The director of the Puccini Festival opposes the director’s decision to stage the opera in France in 1968. “I don’t want to be a part of the visual chaos of a raped author”
you rape Puccini’s bohemian and I run it blindfolded. The master’s provocative decision caused a stir Albert Veronesi that on the evening of July 14 he walked blindfolded on the stage of the Gran Teatro Puccini in Torre del Lago. Addressing the audience, he explained: “I don’t want to see these scenes“. And it was controversial. At the heart of the opera culture scandal is the film version of “La Boheme” signed by French director Christophe Gayral. Rather than reproposing the classic setting of Puccini’s text in France in 1830, Gayral wished to “update” it by setting it in France in May 1868. “The young people of 1968, like today, were looking for certainties about their future,” Gayral told Avvenire. “1968 seemed to me the ideal context, also because the events of La Bohème are already part of a political framework, the 1830 revolution, Les Trois Glorieuses in France, and our bohemians are artists who shape the society in which they live, question.”
Veronesi has a completely different opinion In addition to conducting the orchestra blindfolded, he has also been director of the Puccini Festival for 25 years. “I made this decision because this scenography and this direction have nothing to do with the work of the maestro,” explained Veronesi Tirreno during the break of the premiere. “I have decided to continue to chair it because it is my institutional duty to do so as President of the Puccini Celebrations Committee. While Gayral is a great director, his choices are not consistent with Puccini’s masterpiece.” Albert Veronesi – Remember – this is it Son of oncologist Umberto and having previously run for the Pd in the 2020 Milan municipal elections, while running for mayor of Lucca in 2022 third pole Finally, he recently ran in February 2023 instead brothers of Italy The centre-right candidate Fontana won the regional elections in Lombardy.
However, the public does not seem to have liked Veronesi’s blind solution. Some “fools”, some “shame”, some “fools” have flown, but the master went on undeterred. Many immediately recalled that the undersecretary for culture was the undersecretary for culture on July 6 during the press conference Vittorio Sgarbi to contest the new production of Bohème with which the Festival opened the calendar of celebrations of Puccini’s 100th birthday in 2023. Sgarbi was the first to say during the press conference “This direction rapes Puccini’s masterpiece” and then he had asked Veronesi not to stage the opera. In any case, the conductor who was present replied to the Undersecretary of State and promised, as Tirreno claimed, “to invent something”. Veronesi then came on stage blindfolded, registered the dispute and finally officially published a press release. “It is a difficult but necessary decision in order not to be forced to see scenes that present facts, ideas and provocations that depict violence against Puccini’s world and depict another rape of a work of art by a director who believes Puccini to do so brings ideas to fruition.” “It’s not his place to say it,” explains Veronesi.
“I make it clear that these are not for political reasons. Art is free and can express any ideology: but with the right authors. I am ready to stage Luigi Nono with a totally communist scenography, as I have done many times in the past. It’s not the communist symbols in Gayral’s direction that bother me. But I can’t help but emphasize that the French 1968s and communism have nothing to do with Puccini. Puccini can and must be interpreted, but with respect for his time, his ideas and his dramatic idea. “Music, and explicitly musical values, are now being massacred by the arrogance of a director who expresses his own ideas as opposed to Puccini’s.”
Finally, the meaning of the bandage: “A blindfold means I’m in charge, I’m still the chairman of the celebrations, but I don’t want to partake in the visual chaos of an author, Puccini, being raped. It also signifies the blindfold, the symbol of the obligation for orchestra conductors not to see or participate in the theatrical event, a breach theaters impose to prevent the creation of a collaboration between conductor and director to create a complete performance. The blindfold symbolizes that here, as in most theaters around the world, the director is seen as a timekeeper and is unable to express a vision that extends to the theater in the round.”