. companies announced their schedules for 2014, these listed productions of sixteen of the twenty-eight operas. Moreover, to these sixteen some companies outside the U.S. added five more, so that in a single year, with all companies not yet reporting, Verdi will have at least twenty-three of his twenty-eight operas performed.

Such a figure is possible only if audi-

ences step up to the box-office and buy.

Which raises a vital question: What is it in Verdi that people like? Curiously, the question is not much asked by scholars. They

plays better onstage than he reads in the score.” And it is true. On the page the reader doesn’t gather as well as in a theatre, sharing with others beside him and

So, what is it in Verdi that appeals to audiences?

tend to focus more on technical matters, such as Verdi’s key structure, his handling of coloratura, revisions in orchestration, work on the libretto, and problems with censors or with the librettist. So, what is it in Verdi that appeals to audiences?

A brief answer, for much of it is conceded, surely would include the following. First, as was noted as early as 1859 by an Italian critic comparing Verdi to Donizetti: “Verdi, as the more passionate, strives more often to agitate and excite the audience; whereas Donizetti strives almost always to delight it.”

It seems so. Verdi steadily increased his skill at luring audiences to participate emotionally in the drama onstage, to see in its characters some traits of their own, so they come to empathize with the protagonists, whether good or bad.

Consider, for example, how he hones this skill from Nabucco to Macbeth to the finale of Rigoletto where he successfully moves his audience to sympathize with a man who is truly more bad than good. In sum, compared to Donizetti Verdi offers drama not concert.

Allied with this skill is another of theatrical pace. It is often said that:“Verdi

onstage, the sense of acceleration, the increasing momentum, the rush to the inevitable end. Even as Violetta in Traviata announces she will live, wants to live, the audience knows she will die. And when she does, Verdi brings the curtain down swiftly, so that the shock of her death remains in the air even as the audience applauds.

Furthermore, all of Verdi’s operas are about humans — no gods, dragons, rings of fire, or scenes in hell or heaven, no drifting through myth into an unreal world, but each opera anchored in common experience. With greater or less success he portrays fellow humans confronting harsh dilemmas, trapped in awkward decisions in which they suffer. And for such stories, human stories, there will always be an audience.

Moreover, in Verdi men and women are always responsible for their acts and choices. Though fate may be against them, for each there is an area left for choice, and choose they must. Anyone wanting to hear an opera in which society is blamed for all that happens will not hear it in Verdi. In Traviata, perhaps the most frequently performed of all his

verdi ever after

operas, Violetta makes her choice; and suffers for it. That view of our condition — that we may not be able to control our fate but we can control our response to it, noble or unworthy — is likely always to find an audience.

Lastly, and perhaps most appealing to audiences, is his gift for melody. Melody has extraordinary powers. Scholars have shown that even in places where the text has become garbled and no longer makes sense, the melody alone can deliver the singer’s meaning: I’m in love; I hate; I die. Thus when the Count in Trovatore sings of his love for Leonora, even though non-Italians in the audience may not understand the words, they grasp the emotion. Additionally, melody in the theatre can create an extraordinary sense of community between stage and audience, fusing a thousand individuals into a single responsive unit. And few if any composers have matched Verdi’s ability to sum up a dramatic situation with a short, piercing melodic phrase, such as Aida’s cry, “Numi, pietà.” It is simple, heart-rending, and draws audiences immediately into her dilemma.

Will Verdi in the coming years dominate the operatic repertory as he does today? If another composer soon appears who can tap successfully into Verdi’s strengths, then audiences will want to hear the new stories and music; and the repertory will adjust, cutting back on Verdi. But if no such composer appears, then possibly audience will continue to hark back to him, for in his dramas he celebrates values they cherish and in a manner they like. In which case, even at his tercentennial, he will still be heard. n

Michelet. “Giuseppe Verdi directing the rehearsals of Falstaff”, 1894. from the magazine L’Univers illustré.

Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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18 verdi ever after

clockwise from left: The film poster of La traviata (1983); Placido Domingo and teresa stratas in scenes from la traviata; the film poster for Otello (1986)

verdi ever after

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Verdi by zeffirelli A look at the award-winning musical films of Verdi’s classics

by Marcia J. CITRON

F

ranco Zeffirelli has built his career on opera and on film. In the early part of his life he assisted famed director Luchino Visconti and learned a great deal about stagecraft and cinema. He soon began directing opera on his own, and like his mentor did the designs as well. Over the years Zeffirelli has staged legendary productions around the world. At the Metropolitan Opera, for instance, his lavish productions of Puccini’s La Bohème and Turandot, introduced in 1981 and 1987 respectively, have become fixtures of the house. Zeffirelli’s first commercial films date from the 1960s, when he made a sensation with two movies based on Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew, starring Hollywood’s hot couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton; and Romeo and Juliet, with the young unknowns Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting. Zeffirelli’s take on the star-crossed lovers has become a classic. Nino Rota’s operatic score (he was also composer for Shrew) meshed well with the beauty on screen and contributed to the film’s success.

Meanwhile, Zeffirelli was trying to join his twin loves in a film of Verdi’s La Traviata that would star his idol, Maria Callas. Unfortunately the project was never realized. Over the coming years the climate for opera-film would be more favorable. In 1982 Zeffirelli made modest films of the one-act operas Cavalleria rusticana (Mascagni) and I Pagliacci (Leoncavallo).

Although both include outdoor scenes, they were mostly shot in La Scala and the studio. That same year, Zeffirelli made a cinematic opera movie, La Traviata. It enjoyed wide distribution, garnered extremely favorable reviews, and proved a hit with audiences. Although Zeffirelli was unable

to cast Callas, who died in 1977, he found a magnificent Violetta in Teresa Stratas, an extraordinary singer-actress who all but embodied the consumptive heroine.

In 1986 Zeffirelli’s film of Verdi’s Otello came out. It also appeared in wide release, but drew a mixed reaction. While audiences loved the visual beauty and the singing, some critics found Zeffirelli’s musical changes and lavish style unsuitable for Verdi’s late opera. Since then, both films have become landmarks of opera-film: memorable renditions of Verdi that show a master stylist with a particular vision.

A key part of that vision entails references to the opera’s literary source. His Traviata opens with an extended flashback. In Verdi’s source, the novel (and later play) La Dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils, the narrator relates the tale told to him by the male protagonist, Armand Duval, of his relationship with the courtesan Marguerite Gautier, who died of consumption. In the opera the plot proceeds from start to finish without temporal manipulation. In the film, however, Violetta is very ill at the start, the same state she will be in at the start of Act IV. Once the sparkling music starts she conjures up her past life and Verdi’s story comes alive. Besides alluding to the literary source, Zeffirelli makes the connection by way of the music: Verdi has the same mournful music before Acts I and IV. Zeffirelli renders visual what Verdi hints at in the score. By the way, some opera imply a flashback in staged versions of the opera. For example, in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s 1979 production for Houston Grand Opera a large coffin visible from the start presages Violetta’s death at the end.

In his Otello Zeffirelli incorporates the Shakespearean source in imaginative

ways. Verdi and librettist Arrigo Boito omitted the first act of Otello, which unfolds in Venice, in order to keep the action in one place (Cyprus) and allow space for the music to unfold. Their solution is brilliant, except that some motivation for Otello’s vulnerability, already a problem in the play, is removed. Zeffirelli recoups the missing Act through flashbacks in the magnificent Love Duet at the end of the opera’s Act I. The last of the four flashbacks replicates the setting of a major scene in the play’s first Act. In the Venetian Senate, as the marriage of Otello and Desdemona is deemed lawful, the face of her father registers deep disappointment.

Before that the director presents two flashbacks at her father’s house in which Desdemona gazes with wonder and growing love at Otello. Although these sequences do not actually occur in Shakespeare’s version, they highlight the Venetian origins of their relationship and Otello as “other.” Another flashback is even further from Shakespeare. As Desdemona sings of how Otello related his bondage into slavery, the film visualizes a boy’s abduction in Africa from the arms of his mother. This is an invented scene, but entirely consistent with the sung words, which originate in Act I of the play. Taken as a whole, Zeffirelli’s version of the Love Duet is a thoroughly cinematic expansion that rounds out Otello’s character and helps us understand the tragedy that will befall the couple.

Although Franco Zeffirelli is not typically considered an auteur of opera-film, La Traviata and Otello represent remarkable interpretations of two masterpieces

by Giuseppe Verdi. In the process viewers around the world get to savor the pleasures of a great visual stylist and a brilliant musical dramatist. n

20 verdi ever after

Zeffirelli

a cinematic timeline

Verdi, Shakespeare and other classics 1950s

1950s Camping, 1957. Marisa Allasio and Paolo Ferrari.

1960s Romeo and Juliet, 1968. Olivia Hussey.

The Taming of the Shrew, 1967.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

1970s Brother Sun, Sister Moon, 1972, Graham Faulkner.

Jesus of Nazareth, 1977. Robert Powell.

The Champ, 1979. Ricky Schroder and Jon Voight.

1960s

1970s

verdi ever after 21

1980s

1990s

2000s

1980s Cavalleria Rusticana, 1982.

Endless Love, 1981. Brooke Shields and Martin Hewitt Il Giovane Toscanini, 1988.

Thomas Howell.

La Traviata, 1983. Plácido Domingo and Teresa Stratas.

Othello, 1986. Plácido Domingo and Katia Ricciarelli.

Pagliacci, 1982.

1990s Hamlet, 1990, Mel Gibson.

Jane Eyre, 1996. Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt.

Sparrow, 1993. Johnathon Schaech and Angela Bettis.

Tea with Mussolini. 1999. Cher, Lily Tomlin.

2000’s Callas Forever, 2002. Fanny Ardant Omaggio a Roma, 2009

22 verdi ever after

Visconti’s Verdi The filmmaker’s passion for the great composer

by Pierpaolo POLZONETTI

O

n November 2, 1906, Carla Erba, granddaughter of the founder of a leading Italian pharmaceutical industry, gave birth to Luchino Visconti in Milan, the city once ruled by the Visconti family.

One hour before he was born – as he liked to recollect – the curtain went up at La Scala for a performance of Verdi’s Traviata.

It was destiny that Visconti, one of the world’s greatest film and stage directors, would develop an obsession for Verdi. The apotheosis of this obsession was his production of Traviata at La Scala in 1955, featuring a splendid Maria Callas who during the previous year went on a strict diet that helped her lose 66 pounds, transforming her body and giving her a completely different stage presence. Callas became an unsurpassed and yet much imitated interpreter of Traviata’s main role, Violetta – a courtesan and party animal who ends up dying of consumption.

As Visconti wrote to Callas’s husband, “you see, our Traviata will last, whatever reactionaries and hopeless jerks could possibly say.” The director explained that “thanks to the art of a great actress like Maria future Violettas will be Violetta-Marias,” and concluded that “it is destiny in art when somebody teaches something to others and Maria has taught.” But Maria Callas also learned something from Visconti. Her style of acting, both on stage and in real life, changed remarkably after her encounter with this director and not only because of her weight loss. Rubens Tedeschi of L’Unità, in his review of the Callas-Visconti production of Traviata, wrote that “it represented the first turning point in the history of staging and

set design, showing how opera could be cleansed of conventions and become a modern, live, believable form of performing art.” Others, like Teodoro Celli of Corriere Lombardo, accused Visconti of treating Verdi’s music as a film score of one of his movies and of contaminating Verdi with neo-realistic aesthetics, which he refers to using the old-fashioned term verismo.

In preparing for the opera the superdiva Maria Callas, “La divina,” humbled herself and followed Visconti’s directions scrupulously. She never missed a rehearsal, even though Visconti imposed a high number of them, including lengthy study sessions with only Callas, the conductor Giulini and himself. As Maestro Giulini recounted, “for three weeks, Visconti, Callas, and myself worked only on the Violetta character. Only after that we started rehearsals. Visconti had the great ability to suggest ideas that an intelligent actress like Callas assimilated and made her own. In these three weeks the character of Violetta was created: La Callas became Violetta.”

Traviata was Visconti’s first attempt at directing Verdi’s operas, followed by Don Carlo at Covent Garden in London in 1958, then in Rome in 1965. In 1958 Visconti also directed Macbeth at the Spoleto Festival dei due Mondi, where he produced a second version of Traviata in 1963. Four years later, he staged a third, and very different Traviata in London. He then directed Il trovatore, first in Moscow, then at Covent Garden (both in 1964). Finally he directed Falstaff in 1966 and Simon Boccanegra three years later, both at the Staatsoper of Vienna.

Besides his contribution to Verdi’s theater as a stage director, Visconti’s obsession with Verdi is also apparent in his movies. One could compare the banquet scene in Il gattopardo (The Leopard) to the

lavish banquet scene in Traviata. Indeed Zeffirelli, who was Visconti’s assistant and pupil, reproduces Visconti’s idea of a banquet in his own movie version of Traviata (1982). From Visconti Zeffirelli also got the idea of Violetta drinking wine

“you see, our Traviata will last, whatever reactionaries and hopeless jerks could possibly say.”

Luchino Visconti from leftover glasses after the act-one party, before singing her cabaletta “sempre libera.” Even Zeffirelli’s choice to cast Teresa Stratas as Violetta was a more or less conscious attempt to evoke Callas, at least visually, for both Callas and Stratas were svelte singers of Greek descent.

Verdi’s music and drama play a fundamental role in Visconti’s first movie, Ossessione (1943), based on James M. Cain’s novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. The movie opens with a neo-realistic scene: a tank truck stops at a gas station with annexed tavern. As the truck drivers share a drink from a wine flask, we hear “Di Provenza il mar, il suol,” the aria from Traviata sung by the father of Violetta’s young lover. This melody reaches our ears as diegetic off-screen music, amateurishly sung by the owner of the gas station, Giuseppe Bregana. He is rehearsing it for an upcoming lyric-voices contest. The

verdi ever after 23

maria Callas posing as Violetta in her deathbed during Visconti’s production of Traviata (Milan, La Scala 1955). photo by Erio Piccagliani. Courtesy of Archivio Visconti, Rome.

24 verdi ever after

scenes from Luchino Visconti, Ossessione, 1943: Left: Giovanna (Clara Calamai) and her lover Gino (Massimo Girotti). Right: Giuseppe Bregana (Juan De Landa) singing “Di Provenza il mar, il suol” down the steps of Ancona, accompanied by his wife Giovanna (Clara Calamai) and her lover Gino (Massimo Girotti). production Industrie Cinematografiche Italiane. Frame selections by Pierpaolo Polzonetti.

melody sticks in everybody’s ears. We see clients of the gas station’s tavern walking away while still singing bits of the aria, or trying it out on the tavern’s piano. The aria also denotes Bregana as the old father figure. His young wife, who married him to escape from poverty, falls in love with Gino (Massimo Girotti), a charming, penniless vagabond.

Gino also falls in love with Giovanna Bregana (Clara Calamai), as she offers him food and wine. Likewise, in Traviata, Violetta and Alfredo establish their relationship in a banquet scene in which she pours wine into the young man’s glass, before he starts singing the famous brindisi, “Libiam ne’ lieti calici.”

After they make love for the first time Giovanna tells Gino how before marrying she used to accept men’s “invitations to dinner” as a profession. Her past as a hooker draws her close to the courtesan Violetta. Alfredo’s rival is in fact an old Baron, whose riches makes him an ideal sugar daddy, but cannot compete with the young man’s charm.

The scene of the lyric contest in Ossessione is an essay of Visconti’s operatic culture and sensibility. As Gino and Giovanna sit at the table, we hear arias that loosely relate to their situation. First, we hear the seductive Habanera from Carmen. Then, a tenor sings “Je crois encore” (in Italian translation) from Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles, in which Nadir

breaks his vow of loyalty to his friend to pursue a forbidden love for the priestess Leïla. Another tenor sings “È il sol dell’anima,” from Verdi’s Rigoletto, a slow piece in which the libertine Duke declares his love to Gilda to seduce her.

But it is during Bregana’s number, “Di Provenza il mar, il suol,” that Gino and Giovanna talk most passionately about their love as the old husband sings “Il tuo vecchio genitor” (“your old father”).

After the lyric contest, the old husband gets drunk. We see the trio (husband and lovers) walking down the steps of Ancona with him still singing Germont’s aria ad nauseam, holding the bottle, which he does not share. As in Verdi, the act of not sharing food or drink isolates the character as it breaks his bonds with other characters, often with tragic consequences. In Ossessione, the young couple kill Giuseppe Bregana, reporting to the police that he died in a car accident after driving completely drunk. Gino and Giovanna would eventually die in an accident after a car chase with the police, encountering the same destiny they forced on Giovanna’s husband.

As it happens between Alfredo and Violetta, in the middle of the movie Giovanna and Gino split momentarily.

In the opera it happens as Gino, tormented by guilt, keeps imagining the old man staring at him, like Macbeth with the ghost of Banquo. Visconti suggests

the association quite explicitly as Gino cries “Lo vedo ancora là dietro quel banco!” – “I still see him there behind that counter” – where banco means ‘counter’ but sounds exactly like the name of Shakespeare’s character, called Banco in Verdi’s Macbeth. As in Traviata, the reconciliation of the two lovers takes place as the tragic end approaches. Giovanna tells Gino that she is pregnant: “We, who have stolen a man’s life have now the opportunity to give life to another.” As Gino asks for forgiveness we hear background orchestral music by Giuseppe Rosati with diaphanous strings in the high register, as when Violetta, dying, appears to be transformed from sinner to saint.

If Visconti’s production of Traviata was affected by his cinematic experiences, his first movie, Ossessione, appears to be influenced by his operatic culture.

In Ossessione Visconti also shows how in the real world Verdi was sung, amateurishly, in inns, taverns, in the streets. In so doing he gives us a glimpse of Italy’s own obsession with Verdi. He shows how Verdi’s music was part of Italy’s culture among common people. Most importantly, Visconti represented common people’s personal dramas in a way that make them akin to the heroes and heroines of Verdi’s operas. In so doing Visconti radicalized the democratic mission of a composer who conferred nobility even to a courtesan. n

verdi ever after 25

Luchino Visconti with soprano Maria Callas during a rehearsal for La Traviata at La Scala, Milan, 1955. Photo by Carlo Bavagnoli. akg-images / Mondadori Portfolio

26 Verdi Ever After

Shared ideals Shakespeare, Verdi and the European stage

by Federica TROISI Who says that I did not know Shakespeare when I wrote Macbeth. Oh, in this they are wrong! He is one of my favorite poets. I have had him in my hands from my earliest youth, and I read and reread him continually.

- Giuseppe Verdi

T

he celebration of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi provides the opportunity for a careful philological reading of his productions and a study of how European literary sources influenced the great composer’s artistic path.

If the first task can be performed by a musician, the latter also involves the literary scholar.

As is known, the young composer initially drew on great histories such as myths and the Bible (Oberto, Attila, Nebuchadnezzar, the Lombards at the first crusade), and later turned to the classics of European Romanticism (think Dumas, Hugo, Byron) or authors of universal greatness such as Schiller and Shakespeare.

The latter, in particular, was favored by Verdi, and it was not by chance that he was the source of most of his best known works.

Certainly this preference was favored by the culture of the time: the worlds of ethical idealism and passion, one represented by Schiller, the other by Shakespeare, were recurrent topics in Romantic critiques. However, Verdi was not the type of artist who let prevailing fashion and popular taste impose on the subject matter of his dramas. If he was so frequently attracted to the two dramatists (for a total of seven works, four from the German and three from the English author), it would not be unreasonable to imagine their characters were particulary congenial to his nature.

However, the frequency with which the two authors are written about is, in a strange way, inversely proportional to the number of operatic works inspired by them. In fact, the connection with Schiller, although founded on the inspiration of well-known operas (Joan of Arc, Luisa Miller, The Robbers, Don Carlo) but linked to ethical values – such as reasons of state, the sense of honor and duty – is less explicit than the elective affinity with Shakespeare, established in his youth and cultivated throughout his life.

A mirror of all human passions and contradictions, the playwright from Stratford becomes, in reality, the symbol of the Romantic era and, as such, the dominant dialectic of Verdi’s music.

Not surprisingly, the melodrama, born between the 16th and 17th centuries with Monteverdi and Metastasio, reached its heyday in the 19th century, precisely coinciding with the discovery, evaluation and dissemination of Shakespearean theater. In the

unorganized culture of the young Verdi, entrusted first to the care of the Busseto parish priest and then to the most experienced Milanese masters, music held a prominent place beside European literature. His passion for all things foreign, the outside world, was a constant source of inspiration since his debut with Oberto, but was deemed unsuitable for a patriot, according to Giusti’s opinion of the young composer. As if it were possible to enclose great art within national borders or ideological schemes!

Fortunately, Verdi did not listen to these short-sighted judgments, as shown by his rich library of not only musical scores (from Palestrina to contemporary Berlioz, Wagner, Brahms), but also both Italian and foreign classical and modern works: from 14th-century mysticism to Memoirs of Casanova, Philothea of St. Francis of Sales and the Joy of D’Annunzio, from Plato to Pascal and Schopenhauer, and from Balzac to Byron, Schlegel, Schiller and Zola; alongwith the great Greek tragedies along with many editions of Shakespeare in both their original language and in translation. Clearly, Verdi was anything but rude and uneducated, or worse, popular and crazy!

The truth of Verdi’s dramatic fiction was not “art imitating reality”, as it was for Puccini, nor did it correspond to an abstract “the truth behind the myth”, as it was for Wagner. In him “truth” was embodied in the tangle of human passions translated in the universal language of music onto the stage. In this challenging typically theatrical game, between reality and fiction, is clearly found not only the uniqueness of the master of Busseto, but also the reason for the deep connection with Shakespeare. The “Invention of Truth” is, in fact, the fundamental principle of Verdi’s search and bears the mark of the Stratford playwright, his lifelong point of reference. We read in his letters how he constantly turns to the Bard to give credibility to his own aesthetic principles with the confidence and affection of a son to his father (“To copy the truth can be a good thing, but to invent the truth is better, much better. It seems there is a contradiction in these three words: invent the truth; but ask Papa [Shakespeare] about it. Maybe he, Papa, encountered some Falstaff, but he would have had a hard time finding a villain as villainous as Iago, and never, absolutely never, angels such as Cordelia, Imogen, Desdemona, and yet they are so true!”), the reverence of a disciple to his master: “Ah, Shakespeare! [...] The great master of the human heart! But I will never learn!”; the sensitivity of a critic ahead of his time: “Ah, progress; science, realism! Be a realist as much as you please, but Shakespeare was a realist, only he did not know it. He was a realist by inspiration; we are realists by design, by calculation.”

“I have the idea to set The Tempest to music – he wrote in a

Verdi Ever After

27

This article is an excerpt of the author’s essay entitled: Verdi e Shakespeare.

La forza di un comune destino europeo, available in Italian at www3.lingue.unibo.it/romanticismo/?p=217

is part Puck (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and Ariel (The Tempest). Additionally, there is also all the drama of the “Swan of Avon,” focused on the study of antiheroic man, and recognizable in the various Rigoletti, Violette, Azucene, i.e., his “lost” mythical characters.

Verdi knows how to tell us about worlds we recognize, that belong to us, without taking inspiration from Norse sagas as Wagner did, but by drawing from European literature – in particular from the Stratford playwright – and maintaining his “Italianism”. It’s a prerogative of true art to be able to express the universal passions and leverage a wealth of collective human feelings and emotions. Verdi is like Shakespeare, who remained the most English of writers while looking far beyond national borders to put the previously unknown wider world onto the stage. The Italian musician drew his characters from Europe, but in turn gave so much to the European culture, not only musically. If it were not so, writes Principe, we would not listen to the premonitions of Saint-Saens and Schumann in Simon Boccanegra, references to Tchaikovsky in Un Ballo in Maschera, unambiguous references to Mahler in Othello, La Traviata and Aida, respectively, in the Third Symphony, the Fifth, in Das Klagende Lied; Verdi also aroused the sympathies of Nietzsche, who believed that Othello was superior to the work of Wagner, and the veneration of Joyce, who enjoyed singing and playing the most famous arias

by Verdi with his son George. EM Forster took inspiration from Othello for Billy Budd, written for Britten’s opera of the same name.

Verdi’s aesthetics inspired the title of Harold Bloom’s essay “Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human” (1999).

So, the relationship between Verdi and Shakespeare was neither subjection nor slavish imitation, but a sort of elective affinity which allowed the composer to challenge the musical world of his time to bring Italian opera to European levels, to the extent of becoming contemporary (Stravinsky, Nono, Berio).

In the history of culture, if nothing is truly original then nothing can be considered as identical, as the art form of any time is the result of its relationship with the past: so said Nietzsche (“The judgment of the past is always an oracular judgment: only as an architect of the future, as one who knows the present, you will understand it”) and, later, TS Eliot: “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists”. A connection that is not intended to be understood as a refusal or free passing of tradition, but as an indirect means of knowledge and creativity to create new and autonomous forms.

Such is the essence of Verdi’s operas. n

Charles-Antoine Cambon. Design for act 2, scene 5 of Verdi’s Macbeth, Théâtre Lyrique in Paris, April 1865.

Bibliothèque nationale de France

letter – as is my idea to do the same to some of the major great dramatic tragedies.”

It is well-known that Shakespeare signified to Verdi the discovery of a new concept focused on the dramatic representation of the human condition and its problems; the knowledge of a theatrical language free from all academic rules, the mixing of genres, the value of “word stage,” the opening of the “closed” mind. In other words, the tragic English drama was an opportunity, the correlative objective of the entire artistic life of the Italian master well beyond his three rewrites – Macbeth, Othello, Falstaff – and plans for a Hamlet, The Tempest and King Lear. The latter – the most “Verdi” of Shakespeare’s plays – would have been set to music, we read in his letters, “in a whole new way, vast, regardless of any conveniences”. The Italian composer, in truth, did not shrink back from the fashion of the time (think of Rossini, Mercadante, Vanwesteraut) but, unlike others, he tried to be himself by creating entirely new texts. It is no coincidence that among the almost endless list of rewrites of Shakespeare, those of Verdi are the only ones that have withstood the test of time.

Protesting vehemently after Macbeth in Paris (1865) against those who accused him of not knowing the English playwright, he defended himself: “It may be that I have not done justice to Macbeth, but to say that I do not know, understand and feel Shakespeare – no, by God, no! He is one of my favorite poets. I have had him in my hands from my earliest youth, and I read and reread him continually.”

At this point it is clear that the influence of the English author goes well beyond the works actually put to music or left unfinished. We are able to see, for example, the teachings of Roman tragedies behind Aida. The aching, tender paternal love of Lear to Cordelia lives in Rigoletto, which Verdi himself defined “the greatest drama of modern times, a creation worthy of Shakespeare”.

The absence of a unique central dramatic action in La Forza del Destino was inspired by the polycentric Troilus and Cressida, while Omar – an ambiguous character of the aforesaid Italian opera –

28 verdi ever after

otello’s screen presence Three decades of the operatic character on the silver screen

by David SCHROEDER

F

rom 1958 to 1986, four notable films of Verdi’s Otello appeared, with remarkably little in common. The first, made for RAI television by director Franco Enriquez in 1958, featured Mario Del Monaco; then came Walter Felsenstein’s East German version in 1969, five years later Herbert von Karajan both conducted and directed his with Jon Vickers and Mirella Freni, and Franco Zeffirelli’s appeared in 1986. All four are cinematic, not filmed stage productions, although the first three could be thought of as stage works adapted to cinema; in fact, two originally were given on the stage. Only Zeffirelli conceived his for the screen, and in so doing appears to have lost sight of Verdi.

In adapting his opera from Shakespeare’s Othello, Verdi very much made it his own work, placing the spotlight on Desdemona’s pathos instead of Othello’s tragedy. In the play she shows independence, intelligence and strength of will, even disputing with her father in Act 1.

Verdi had little interest in that side of her, dropping that act entirely, instead revealing her as a sensitive and fragile beauty, in her Act 1 duet with Otello or adulated by children in Act 2, whose demise we will deeply regret. With this early focus on her, the opening of Act 4 becomes the epicenter of the opera, especially the most musically appealing number of the work, her “Willow song.”

Von Karajan recognized that sense of the opera most clearly of the four, and with Freni singing Desdemona, one of the finest singer/actors of the twentieth century, he could be assured of the result.

Aside from the opening storm scene, little happens that could not have been done on stage, and the relatively static camera simply gives the audience a better view than from the parterre. Musically this ver-

sion stands as superior to the others.

RAI intended its production as a vehicle to display Del Monaco’s talent, and even the credits relegated Rosanna Carteri as Desdemona to a secondary role.

Despite this, Enriquez used black and white to the best possible effect, capturing atmosphere with his contrast of light and dark, exploring psychological aspects with the varied use of chiaroscuro. Tullio Serafin achieved his usual high standard as conductor, and in no way did he allow Desdemona musically to be slighted.

Felsenstein moved more towards cinema, with sets that could have come from expressionist silent films, creating gloom and foreboding. In Act 4 Otello walks not unlike Murnau’s Nosferatu, and even the kiss has something of the vampire’s touch. His approach was to “photograph the music,” searching for the psychological essence of the music, which in part he achieved with the use of close-up shots, in some cases extreme close-ups, such as Iago’s bloodshot eyes engulfing the screen in his “Credo.” He seems at times to avoid long shots. Not surprisingly for East Germany, the opera was sung in German, and Kurt Masur’s conducting kept the musical level high.

After the successful cinematic realizations of Don Giovanni (Joseph Losey, 1978) and Carmen (Francesco Rosi, 1983), producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus of Cannon Films had high hopes for the commercial viability of Zeffirelli’s Otello. Zeffirelli’s approach appears to have accounted for that, as he turned Otello (Placido Domingo) into a crazed killer, possessed by the supposed paganism of his North African background.

We encounter that heritage strikingly in Act 1, when the duet between Otello and Desdemona (Katia Riciarelli) underlies flashbacks to his earlier life in Africa. The paganism peaks in Act 4 when we see him

naked above the waist burning his cross necklace, reverting to a primitive state.

The shift back to Otello has little to do with Shakespeare, since the paganism all but eliminates the element of tragedy, leaving him as little more than a deranged madman. Movies featuring psychopaths of course were popular; in fact, the Cannon Films release immediately prior to this one was The Texas

Verdi spotlights Desdemona’s pathos instead of Othello’s tragedy.

Chainsaw Massacre, Part 2. Zeffirelli could perhaps have gone this route while leaving the pathos for Desdemona intact, but he did not, since he entirely excised her strongest outpouring of pathos, the “Willow song.” Perhaps like Marion Crane in Psycho, whom Hitchcock drops in the middle of the film, we are left to focus on the killer instead of the victim. Verdi seems not to have mattered at this point, as his finest music gives way to horror.

With the help of conductor Lorin Maazel, the music comes in for other distortions as well. Unlike the continuous music of the opera, in this film it occasionally stops, as though functioning like a soundtrack, and even has other music inserted, in both Acts 1 and 3, for the added celebratory dance scenes. The treatment of the music as soundtrack gets further emphasis from the generally poor quality of the sound, at times even

verdi ever after

The Operas of Verdi and their premiere dates

G. B. Ganzini. Francesco Tamagno as Otello, 1896. printed photograph. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

sounding out of tune because of variance in the speed of the track.

We may find what Zeffirelli did to Verdi objectionable, as well as his apparent pandering to commercial success, but he takes his much further into the realm of cinema—away from the filming of a stage production—than any of the other three.

Some of the visual effects are striking, and even his steering Otello towards paganism is not, accounting for Arrigo Boito’s libretto, entirely implausible. In recent years the place of opera as cinema has largely been replaced by Live in HD from the Met, but it would have been interesting to see if the genre active from the 1950s to the 1980s could have succeeded. I suspect if so, Verdi’s operas would have been very much at the center of it. n

DVDs Otello. Directed by Franco Enriquez. Milan: Hardy Trading Co., n.d.

Directed by Walter Felsenstein. Berlin: Arthaus Musik, 2009.

Directed by Herbert von Karajan. Munich: Unitel, 2005.

Directed by Franco Zeffirelli. Santa Monica, CA: MGM Home Entertainment, Inc., 2003.

Oberto November 17, 1839 Un giorno di regno September 5,1840 Nabucco March 9, 1842 I Lombardi alla prima crociata February 11, 1843 Ernani March 9, 1844 I due Foscari November 3, 1844 Giovanna d’Arco February 15, 1845 Alzira August 12, 1845 Attila March 17, 1846 Macbeth March 14, 1847 I masnadieri July 22, 1847 Il corsaro October 25, 1848 La battaglia di Legnano January 27, 1849 Luisa Miller December 8, 1849 Stiffelio November 16, 1850 Rigoletto March 11, 1851 Il trovatore January 19, 1853 La traviata March 6, 1853 Les vêpres siciliennes June 13, 1855 Simon Boccanegra March 12, 1857 Aroldo August 16, 1857 Un ballo in maschera February 17, 1859 La forza del destino November 10, 1862 Macbeth (revised) April 19, 1865 Don Carlo March 11, 1867 Aida December 24, 1871 Simon Boccanegra (revised) March 24, 1881 Otello February 5, 1887 Falstaff February 9, 1893

29

30 verdi ever after

Verdi’s “most beautiful” work His exceptional vision for musicians in retirement

by Fred PLOTKIN

T

alk to anyone in Busseto about Giuseppe Verdi, who was born five kilometers away in Roncole, and he or she will have a strong opinion about the composer who was also a national hero for giving Italy definition and voice in his operas and political activities. As often as not, Verdi is regarded with grudging respect locally for his indisputable achievements.

But there is also a memory of the man, handed down through generations from those who knew him, as being rather hard-headed and easy to anger.

While the outside world thinks of Verdi for his brilliant melodies and the complexity of the plots of some of his operas, many bussetani see him as another product of their land, much like prosciutto di Parma and Parmigiano-Reggiano. In many shops, Verdi’s image is displayed next to ones of the world-class ham and cheese that are staples both in the diet and the economy.

Verdi was indeed a product of this land, with its rich soils and atmospheric fogs and mists that give it special character. At his home in Sant’Agata, three kilometers from town, he ran an active and busy farm with crops and animals. His ledgers and notebooks are filled with details about weather, sales of livestock and payment of employees. Although he was the greatest composer Italy ever produced, he often signed his correspondence, “Giuseppe Verdi, Agricoltore.”

The farmer-composer is remembered for being volatile and subject to sudden changes in opinion and approach as he ran his business. His sometimes explosive outbursts toward workers and his wife, the retired soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, required patience. And yet Verdi’s anger was often directed toward society at large. He helped lead the fight for Italian unification from the 1840s to the 1860s but then was frequently critical of the political figures he considered too self-serving and out of touch with the needs of il popolo italiano.

While the oral tradition in and around Busseto would have it that Verdi was difficult, there are many people who point to an aspect of him that was farsighted and revolutionary. He gave voice to the voiceless and, as has been often noted, “loved and wept” for us all. This was a man who embraced and gave humanity to outsiders in his operas, holding up a mirror to a society that was often prejudiced against those who were different.

One need only look at the famous Middle Trilogy of operas to understand this. These were the first three works he composed at his farm, which he purchased in 1848 and occupied in 1851.

Rigoletto (1851) has a title character, a hunchback, who was reviled and ridiculed for his disability. The central role of Il Trovatore

Verdi with guests at sant’agata, 1898. courtesy verdi200.

(1852) is not Manrico but Azucena, the Gypsy whose suffering is belittled by the majority of characters even if they have violent disagreements on other issues. La Traviata (1853) is the story of a prostitute whose wisdom and humanity so far outstrip those of the people who surround her, yet they smugly judge and feel superior to her.

In these operas, Verdi beguiled audiences with gorgeous melodies but also demanded that they face uncomfortable truths about the human condition. His attitude was the same in the way he thought of his workers. He could be willful but he also saw the humanity of the lives of people who labored faithfully but had no access to the benefits he believed a nation should offer to all of its citizens. He noticed that his workers had little access to proper medical care.

His holdings were in Sant’Agata, which was one of four villages that were part of a territory known as Villanova sull’Arda.

The total population was about six thousand. While Busseto had a hospital, it was not necessarily available to people who lived in Villanova which, administratively, was part of the city of Piacenza. However, Piacenza and its hospital were thirty-five kilometers away. Most of the infirm in Villanova with life-threatening conditions died before they could reach Piacenza.

Verdi determined that the people of Villanova needed a hospital and he decided he would have to be the one to build it.

Although property was acquired in 1878 to create the hospital, which came to be known as Ospedale Giuseppe Verdi, it did not open until November 5, 1888. The delays were a source of aggravation for Verdi, who doggedly pursued the project in a series of letters and meetings with political and religious figures. His

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31

Casa di Riposo. from touring club, lombardy, italy

ambition to provide help to the poor was seen in some quarters as self-serving. Some newspaper articles lamented that the hospital would be too small and was more about Verdi’s vanity than about doing something for the greater good.

When the hospital finally opened its doors, Verdi insisted that it be done without pomp or ceremony. He said that twelve patients should be admitted and their care begun. Verdi visited periodically and, when he felt that conditions and care were inferior, he made sure that improvements were made. In a famously testy letter written from Genoa on January 16, 1889, he complained that he had learned that the milk, oil, pasta and rice used to feed patients were of inferior quality and he demanded that improvements be made. He also demanded to know if it was true that, as he had heard, funeral costs were required from families who were destitute when, in fact, Verdi had made provisions for such expenditures.

The genesis of the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti, a retirement home for musicians on the Piazza Michelangelo Buonarroti in Milan, is a better-known story of Verdi’s benevolence. The composer realized that some instrumentalists, chorus members and solo singers see their careers end without having enough funds to live in a dignified way. Verdi initiated a project to create a building that would become a community of musicians. He engaged the architect Camillo Boito (brother of Arrigo Boito, who wrote the libretti for Otello and Falstaff) to design a building with a budget of one million lire.

Again, the composer took a very active role in the design and construction of this institution. When it was completed in 1899, Verdi made a pun on the word opera, which in Italian means both “work” and “opera,” and declared the Casa di Riposo “la mia opera più bella.”

Verdi’s only requirement was that no residents be admitted to the home until after his death, which took place on January 27, 1901. The first group took occupancy on October 10, 1902, which would have been his eighty-ninth birthday. Verdi and Strepponi (who died in 1897) were buried in a crypt in the central atrium of the home and, ever since, residents go to talk to the Maestro, to thank him, and to hum his melodies. The number of residents at the home ranges from seventy to one-hundred and, nowadays, music students from foreign countries reside there. Not only do they receive tutelage and wisdom from the retired musicians but, in return, provide company and intellectual stimulation.

In his final will and testament, Verdi generously provided for the poor, the sick and the disadvantaged in Genoa, Busseto, Villanova and Milan. Royalties postcards of Villa S.Agata from his operas, from the collection of Renato properly investManici ed, give funds to this day to various institutions, although it is now necessary- – and wise – for lovers of Verdi’s music and ideas to contribute to the maintenance of the places he created for those not as fortunate as he was.

It is easy to remember Verdi for his beautiful music. Those who live near where he did might recall the stories of his volatility and consider him brilliant but difficult. But it was his deep humanity and sense of justice, and his willingness to do battle for those who could not, that are the legacy of the benevolent Verdi, the man who put his music in service to the greater good. n

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33

memorably “Imperfect” Photo courtesy Giorgio Battistelli

An interview with composer Giorgio Battistelli

by Ludovica ROSSI PURINI Giorgio Battistelli is an award-winning composer of classical music, opera and musical theater, performed by such greats as Riccardo Muti, Antonio Pappano, Lorin Maazel, Daniele Gatti, Daniel Harding, Ádám Fischer and others.

Recipient of the prestigious Commentatore dell’Ordine al merito of the Italian Republic, Battistelli has vast experience in the most prestigious musical institutions worldwide. His newest opera is set to premiere at the Teatro della Scala, Milan in 2015. The following interview took place in Rome on September 13, 2013.

LUDOVICA ROSSI PURINI: This year, 200 years after the birth of Giuseppe Verdi, the whole world joins Italy in paying tribute to the greatness of the famous composer from the human, political and cultural standpoint.

Thousands of operas, films and documentaries, exhibitions, conferences and books celebrate the great musical genius, his enduring fascination to the listener and the universality of the values that animate his work. What more can be done to celebrate this event?

GIORGIO BATTISTELLI: The calendar of events is definitely very dense but certainly this anniversary could be the occasion for some important reflections on contemporary opera. Verdi represents a milestone in the history of opera and its modernity lies in its eclectic dramatical size. A country like Italy, so deeply and diversely layered, currently produces a wide operatic variety that has changed considerably from what it was at the time of Giuseppe Verdi. This event can provide the setting for its in-depth analysis.

LRP: Why have various definitions changed opera?

GB: New forms of media, television, cinema, etc., have significantly changed the relationship between the eye and ear in favor of a clear predominance of the eye. What we see is more important than what we hear. This different sensory dialectic is not always positive when it comes to melodrama as there is a risk that the work itself will become the pretext of the opera, where the focus shifts more to size than the spectacular musical score.

LRP: Maestro, as a composer you have produced more than thirty works and next year will debut your new opera CO2 at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, under the direction of Robert Carsen.

How do you think this complex issue of sensory dialectics, the relationship between the visual narrative and musical language, can be resolved?

GB: You absolutely must avoid devising the work in such a way that it becomes hypertrophic visual signals, since this inevitably departs from the ability to properly listen, to hear. Moreover, while the visual element is stable, music transports you through time and its flow and so is more difficult to follow in its develop-

ment. Just thinking about the representation of Verdi’s operas, I remember in particular the Fura dels Baus Aida at the Arena di Verona and one of Zeffirelli’s in Parma, the latter transformed to a chamber-music perspective, in which the relationship between visual narrative and musical language was perfectly balanced and Verdi’s great music was never lost.

LRP: Verdi is being celebrated not only in Italy but throughout the world. How do you explain the international appeal of this fascinating composer?

GB: Giuseppe Verdi was a composer who knew how to create a true osmosis between the articulation of well-defined and universally recognizable narrative aspects, and music that not only emphasizes but conceptualizes them. The music’s performance is always understandable and narratively consistent. Without wishing to be provocative, I could define Verdi as “an imperfect composer” where sometimes perfection in the scores of the harmonic language is sacrificed in order to maximize appearance and dramatic narrative. But this imperfection, in my opinion, is what made him the great operatic composer still loved around the world. n

34 contemporary art

left: Vincenzo Pennacchi.

The flesh and the Spirit ( overall view with the steel towers), 2013. steel, mixed media on canvas, allumirror. deconsecrated church of St. Francis in Velletri, Rome.

Opposite page: Carlo D’Orta.

(De)Composition London 36, 2012. Plexiglass and aluminium.

Private Collection.

Giacamo Puccini. Courtesy Puccini Foundation.

Photo by Francesco Della Manna.

contemporary art 35

To back(stage) or not to back(stage) When processes and outcomes are one

by Gianluca MARZIANI

W

e see it, on the wall of a gallery or museum, indoors or outdoors, in or on a monitor screen, hanging, suspended or resting ... to us the work of art always appears as a finished project. Ultimately, we see the end result and (almost) never behind the scenes, with executive backstage passes to witness the time between conception and design. Admittedly, in recent decades, the growth of technological tools has increased the fever pitch for knowledge of artistic creation. Now you want to enter the “question mark” behind the talent, to go backstage to the inner world of the artist, into the mysterious world of private stories. A media voyeurism raised in close relationship with the digital culture; it was always assumed that popular backstage access would shatter the parameters between art and its viewer. If we think about the origins of “hero worship” and the new laws of desire, it is normal that the public is not satisfied with just the result (the final work, similar to a movie seen in the theater or a novel read in the library) but searches for the background, a taste of “real reality” that quenches the hunger and thirst for informative gossip.

In the chaos of new media, hope becomes a plausible reality: that visual art retains its confidentiality, the right distance remains between the viewer and icon, a one-act play that is enhanced by its resultant exposition. Being the only language that creates images through symbols means its mystery must always be retained, without losing touch with reality but being aware of the rhythms, codes and styles of each individual presence. Art must deal with actuality and stay out of the melee, a step away from

the collective virus, but never joining the fray. Otherwise it would lose its metaphorical and allegorical strength, its analytical conscience that in investigating facts develops clairvoyance.

If we talk about Italian art, in a view that from the 14thcentury Umbria has led us to today’s young talents, it is clear that the process behind the work (backstage language) is a measure of our representation. The iconographic canons utilize complex construction as the main processing method.

A peculiarity crossing both art masters and avant-garde, characterizing Italian art as a learning method, the figurative tie that binds, link in the chain, for its compositional balance that stratifies without burdening the result.

DANILO BUCCHI works in a progressive dimension of time that coincides with the action of a syringe filled with ink. From a solid line, a style of writing over post-informal Wols automatic codes, the artist has replaced the brush with a syringe that calibrates the casting with a progressive rhythm. Hence came the idea that the framework’s construction is a more complex mechanism than its own result. Thus the performance was born in which Bucchi, following an electronic sound, created the painting in front of a camera filming sign after sign, like a building that grows brick by brick.

The result was also the wall of the Palazzo Collicola Visual Arts where he amplified surfaces and expanded their intimate nature. All his paintings, even those with

canonical techniques, are linked ideally by a natural diary, as though his papers and canvas are strung together like daily diary pages between real life and his inner world. We do not see, but perceive, the elaborative phases, the natural juxtapositions, a manual modularity that replicates without copying. It is in the complexity of the process that the figure takes shape as the ink dries.

In confirmation of a natural living process to synthesize results, Bucchi has collaborated with designer ANTONIO MARRAS for a recent exhibition in Spoleto in the rooms on the main floor of Palazzo Collicola Visual Arts. From a long backstaged work documented in a black and white photographic catalog, it follows their combined successful crossing of personality on paper and canvas.

Bucchi has structured the perimeters of the image, the physiognomic foundation that Marras has “dressed” with colors, fabrics and collage. To do so, the two met several times between Rome and Alghero, combining without overlapping their personalities in a dynamic equilibrium between process and foundation. It was the only way to leave the centrality of artistic language, without the fashion

36 contemporary art

Art must deal with actuality and stay out of the melee, a step away from the collective virus, but never joining the fray.

Photo by Giorgio Benni.

Vincenzo Pennacchi. The flesh and the Spirit (central canopy detail), 2013. steel, mixed media on canvas, allumirror, wire mesh, wood, plastic. deconsecrated church of St. Francis in Velletri, Rome.

Below: Fabrizio Campanella. Xiris Table and Players, 2012. Digital printing on D-bond. Author’s collection.

the discipline of governing the backstage; the combination of “crazy genius” which is presently rarely found among even the most mature and innovative artists.

absorbing the iconographic structure.

In this way, the “dress” is returned to its sculptural essence, its primordial design, to the material roots with which everything was born.

CRISTIANO PINTALDI is another example of how many procedural stages there are behind a painting. The artist has invented a language system that is based on pixel structure, the same that modulates television images according to scientific relationships between location and percentage of color. Each painting is the result of overlapping phases in which any error becomes categorically excluded, the penalty being destruction of the painting. The artist seems to merge the concentration of a zen monk with the fanatical operations of a goldsmith.

His painting requires a slow process, also documented by photographs in which the studio is transformed into a laboratory of art and science. He triumphs in

This complex construction is the same in all visual languages, including photography in its many forms. Here, too, the Italian value shows a methodical structural work that involves pictorial tension and sculptural volume, locking in the value of its final summation. MATTEO BASILE’ confirms this through an evident maturity: the landscapes take on a Renaissance-style; body types mix historical past with a defiled present; costumes add a narrative and conceptual research on color; postures respond to a series of sculptural archetypes. The trip, in short, is the synthesis of a long process behind the single photograph: and the backstage becomes a photographic page in the books created by the artist.

CARLO D’ORTA adds something significant to his photographs: three-dimensional inserts that follow the compositional elements of the image, inventing a double sculpture recreated in a plastic sense. Sheets of Plexiglas, developed in 1:1 scale to the objects in the photo, are installed in front of the print, thus emphasizing and becoming the heart and soul of not only the object but every narrative photorealist. Not since the days of

Ugo Mulas and Gianfranco Chiavacci has a similar link between linguistic concept and language been seen.

FABRIZIO CAMPANELLA has conceptualized a total processuality around a piece of art. Always starting with a finished work, he follows a painting’s geometric tensions, using a single pictorial theme as a module in progress. From here the development takes the form of wallpaper, sculpture, video and architectural space, creating a living processuality around the pure geometric element, creating a feeling that a futurist has been catapulted into our millennium. His backstage turns into a live action, sequential, a driving force which gives us both the fire and the fuel that feeds it.

VINCENZO PENNACCHI also develops processuality around a single framework. His work begins in a sculptural manner, spatially creating systems of ever-expanding pallets of color; interacting with the natural materials from which all life is born; photographed as though rhythmically removing veils of secrecy from a historical former church. It is the life of the picture, simultaneously complex by nature and tarnished, living in harmony with the linguistic keys, and proof of how many solutions exist around the known languages and the main themes of depiction. n

contemporary art 37

Carlo D’Orta. (De)Composition Roma Tiburtina 7, 2012. Plexiglass and aluminium. Private Collection.

top: Danilo Bucchi, Antonio Marras. M+B 07, 2013. mixed media on paper. 76 X 54 cm.

Left: Antonio Marras. Gli scartati (Los Ascaltatz) (installation view), 2006. bicycle wheel rims, fabric, mixed media.

top and right: Fabrizio Campanella. Elements, 2010. Virtualismi, solo exhibition curated by Gianluca Marziani. Palazzo Collicola Arti Visive, Spoleto, Italy, 2012.

Top: Swimming Pool from Elements, 2012. Digital printing on D-bond. Author’s collection.

Right: Elements, 2010. Acrylic on canvas.

Author’s collection.

38 Fashion

backstage view

by Barbara ZORZOLI

backstage at Amanda Wakeley during London Fashion Week, Spring 2011.

london fashion week 2013_backstage

A

s the lights go up, the music starts and the models stride into view. Their timing is perfect and the clothes look sensational… but the show begins behind the scenes.

Twice a year, the world’s style capitals London, Milan, New York and Paris host Fashion Week to showcase designers’ wares for next season.

Beautiful faces, spectacular clothes, tickets to the top-level shows. But for all that glitz and artifice, behind the Fashion Week there is always a hard job. A runway show may last ten minutes, but the backstage action can go on for hours. Shows are planned over a year in advance, with dedicated teams overseeing each aspect – from music and lighting to shoes and models’ eyeshadow shades. It takes three weeks to build the venue. An average show lasts between 7 and 20 minutes, features around 40 looks and costs a lot of money to put on ($150,000, but many designers spend closer to $400,000 in the hope they will generate enough media coverage and buyer interest to recoup their significant investment). In previous years, before the recession affecting most of the world, fashion houses would be expecting costs up to $750,000 to produce a quality runway show. During Fashion Week, up to 100 shows take place, with start times ranging from 9a.m. to 9p.m. Up-and-coming designers live in fear of snagging a time slot that conflicts with that of a ‘top drawer’ name: highfalutin fashion names can only be in one draughty marquee at a time, after all. To the casual observer, Fashion Week’s catwalk shows run like a well-oiled machine. But schedules are often thrown off kilter, and curtains have been known to rise up two hours late. The term ‘fashionably late’ was clearly coined for catwalk shows, and while celebs are often paid to pitch up, cash does not guarantee punctuality.

Even with the golden tickets in hand, not everyone adheres to the seating policy and ‘runway rage’ is common. And what about models? During Fashion Week, they would sometimes be working 20-hour days. They are not just walking down a catwalk, every day they also go up to 20 go-sees (where models ‘go-see’ designers with their portfolios), and doing fittings in-between. The pressure to impress is intense. n

Simonetta catwalk Pitti Bimbo, summer 2012

catwalk at Lichting, 2013

fashion 39

New york Fashion week, 2013.

front row, NY Fashion Week, 2012.

backstage at Francesco Scognamiglio, Autumn 2011 NY fashion week 2013.

Hair and makeup, Backstage at New York fashion week 2013.

Backstage at Roland Mouret, Paris Fashion Week, Spring 2012.

Backstage at The 2012 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.

Donna Karan, NY 2013.

Donna Karan, NY 2013.

Left: Front Row at London Fashion Week, 2012, Mulberry Salon, including actor Benedict Cumberbatch.

40 advertisement

Futurism: Concepts and Imaginings The Boca Museum of Art January 12 - March 30, 2014

An exhibit of thirty-eight works in various media of Italian futurist artists.

These works, from the first and second wave of Futurist artists, illustrate their thinking on energy, color and multimedia possibilities. www.bocamuseum.org / www.italianacademyfoundation.org

literature

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Italian fiction into screenplays

by Laura GIACALONE

T

he history of Italian literature has always been tightly intertwined with that of film. World-famous cinematic transpositions of literature masterpieces have left indelible marks on the collective imagination. It is enough to mention Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), the celebrated novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa posthumously published in 1958 and recently named by The Observer as one of “the 10 best historical novels” of all time. Its rich portrait of an aristocratic Sicilian family in decline was well captured in Luchino Visconti’s sumptuous 1963 film, starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon.

Other celebrated adaptations of Italian best-selling novels include The Name of the Rose (1980) by Umberto Eco, brought to the screen in 1986 by Jean-Jack Annaud, with Sean Connery in the role of Franciscan friar William of Baskerville, and, more recently, The Shape of Water (1994), the first novel in the internationally popular Inspector Montalbano series by Sicilian crime writer Andrea Camilleri, which has become a successful TV series also broadcast in the US by MHzNetworks.

A recent initiative promoted in New York by ANICA (Italian Association of Cinematographic Audiovisual and Multimedia Industries) and AIE (Italian Publishers Association), with the support of the Italian Ministry for Economic Development and Fondazione Cinema per Roma, has recently turned the spotlight on the fruitful connection between Italian literature and cinema with the aim of promoting Italian film and publishing industries in the US market and favoring international co-production projects.

The program of events, titled “Words on Screen – New Italian Literature into Film”, included screenings of films in-

spired by Italian novels, debates and meetings with directors, producers, writers and publishers, and took place at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò on June 3 and 4, 2013.

The relationship between film and literature in Italy can claim a very long tradition and is still an inexhaustible source of creative inspiration. In the last few years, an increasing number of Italian novels have made it to the screen, with great acclaim of public and critics.

An interesting example is Bellas Mariposas, a 1996 novel by Sergio Atzeni (published by Sellerio), which inspired Salvatore Mereu’s film of the same name released in 2012. The book tells a day in the life of 12-year-old Caterina, who, from the slums of the Sardinian capital Cagliari, spreads her optimistic view of the world on the large-scale wrongs she sees around her.

For his latest film, two-time Oscar winning director Bernardo Bertolucci drew inspiration from Niccolò Ammaniti’s Me and You (Black Cat, 2011), the story of an introverted teenager who lies to his parents about going on a ski trip so that he can spend time alone in a basement.

A young couple struggling with their precarious jobs and desire for parenthood is at the center of Simone Lenzi’s La generazione (Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 2012), adapted into the beautiful film Tutti i santi giorni (Every Blessed Day) by Tuscan director Paolo Virzì.

Finally, in 2013, Siberian Education (McClelland & Stewart, 2011), a successful crime biography by Nicolai Lilin, was brought to the screen by Oscar-winning film director Gabriele Salvatores, with John Malkovich taking the lead. A Russian-born author who writes in Italian, Lilin tells the compelling story of his criminal education in a contested, lawless region between Moldova and Ukraine known as Transnistria.

While Italian contemporary writ-

ers lend their creations to talented filmmakers, the classics of Italian literature have never ceased to fascinate the masters of the Seventh Art. It is no accident that veteran Italian director Ermanno Olmi selected three masterpieces of Italian literature as a theme for his 1950s short films, screened at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò on June 2, 2013: L’onda (The Wave, 1903) by Gabriele D’Annunzio; Dialogo di un venditore d’almanacchi e di un passeggere (The Dialogue Between an Almanac Seller and a Passer-By, 1832) by Giacomo Leopardi; and Manon Finestra 2 (Manon: Window 2, 1956) by Pierpaolo Pasolini.

Widely explored by literature and film critics, the symbiotic relationship between these two forms of art continues to be a field of fascinating crossovers, which involve complex issues of fidelity and transcoding, while suggesting new approaches to reading literature and contributing to a greater awareness of the intertextual openness of culture.n

42 photography

light on photography by Mauro Benedetti

Ancient Faces

The Capitoline Museum in Rome is a treasure trove of Italian antiquities, including three grand rooms dedicated solely to the preferred form of portraiture in B.C. Rome: sculptural busts. Gods, goddesses, philosophers, statesmen, famous families (and even their dogs) were all memorialized in stone...not so dissimilar from the faces glimpsed on the museum’s surrounding streets.

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44 Social journal

Social Journal Verdi Concert at Carnegie Hall The Italian Academy Foundation, Inc. along with prestigious sponsors presented a beautiful program by the Cameristi della Scala orchestra in honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi.

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1. Hon. Natalia Quintavalle, Consul General of Italy in New York; 2.

I.A.F. Chairman, Stefano Acunto; 3. i Cameristi della Scala; 4. Ines Theodoli and Phillips Clarke; 5.

Dr. and Mrs. Anthony Tamburri; 6. Dr. Joseph Sciame; 7. Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Stillwell; 8. Mr. & Mrs. Olson Rohdes; 9. Annelle Garcia, Dott.sa Piera Palazzolo; 10. Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Phebus; 11. Consul General Quintavalle, Mr. Acunto, Dr. Gabriella Bolton, Mr. & Mrs. Friedrich Jaeger; 12. Rosa D’Imperio and Stephan Kirchgraber; 13.

Ruthann Niosi and Dr. Francesca Verga; 14. Mr. & Mrs. Dominic Delli Carpini.

Social journal

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Social Journal Photos by Vito CATALANO

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15. Karina Clausen and Mr. Arcadio Casillas; 16. Mr. & Mrs. Quintino Cianfaglione; 17. Dr. Bilha Chesner Fish, Dr. Karen Burke, Mr. Acunto, H.I.R.H. Archduke Dominic von Habsburg and H.I.R.H. Archduchess Emmanuelle Von Habsburg; 18. Nick and Nancy Pearson; 19. Clemente Contestabile, Mr. Acunto and Deputy Consul Lucia Pasqualini; 20. Actor Tony LoBianco, i-Italy’s Letizia Airos and Giulian Madron.

Maestro Zeffirelli receives IAF Bravo! Award

IAF Chairman Acunto and Vice Chair Claudia Palmira Acunto visited with Maestro Franco Zeffirelli at his home outside Rome to deliver his recently-awarded Bravo! plaque.

Maestro Zeffirelli reminisced about the opera, about his experiences in the United States and elsewhere, during a long afternoon of pleasant remembrance.

46 Social journal

Social Journal John Cabot University Gala Rome’s prestigious American-accredited university celebrates a banner year and honors the new Board of Trustees Chairman, Frank Guarini, during the gala at the splendid Hassler Hotel.

Above: Hon. Frank Guarini, Chairman of the Board of John Cabot University, Mr. Robert del Tufo, Trustee, Dr. Mary Merva, Dean of the school.

Mrs. Acunto and Dr. Franco Pavoncello, President of John Cabot University, Rome.

Hon. William J. Martini, Vice Chairman of John Cabot University.

Several members of the graduating class.

40 Roman Women: Book Launch Photos by Suzanne PREPARATA

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1. Book author Roberta Petronio with Claudia Palmira; 2. Some of the 40 featured women, including Ludovica Rossi Purini; 3. The presentation; 4. The three authors: Roberta Petronio, Ilaria Grillini and Paola Pisa.

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Social Journal New York Stage and Film Winter Gala

Photos by Jenny ANDERSON

The Italian Academy Foundation was pleased to contribute to the New York Stage and Film Winter Gala, together with Alice Walsh, Chairman, to honor Stanley Tucci (pictured photo top left) join such actors as Steve Buscemi and others seen here.

Steve Buscemi with wife Jo Andres.

Federico Castelluccio and Yvonne Schaefer.

Stanley Tucci with wife Felicity Blunt.

Actress Julianna Margulies; Actor Peter Gallagher.

Rebirth Rome: Panel and Reception A panel featuring Daniel Libeskind in Rome’s Deputy Chambers launched the Rebirth Rome initiative. A reception followed at the home of Ludovica Rossi Purini. Read the full story on page 10.

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1. Featured speaker Daniel Libeskind; 2. Speaker Joseph Cari; 3. Speaker Ertharin Cousin; 4. The event at the Deputy Chambers, Rome; 5. Ludovica Rossi Purini with Nicole Schiavone and guest; 6. The owners of Miamo Cosmetics; 7. Daniel Libeskind, Claudia Palmira Acunto and Ludovica Rossi Purini; 8. Joseph Cari with Mr. and Mrs. Rasmussen.

48 Social journal

Social Journal Italian Academy Foundation Reception

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Naoto Nakagawa Studio Visit

Artist Naoto Nakagawa with IAF Chairman Stefano Acunto and IJ Editor Claudia Palmira Acunto at his TriBeCa studio. The IAF supports the artist’s “1,000 Portraits of Hope” campaign providing relief to victims of the March 2011 tsunami in Japan.

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A reception held late this past summer at Hudson Cliff House for Italian Academy Foundation friends who joined to welcome back to New York Ambassador Francesco Maria Talo who represents Italy in the State of Israel.

1. Ambassador & Mrs. Ornella Talo; 2. Justice and Mrs. Dominic Massaro with Mrs. Talo; 3. Ms. Vivan Cardia and Mike and Rosemarie Santangelo.

Exed Gallery Opening Rome

Two painted and mixed media works of Italian Journal editor Claudia Palmira Acunto on display at the Exed Gallery, Rome, Fall 2013.

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cultural diplomacy via email

sign up for the iaf e-mailing list (Gratis)

www.italianacademyfoundation.org

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face file

Valeria GOLINO

by Barbara ZORZOLI

F

or three decades, Valeria Golino, 47, has enjoyed a career of unusual variety, alternating in the past 25 years between Hollywood movies and films in her native Italy. Best known to English-speaking audiences as Topper Harley’s sexy, exotic girlfriend in the popular Hot Shots! and for her role in Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, Valeria, born to a Greek mother and Italian father in Naples, began her career as a model. She started working as an actress during the 1980s, after she was discovered

by Italian film icon Lina Wertmüller, who cast her in A Joke of Destiny (1983) when she was still in high school. Three years later she won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival for Storia d’Amore.

One of her first appearances was in the film Blind Date alongside Greek-Brit Marina Sirtis. This description might be a reductive summation of her talents, because this year, at the Cannes Film Festival, she presented her directorial debut, Miele (the story of a young Italian woman who devotes her life to alleviating the pain of others, even when they make dramatic decisions).

“This little film has brought me to Cannes, I love it,” Golino stated. “I’m very nervous and I can’t quite enjoy this moment,” she said on the red carpet. “I can’t describe my state of mind, I’d like to be calmer, but it’s just the way I am. I’ll be happy in a month’s time,” she admits, “I always wanted to go to Cannes and I always thought of the Certain Regard for this film. The idea of going there and getting dressed up fills me with joy. In actual fact, you have less fun than you expect to but the idea of participating gives you a sense of belonging to global cinema. It makes me proud.” She chose to tell this story because she read the book A nome tuo by Mauro Covacich three years ago.

“I found it to be a striking book. Very contemporary, painful and provoking, with a type of female character Italian literature and cinema hadn’t yet seen. I talked about it with Viola Prestieri and Riccardo Scamarcio [who produced the film for Buena Onda] and I put a request in to buy the book’s rights.

Initially, we were frightened. We weren’t sure whether it might be too difficult for me to take on as a first film,” she explains.

“I also didn’t want to star in my first film, I was more curious to film someone else. I am not saying it won’t happen in the future… If I don’t start surprising myself a little,” says Golino.

“I didn’t want to star in my first film, I was more curious to film someone else. I am not saying it won’t happen in the future…

In between American projects, she maintains her status as one of the few Hollywood actresses who regularly work in another language, as well as being one of the few who can handle her own dubbing duties. Ironically, when she first began working in American films, her voice was greeted with a muted reaction back home. Her choices aren’t always obvious. Valeria likes both the bigger Hollywood movies as well as the independent films. The common denominator in her attraction to the roles she’s taken is the filmmaking process itself, particularly the talent and the ideas involved in the story.

“I just care to work with people that I’d like to spend a couple of months with and won’t get bored and not listen to what they have to say,” she explains.

While away from the movie set, Golino enjoys travel, photography, reading, and going to the movies: “You know, normal things.” n

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