Tutto nel mondo è burla

Author:

by Opera Charm Team

February 10, 2024

Production Fondazione Teatro Regio Di Parma

Music | Giuseppe Verdi

Text | Arrigo Boito after The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV by William Shakespeare

Conductor| Giampaolo Bisanti

Director | Jacopo Spirei

Choir director | Nikolaus Webern

Costumes | Silvia Aumonino

Lighting | Fiammetta Baldiserri

Sir John Flastaff | Pietro Spagnoli

Mrs. Alice Ford | Carolina López Moreno

Mistress Quickly | Marianna Pizzolato

Mrs. Meg Page | Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur

Ford | Simone Piazzola

Nannetta| Francesca Benitez

Fenton | Julio Pelligra

Pistola | Patrick Bolleire

Bardolfo | Pierre Derhet

Dr. Caius | Alexander Marev

Orchestra, choir and technicians | Opéra Royal Wallonie-Liège

” Malice and revenge go hand in hand when women play a vain seducer “

Created in 1893 to a libretto by Arrigo Boito after Shakespeare, Falstaff is Giuseppe Verdi’s last opera. It was the composer’s last foray into the world of comedy, with one unsuccessful exception (his second opera Un giorno di regno, which failed both critics and the public). Falstaff depicts the madcap day of a series of colourful characters, supported and told through subtle music that is the sum total of Verdi’s many innovations. In this production, which premiered at the Teatro Regio in Parma in 2017, director Jacopo Spireidrawls a gritty portrait of Sir John Falstaff in opposition to what society expects of him, refusing to hide or give up what makes him who he is. With sets by Nikolaus Webern, costumes by Silvia Aymonino and lighting by Fiammetta Baldiserri, the production is set in an English suburb of the 1950s, whose small houses and gardens play host to the characters’ wild antics. After a highly successful production of Rusalka, we will welcome back our Musical Director Giampaolo Bisanti to the baton, for this work that he has already conducted in 2013 at Iesi and at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2021 and 2022.

“In Falstaff, Verdi, a composer on the threshold of his eighties, and Arrigo Boito, a poet of almost fifty, tackle the theme of love in a very different way from previous works, by reasoning about the relationships between the sexes, conditioned by lies and deceit. Tutto nel mondo è burla (Everything in the world is a joke), it is better not to take anything too seriously… And it is precisely the famous final fugue, characterised by almost grotesque intervals, that underlines the ambiguity of the term burla, with its sense of mockery: a final escape that appears as Verdi’s sarcastic commentary on life’s disillusions” – Giampaolo Bisanti said.

Falstaff will be played by the great Pietro Spagnoli, alongside Marianna Pizzolato (Mrs Quickly), Simone Piazzola (Ford), and new roles for Carolina López Moreno (Mrs Alice Ford), Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur (Mrs Meg Page),Francesca Benitez (Nannetta), Giulio Pelligra(Fenton), Patrick Bolleire (Pistola), Pierre Derhet(Bardolfo) and Alexander Marev (Caius).

The intention
Falstaff is an old man navigating a world obsessed with the future, in which youth is an absolute value. Falstaff is a straight-talking man in a world where appearances reign supreme. Falstaff is fat in a world where thinness is the norm. Falstaff shatters the conventions of bourgeois society and upsets its balance. He embodies a quest within a character who sees his world collapsing but stubbornly refuses to withdraw from the game, who wants to prove that he is still there, still capable of seducing, deceiving and mocking. He confronts us with our own mediocrity and pettiness, only to sweep us off our feet in a fit of laughter.

DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE A L'OPÉRA DE PARIS

October 2024

OPERA CHARM TEAM

PREMIERE OF ‘DON CARLO’ AT WIENER STAATSOPER

September 2024

Opera Charm Team

Alice Lechner

Alice Lechner comes from a music-loving family. Her first encounter with the opera universe was at the tender age of six. The grandeur of the stage productions and costumes, the backstage chatter, and last, but definitely not least, the music left her in awe, beginning with Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The overall feeling that opera awakens in anyone who gets a glimpse into this part of artistic eternity, that each and every day passes the test of time, was what drew her to stay and be a part of this world. The Opera House of Brașov became her second home, and the people who worked there were her second family.

Since then, Alice has devoted her spare time to maximising her musical knowledge through instrumental studies, studying both piano and violin for a short time. In the following years, her number one passion stepped out of the limelight and graciously gave way to Law Studies.
Since 2018 she has been studying Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Her passion for opera, even if it is no longer her top professional priority in terms of career, it has most definitely become her priority during her free time. Wanting to experience the best of both worlds and extend her musical horizons, she regularly attends opera performances throughout Romania and abroad.
With OPERA Charm Magazine, Alice aims to nurture her creative side to help it flourish and bloom and to discover, alongside the magazine’s readers, the fascinatingly complex world of opera.

Currently, she is an LL.M. in Business Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Oana Zamfir

Oana Zamfir is a second year MA student at the “George Enescu” National University of Arts, at the Department of Musicology.

She studied violin for 12 years at the “Stefan Luchian” High School of Art in Botosani, later focusing on the theoretical aspects of music. In 2019 she completed her bachelor studies in Musicology as a student of the National Academy of Music “Gheorghe Dima” in Cluj-Napoca. Her research during 2018-2019 brought to the forefront elements of the archaic ritual within works of composers who activated during the communist period, giving her the opportunity to start a research internship at the “Carl von Ossietzky” University in Germany. In this context, she recorded conversations with members of the Sophie Drinker Institute in Bremen, and had access to documents directly from the Myriam Marbé archive.

Since 2019 she has been a teacher of Music Education and Theoretical Music Studies, making full use of interactive methods in the musical training of students and working, at the same time, with the children’s choir founded in the first year of her activity.

Her interests include pursuing a degree in interior design in 2020.

Alexandru Suciu

Alexandru Suciu inherited his passion for art growing up in a family of several generations of musicians. He began his musical studies at the “Augustin Bena” School of Music in Cluj, where he studied piano and guitar. Even though his main study direction was philological, his passion for music prevailed. He began his academical journey at the Faculty of Letters of the “Babeș-Bolyai” University, studying Comparative literature and English. He continued by studying Opera Singing at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy. He also graduated the Musical Education section, followed by Artistic Directing at the Musical Performing Arts department.

His multidisciplinary education opened the doors towards research, which is seen both through his participation in national and international conferences and symposia, such as the Salzburg Easter School PhD-forum, organized by the Salzburg Universität or the Silesian Meeting of Young Scholars, organized by the Institute of English at the University of Silesia, as well as the collaboration with Opera Charm Magazine.

During his student years, he won several prizes, including the Grand Prize at the “Paul Constantinescu” National Musical Interpretation Competition, the Romanian Composers and Musicologists’ Union Prize at the same competition, the First Prize and the Schubert Prize at the “Ada Ulubeanu” Competition.

He further developed his artistic skills by specializing in courses and masterclasses held by personalities such as Vittorio Terranova, Giuseppe Sabbatini, Marian Pop, Ines Salazar, Riccardo Zanellato, Paolo Bosisio, Valentina Farcaș and Manuel Lange in contexts such as the Internationale Sommerakademie für Operngesang Deutschlandsberg, Corso Internazionale di Canto Lirico I.M.C. Licata or the Europäische Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst Montepulciano. Besides his activity on-stage, he currently teaches Opera Singing Didactics, and Pedagogical Practice within the Department for Teacher Education and Training at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy.

Cristina Fieraru

Cristina is a 24 year-old Romanian soprano & a student at the National University of Music Bucharest, where she pursues the MA program in Vocal Performance.

She made her debut in Pamina from “Die Zauberflöte” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at only 19 years old at the Bucharest National Opera House, as a member of the Ludovic Spiess Experimental Opera Studio. Over the years she made her debut in roles such as Contessa d’Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Mimì & Musetta (La Bohème), Alice Ford (Falstaff), Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte) in her university’s opera productions.
Her passion and experience extends in the field of choral music, too.

She has been part of our dream team since the fall of 2021. For a good period of time she took care of OPERA Charm’s social media and took you on the monthly journey through the history of opera through our Legends rubric – and a few times through the Theaters around the World rubric.

Her little soul rubric – from 2021 to present – is definitely the Conductors of the Future, where, every month, she gives you the chance to meet a young star of the world of conducting and, of course, to find out what’s the most charming feature of opera in these artists’ views.

BIANCA L. NICA

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