English

Teatro alla Scala, ''Quartett''

Milan

The viscount of Valmont and the marquise of Merteuil appear imprisoned in a minuscule interior without way of escape, because it is suspended in the air exactly at the middle of the stage.
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The background of the scene is constituted by a big Rear-projection screen made of RNO - Notturno film.
The two open walls, instead of giving breath to the environment in which the fierce struggle of the protagonists is developing, underline the impression of claustrophobia that surrounds Valmont and Merteuil when two gigantic characters observing them appear on the screen RNO - Notturno almost they were two canaries in a cage.
Or better, the protagonists are observed, as the composer Luca Francesconi explained, as if they were «... some bugs in a terrarium.»
The visionary power of the famous Catalan company La Fura dels Baus had the opportunity of expressing at its best with the gigantic video-projections. The composer Luca Francesconi defined the show, more than an opera, «... a multimedia experience.»
The opera uses of an original and complex orchestration. To the traditional orchestral formation set in the pit, directed by the Finn Susanna Mälkki, it plays in fact as a counterpoint a second and smaller orchestra, positioned more aloft and conducted by another director.To the two orchestras it is added a great choir that is placed outside of the theater in a place that is unknown to the spectators, whose song is transmitted to the hall with the employment of technological means.
Susanna Mälkki is «... the first woman to conduct an opera to the Scala. An important event», Luca Francesconi continues, «also because this whole dramaturgical construction reaches the end the woman, as a protagonist, in quite a shocking way. But, after all, my idea is that, perhaps it is a woman who will save us.»
Lyric opera
in twelve scenes and an exodus
Music
Luca Francesconi (1956)
Libretto
Luca Francesconi
from the homonym theatrical pièce by Heiner Müller, freely drawn from Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos
First night
Milan, Teatro alla Scala, 26/4/2011
Scenography
Alfons Flores
Costume design
Lluc Castells
Scenographical workshop
El Teler
Video
Franc Aleu
Light design
Marco Filibeck
Stage direction
Àlex Ollé, (La Fura dels Baus)
Staging
Teatro alla Scala of Milan
Season
2010/2011

See also ...

FTO - Tosca

Velvets

Rear-projection screens

Rear-projection screens

RNO - Notturno

Rear-projection films