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Teatro Regio di Parma, ''La damnation de Faust''

Parma

Hugo de Ana settles on the stage a big elliptic basin interposed among a big Rear-projection screen RTE - Temporale and a backdrop made of BRL - Rexor tulle, silver colour, the closed the whole proscenium.Visionary projections with a really powerful visual impact overlapped or alternated on the Rear-projection screen, on the tulle backdrop and on the concave fund of the basin, in a kaleidoscopic sequence of cross fadings of cinema style and in a overlapping of levels and of symbolisms that for three hours and half created a hallucinated dizziness, an upsetting delirium, an infernal and surreal nightmare that shook and thrilled the public of the Teatro Regio.
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Projections on the BRL - Rexor tulle backdrop.The interpretation that the Argentinian director almost overlapped to the masterpiece of Berlioz didn't left indifferent not even the totality of the critics. «It is a lot more than an installation. It is a gigantic work of total art. The scenographical installation has the Nine hundred most scheming experiments originality, for instance those by Depero for Le chant du rossignol. The stage direcion uses different techniques, included the cinema. The filmed sequences don't almost circumscribe scenes impossible otherwise to be realized, as the Corse a l'abime, neither they illustrate the antecedents. They are an integral part of the show. They collaborate to the visual transposition of the music.»Giancarlo Landini, from L'opera, n. 214, page 8.
Invisible but fundamental the function developed by the black Stage masking made of COS - Oscurante molton on the stage of the Teatro Regio.The whirlwind of lights and projections on the backdrop made of silver BRL - Rexor tulle in fact, in order to be totally effective, had the need to be contained and neutralized with discretion.
The projection in transparency on the big BRL - Rexor tulle backdrop of the names of the elements (terra, aqua, aer, ignis) whose union, according to Empedocles, originated the birth of the things, and whose separation determines the death, in a process of continuous transformation and becoming (calidum / frigidum, humidum / siccum) that will stimulate the studies of the Greek-Alexandrine alchemy and, very later, of that medieval. The elements circumscribe the orbits of the planets, here put as a symbol of the whole universe.
Projections on the BRL - Rexor tulle backdrop. «Half way among a pilgrim - the romantic Wanderer - and a tourist, Faust arrives in scene with a suitcase and helps to make the stage a surreal place that, for the heterogeneity of the elements, remembered us the mixture of sacred and profane objects, religious and blasphemers that can be observed in the house museum of Salvador Dalí in Figueras.»Giancarlo Landini, from L'opera, n. 214, page 9.
It is the same Hugo de Ana to reveal, in an interview, one of the iconographical roots of his stage interpretation. «It's important the point of departure. In Faust of Gounod that point was the square, with some consequent representations as the mirror, the crystal... For Berlioz instead everything sprang out of the idea of the circle, that allowed me to develop the show with an almost mathematical sequence, with a rigor that belongs to the same music written for La damnation. [ ... ] I created a visual run that departed from this idea of the circle in which the terrestrial element is represented.»From At the beginning there was the circle. A talk with Hugo De Ana, by Alessandro Taverna.
Projections on the BRL - Rexor tulle backdrop.«
Méphistophélès and Brander. «It is a new-baroque day-dream that discloses the affiliation of the director to the Spanish culture, also for that opening, I would say continuous, to the kitsch and to underline the aspect of the vulgarity. It celebrates its apotheosis in the chanson Certain rat, dans une cuisine tuned up by a clown version Brander that shows the buttock to the public. Or in the mask of Méphistophélès, in the disordered gestures of this prince of the evil.»Giancarlo Landini, from L'opera, n. 214, pages 8 and 9.
Légende dramatique in four parts
Music
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)
Libretto
First night
Monte Carlo, Théâtre de l'Opéra, 18/2/1890

Scenography,
costume design,
light design,
stage direction
Elaboration and projection virtual scenographies
Mattia Metalli
Sergio Metalli
Choreography
Leda Lojodice
Scenographical workshop direction
Franco Venturi
Technical direction
Luigi Cipelli

Staging
Teatro Regio of Parma
Season
2006-2007

Materials used in this production

ASL - Light Sceno

Sheer muslin

BRL - Rexor

Scrim and bobbinet fabrics

COS - Oscurante

Duvetyne and blackout fabrics

HSE - Tempesta

Silks and satins

Hugo de Ana

Some Masters

RTE - Temporale

Rear-projection films

Stage maskings

Acoustic curtains

Information on data processing