In the labyrinthine library of a Benedictine monastery in northern Italy, a Franciscan brother is investigating a series of murders. Hooded monks, their habits arched in rope, sing in a mixture of Italian, German, Latin and old Greek. Cryptic clues slide through their lips, alluding to the fatal secrets of the library. Guglielmo da Baskerville, the brother, heads for a central desk, his fingers brilliantly parchment.
This medieval intrigue takes place not in a dark scriptorium but in the rehearsal rooms of the vast workshop complex of La Scala in Milan. The company is preparing The name of the teamA new “big opera” in two acts based on the first successful novel by Umberto Eco The name of the rose (1980). The play will be presented on April 27 at La Scala with a separate French version to follow at the Paris Opera in three years.
For the first opera interpretation of Eco's novel, La Scala brought together a creative stellar team. The partition of composer Francesco Filidei, which mixes a complex orchestration with the atmospheric Gregorian chant, was entrusted to the conductor Ingo Metzmacher, master of complex musical worlds. Damiano Michieletto, the most famous Italian director of his generation, promises a visceral medieval staging filled with bloody murders and ghostly appearances. The casting is led by the Lucas Meachem baritone (Guglielmo), the Soprano Mezzo Kate Lindsey (Son Novice, ADSO) and the Mezzo Daniela Barcellona in the role of contractual of the threatening inquisitor, Bernardo Gui.
The sprawling novel of condensation – 600 dense pages of secret symbols, a biblical analysis and a medieval mystery – in a three -hour opera was not an easy task. “This project was a dream, but I was terrified,” explains Filidei, 51, taking a break from rehearsals in a neighboring park. “There were times when I wondered:” What am I doing? ” »»
At the time of his death in Milan in 2016, at the age of 84, Eco was celebrated as one of the great intellectuals of his time, as well as for his semiotic theory only for his magazine columns and seven novels. The name of the rose – At first glance, a very readable medieval detective story – has become a global phenomenon, selling more than 50 million copies in several languages. Guglielmo and Adso's investigation reveals a poisoned copy of the second lost book of Aristotle's poetics, hidden by a blind librarian who judges its content that is too dangerous to reveal. The fiery destruction of the library was captured in a memorable way in the cinematic adaptation of Jean-Jacques Annaud in 1986.
However, under its accessible prose is a semiotic labyrinth. The novel is a network of literary allusions, theological debates of the 14th century and historical references, based on figures from Sherlock Holmes in William d'Ockham. Eco himself saw him as a literary game, a playful but scholarly puzzle that invites the reader to decode his layers of meaning.
Filidei underlines his commitment to the original, describing his opera as a “translation” rather than an adaptation. “We used all of Eco's sentences that we could … We aimed to recreate its language, as a result of its reflection process, as if the opera was one of the novels of Eco.” More than the mystery of murder, it is attracted by what he considers the central concern of the book: the search for identity. “The opera has many forces, but it is not the best medium for a story of detective,” he said.
Like the novel, the partition is multilayer, an immediately intelligible surface hiding several substrates, including references to Verdi, Strauss and Saint-Saëns. While the orchestra often plays slowly, with only one or two instruments supporting the singers, an exception is the representation of the first scene of a church entrance: an orchestral cacophonic tapestry evoking angels, satanic animals and the seven trumpets of the apocalypse. “It's huge, like Messiaen,” said Metzmacher during a rehearsal break. “It's really wild.”
There are no less than three choirs – including a refrain for children of 60 people – who sing variously on stage, out of the stage and on a raised curved medium. “We will need monitors to coordinate,” explains Metzmacher with obvious joy. “I love these challenges. The more people I have around me, the more I am excited. ”
The score is also a tribute to the Italian opera of the 19th century, with 21 characters given the tunes and recitatives. While most of the song is “traditional”, the grotesque salvatore of Roberto Frontali, has designed as a caricature of Buffo inspiration, parps and grunts. Gui, Adso and Ubertino are pants roles, allowing female voices. Three against -Ters add a greater timbral variety.
Milan is an appropriate location for the first of the opera. Born in Alessandria, in the northern region of the Piedmont d'Italie, Eco moved to the Lombard capital in the 1950s to work for the Rai national broadcaster. The city – The Center of Italy for publishing, art, theater, music and design – offered a dynamic creative scene. “Milan was one of the great European capitals of culture, attracting young intellectuals who found closed and suffocating Italian universities,” explains Riccardo Fedriga, university professor and former collaborator of the writer. “That's why Eco was there.”
Fedriga is expressed in the old house of Eco in the shadow of the castle of Milan, where I made arrangements to meet Carlotta Eco, the daughter of the writer. The walls of the vast apartment are bordered by imposing and infinite libraries and Newgarten-Gardian crying art. As Carlotta explains, Eco, in his main Milanese, would meet the artist Enrico Baj and the composer Luciano Berio, one of his closest friends, in the watering holes of the Brera district. “They dragged in bars,” she said. “My father would make the prefaces for the catalogs of artists, and they would give him their paintings in return.”
Following its publication, asks to adapt The name of the rose Flooded. Eco rarely granted and was initially “skeptical” of Annaud's proposal to make a film, known as Stefano Eco, his son, in a telephone interview. “He respected the film medium a lot but did not see it as a good match for this very complex and laminate book,” explains Stefano. In the end, Eco changed her mind after having more fully appreciated the unconventional approach to the French director of the narration.
Filidei, who admires Annaud's distillation of the complexity of the novel in its essence, has long considered adapting The name of the rose. He discussed the idea seven years ago with a German opera, although the project never materialized. Then, during the first locking covers, La Scala asked him to compose an opera based on an Italian novel. As the Paris Opera also approached it for a commission, the two theaters opted for a co -production, allowing Filidei to write Italian and French versions – just like the major operas of Rossini and Verdi.
First, Filidei needed the authorization of the heirs of Eco – Carlotta and Stefano Eco, and his widow Renate Ramge – which retains decisions to grant licenses for his work. Getting their confidence has taken time. “It was not automatic,” admits Filidei. “It was a long nuptial parade.”
While Eco was not an opera enthusiast, he was extremely interested in contemporary music, in particular the type produced by Berio. Filidei used “polished insistence” to gain family confidence, recalls Stefano. “It was a serious project … an intellectually stimulating challenge that – who knows – could have called on my father,” he said. “Having major theaters involved also makes your mind comfortable.”
The composer maintains that the real justification of the opera lies in the book itself. In a test on The name of the roseEco characterized the novel as having “an opera structure Buffa, with long recitatives and elaborate tunes”. He also revealed in interviews that Gustav Mahler's method of integrating disparate musical elements in his symphonies had influenced his approach to the novel. Filidei says that Eco strongly pulled popular 19th century French novels, Count of Monte Cristo Among them, inspiring his own decision to reference the Italian opera of the 19th century.
Filidei took a year and a half to develop the booklet, with regular meetings with collaborators to refine it. The result is a rigorously structured text. The account of seven days of Eco remains intact, but Filidei exchanges the original liturgical divisions for 24 scenes fixed in individual parts, each centered on a single note A semi-one moves from top to bottom compared to the previous one. “To create the musical world, I had to start with the structure,” explains Filidei. “It was like Eco, who said that he had spent a year sketching the monks and mapping the space.”
The staging of Michieletto is dominated by an octagonal “cathedral” suspended made from illuminated gauze bands which gradually descends to form the labyrinthine library. As the lights are switched, the monks arranged on the curved support behind disappear and reappear. We also see one of the inhabitants of the monastery who mortally stung by a mechanical scorpion, another drowned in a tank, extras in masks of colorful animals inspired by the medieval bestiary and a monumental polystyrene door from which the dark limbs.
Filidei says that he has not finished exploring the many mysteries of the book, noting that Eco said once he had written a prayer to say by Guglielmo that he took later. “I asked Stefano if this prayer still exists,” he says. “Maybe one day I can read it and integrate it into the French version of the Opera.”
April 27–May 10, Teatroallascala.org
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