"La Griselda": The Playbill - The Poster - Photo 1 - Photo 2
"Openopera" project was born following the strong desire to promote a particular reality of more than 1000 Italian Municipalities: small theatre.
There are many small theatres scattered troughout our peninsula, despite their historical and architectural differences, they share daily economical difficulties.
Openopera wants to promote an experimental lyric project together with an extremely interesting cultural program.
Operas production that has been addressed exclusively to big theatres up to now, today reaches also small theatres. Incidentally, Bibbiena district has accepted the challenge to produce plays for small theatres at national level.
WHY BARO
In Baroque period, by opera, theatre hall, music, stage designing and costumes were realized the most inventive and astonishing shows that have ever been staged.
Opera theatre has inspired that “wonder” as no other representation, right in a period that wanted to be astonished.
If Bibbiena can boast to be the Galli's birth place, the most illustrious stage designers family lived between 17th and 18th centuries, by OPENOPERA project, a precious combination between work and stage desinging coming from Baroque period, is reproposed.
Bibbiena district concentrated its cultural engagement in stage art and theatrical search and development for years. With Pier Luigi Pizzi becoming Bibbiena honorary citizen and with the setting up of "Galli Academy Foundation" a step forward has been taken.
In 1997 the reopening of Dovizi Theatre, restored and redesigned in Galli Bibiena Baroque style by architect Massimo Gasparon, represented a crucial moment for this project.
Since then, Bibbiena, considering “small theatre” as an important moment of improvement and comparison between different cultural expressions, has tried to boast a forgotten theatre type.
Small theatre gains a new function, overcoming periods of inactivity (as mere container) and financial straits, founding new creative spurs, becoming a privileged place for specific and innovative playbills, to study, to search for improvement and consequent young artists introduction..
Baroque period stands as a point of reference for historians, prolific and eminent art exchanges in musical comparisons among European cultures. Moreover 17th and 18th centuries operas after a fertile ground for “different” musical and stage possibilities, thanks to their declared mobility and internationality.
Next to opera aria definition and ratification (it allowed to divine musicals and singers to perform in vocal acrobaties, often rising public to fever pitch), there was stage designing, an other fundamental charming element for the audience. The architectural splendour which displayed an illusory reality by gifted stage designers was the only aspect facing the different arias in wonder searching.
Ferdinando Galli Bibiena, in particular, was the first true Master of this special type of theatre, because with angle or multiple fires perspective introduction, obtained the greatest visual concentration on singer. Audience's favourite performed in proscenium and stage designing, planned by Bibiena, became the protagonist of a fantastic, illusionistic vision: a sort of dream but the only possible reality for the audience..
Therefore, arias
and stage designing have represented a fruitful combination for almost two
centuries of music and theatre.
Pier Luigi Pizzi, a great contemporary stage designer, says:
“Stage designing is a basic element in 18th theatrical structure. A large part of show result is based on stage designer virtuosity, on the aptitude to astonish in a schematic code. Thus opera or drama ballet “places” are always the same and interchangeables as arias and “affections”. In order to surprise and to stun more and more the audience, a Baroque stage designer carries his fantasy and virtuosity beyond all limits: cars, perspective deceptions, trompe-d'œil, visible changes able to guarantee a dynamic energy rather then a non-existent dramaturgy”.
There is all stage wonderful repertory in Pizzi's words, just as a correspondence in Opera singers' virtuous repertory.
A WAY STARTED IN 1992 …
For years Bibbiena district has chosen stage designing and in particular the Gallis, the family of architects and stage designers, protagonists of XVII° and XVIII° centuries theatrical culture, as one of its favourite subjects.
In 1992 Bibbiena municipality, together with Lisbon Ancient Art National Museum, Tuscany Region and with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of National Heritage Culture and Environment, has organized the exhibition called “Wonderful Stages Pleasant Deceptions – Galli Bibiena”.
This exhibition has arrived in Bibbiena following its italian tour, from Lisbon Ancient Art National Museum which have prepared another one on original “Bibiena” sketches and prestigious tour in main North American museums.
As a consequence in 1995, there was an international meeting: “The Galli Bibiena, a dinasty of architects and stage designers” that ended in the publication of acts and subsequent anastatic reprint of Ferdinando Galli's “Directions to young students...” and “Directions of theoretical perspective…” first and second volume.
In 1997, after an accurate architectural restoration financed also by European Union, Dovizi Theatre was reopened staging Claudio Monteverdi's “Tancredi and Clorinda fight”; there were the ballet dancers Carla Fracci, Gheorghe Iancu and the soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci, under Pier Luigi Pizzi's direction, Sandro Volta's musical direction, Massimo Gasparon's stage designing.
Our municipality has collaborated with Galli Bibiena Foundation Academy since then, introducing itself as a leader in lyric production for small theatres involving a production project.
By the financial support of the Province of Arezzo, in January 1998, a vocational training course for “Assistant in theatrical preparation” was realized in F.S.E. field; this course resulted in "La Dori ovvero la Schiava Fedele" performance in Dovizi in January 1999, a musical drama by Antonio Cesti with Sandro Volta's superviosion and Massimo Gasparon's direction, stages and costumes.
Then in 1999-2000 a course “ theatre- work professions for touring company” was realized by Ministry of Labour financial support. Consequently two plays were performed in Dovizi Theatre: the first one a comical-mythological opera by Franz Von Suppè called "Beautiful Galatea", rhythmically translated by Gianpiero Taverna and directed by Angelo Savelli, the second was Haendel's "Tamerlano" with Sandro Volta supervision.
IN 2002…GRISELDA
In May 2002, with the performance of Antonio Vivaldi's “Griselda” by Apostolo Zeno's original libretto readapted by Carlo Goldoni, Bibbiena has promoted baroque opera return in small theatres to taste again feelings well-known to 18th century audience.
Moreover two theatres were chosen to re-create in the best possible way performing conditions of that period: one is Dovizi Theatre, built in 1842 but recently restored by Massimo Gasparon with an intervention inspired to Galli Bibiena's architectural and stage works, the other one is Cesare Corporali's Theatre, one of the smallest historical theatres in Umbria Region, built in 1786.
Panicale Municipal District together with Bibbiena, proposed to develop new forms of production in smaller theatres. Therefore the “Griselda” became a baroque symbol for theatre born as a perfect moment of search in Italian tradition. This theatre, conceived as a fantasy work of that period, gained a new popularity. Thanks to spectacularity and wonder singers and stage designing, succeeded in catching all European audience's attention, without distinguishing between the rich and the poor.
The "Griselda” allowed us to relive Baroque opera splendour in one of its utmost expressions. Besides in this work two Italian masters of 18th century like Vivaldi and Goldoni were put together. On this occasion “Griselda” was nationally performed for the first time in modern theatre: a way to discover a “Red Priest” 's masterpiece, celebrated for instrumental music, but still little known for its immense opera production.
AND SINCE
2003 …
The six staged performances of "Griselda" gained a considerable success with an enthusiastic audience which even outnumbered the available seats; although these two municipalities have borne heavy engagements they have understood that music and stage designing are more than winning combination which for “Openopera” project has become even more ambitious.
In 2003 two operas have been realized, properly prepared and planned to give small theatres stages the greatest improvement; at the same time two operas have been worldly performed for the first time, supported by an appropriate digital visive shooting and recording. The high quality and specificity of these projects succeeded in spreading and promoting a still forgotten heritage.
In order to improve that “wonderful” stage design world, the only one at national level, the Centre and the Museum about Stage designing studies, will be opened in Autumn 2004.
Thanks to Master Pier Luigi Pizzi's interest and collaboration, it will be established:
a) a
permanent museum with original stage designing
and sketches "from Galli Bibiena architects to contemporary stage designers";
b)
an
educational
centre where anyone can deepen specific subjects by:
· a stage designing data bank from Galli Bibiena architects to contemporary stage designers.
· An operas setting data bank. A collection of technical and visual documentation from different operas stagings in italian theatres. The Centre is a point of reference for anyone who wants to staged an opera, using again available stagings so as to promote a larger production of opera repertory in small theatres. In this field you could find also the playbills collection of all realized operas.