LA MORT DE CLEOPATRE
LA DAME DE MONTE CARLO
ERWARTUNG

with

conductor John Axelrod

stage and lighting design Laurent Berger

costume design Luisa Spinatelli

production Spoleto57 Festival of 2Worlds

mimes

technical manager Ottorino Neri

assistant director Solène Souriau

assistant costume design Monia Torchia

piano master Eugenio Krizanovski

stage master Roberta Mori

lighting master Ermelinda Suella

production manager Maya Dimova 

technical management coordinator Daniele Di Battista

technical secretariat Silvia Preda

assistants technical manager Alessia Forcina, Giulia Chiapparelli

stage manager Fabrizio Pisaneschi

lighting supervisor Graziano Albertella

sceneshifters supervisor Paolo Zappelli

head sceneshifter Michele Colella

sceneshifters Leonardo Bellini, Generoso Ciociola, Alessandro Gobbi, Massimiliano Marotta, Fabio Pibiri

head electrician Simone De Angelis

lighting console operator Francesco Vignati

electrician Umberto Giorgi

phonic Luca Starpi

prop manager Patrizia Valentini

propman Maurizio Salvatori

costume shop supervisor Chiara Crisolini Malatesta

seamstresses Claudia Zampolini, Serenella Orti, Marian Osman Mohamed, Giuliana Rossi

costumes Brancato Costumeshop Milan

footwear Calzature Epoca

make-up and wigs Roberto Maria Paglialunga

scenography Scenography and Painting Laboratory of Festival of 2Worlds in Spoleto, Tecnoscena S.r.l.

scenography Technical Staff of Festival of 2Worlds

person in charge Claudio Balducci

stagehand constructor Enrico Calabresi

scenographic painters Moreno Bizzarri, Silvana Luti

sculptor Massimiano Albanese

assistant Edoardo Marcolini

lights Luce E’ S.r.l Florence

show business structures and services Atmo Divisione Gioform S.r.l.

pianos Angelo Fabbrini

trasports GBANG S.r.l.

remote lighting control E.T.C. Italia www.etcconnect.com

I love Opera. It is a unique art that has the power to transform space and time and comes into contact with our most intimate side, with our most hidden and secret emotions.

Berlioz, Poulenc and Schönberg composed three short Operas, a concentration of humanity. When I heard them for the first time, one after the other, I was in a state of shock, hallucination. I was speechless.

Cléopâtre , the lady of Monte Carlo and the woman in Erwartung are three tragic heroines; they are on the brink, wavering before the abyss.

But they are very different from each other.

I imagine them as the three stages of women, maturity, old age and youth, who existed in three different eras and territories.

La mort de Cléopâtre narrates the last few minutes of a queen’s life. A woman who had managed to withstand the invader using her beauty, making love her weapon. Now, for the first time, a man has remained indifferent, her charm has disappeared, she is defeated and dies.

In the passage towards her death, she will have to confront her past actions. For her meditation, Berlioz has created intense, heartwarming and profound music, that breaks completely with the splendor of the first half of the cantata.

This moment of transformation is what I want to stage. The instant when the woman who embodies power, after offering herself one last time to her people, enters the kingdom of dusk. Alone, with the memory of her dead ancestors, the tragedy penetrates to the heart and we suffer with her; in that moment, the queen is nothing more than a woman facing death.

La dame de Monte Carlo was composed by Poulenc from a song written by Cocteau for cabaret. This woman, not spared by life, has enjoyed the fruits of it before being abandoned, betrayed by her lovers and luck. Now a withering beauty, she has found refuge in the elation of gambling.

Tonight she has hit rock bottom, she has lost everything. In despair, she wanders into the night of Montecarlo.

I have chosen to represent this woman as if she were a number from a musical revue. The lady of the past, in equilibrium between the orchestra and the audience, becomes a tightrope walker. She sings, talks to the people of the night, the street sweepers, the homeless, a pair of lovers. She talks nonsense, she can no longer endure life. The Mediterranean Sea is very close: there she will finally find the longed-for rest.

With Erwartung, Schönberg projects the music towards modernity. It is an Opera which inaugurates the music of the 20th century. Based on the raving libretto of a young medical student, Marie Pappenheim, it is a real theatrical monologue.

A young woman is waiting in the woods at night.

Everything is familiar, and yet for this reason appears threatening. What was once reassuring, now suddenly frightens her. The woman talks to the moon, to the cricket and to the man whom she will find dead. The forest seems to be from a terrifying tale for children where unconscious dreams and nightmares intertwine with reality, deforming the perception of things until they become monstrous.

Schönberg tries to narrate the few seconds following a traumatic event, in thirty minutes. Many say that after having experienced an accident, they saw their life passing by before their eyes. As if that instant had the power to stretch, so as to embrace a lifetime.

This is the starting point for the representation of Erwartung. When the music starts everything has already happened; there has been an accident, a woman is wandering through the woods.

Like in a film by Lynch or Cronenberg, there is the wreck of the car still smoking, but she does not see it. She is occupied elsewhere, in her head, in her heart, chasing away what happened.

Is she already rewriting the story? Is she trying to forget what has just happened?

Was there a quarrel between two lovers at the wheel, an abrupt, involuntary gesture and the car went off the road? Or perhaps, was there a premeditated intention to kill the lover who betrayed her?

We will not answer these questions. The important thing is, the emotion conveyed by this young woman in the doldrums, struggling with the unbearable, trying to manage as she can. She is on the brink of madness and death, suspended over the void.

With Laurent P. Berger we have chosen to draw attention to the scenic arch of the Teatro Nuovo. It becomes the threshold of Cléopâtre’s tomb which we see flattened, and resembles a low relief ripped from a temple wall.

It becomes a screen, an abstract backdrop, on which Poulenc’s lady stands out in her number as tightrope walker.

It is a window through which viewers can see the woods, and spy on the woman of Erwartung.

Luisa Spinatelli has designed the costumes of the various eras, in an attempt to place these women in a contemporary vision.

The uniting of the three songs is beautiful and courageous. I wish to thank the Festival of Spoleto and in particular Giorgio Ferrara, for the trust he placed in me, by asking me to stage this intense and subtle passage, through the history of music of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

KATHRYN HARRIES - soprano

After studying for five years at the Royal Academy of Music and London University, in 1974 Kathryn Harries embarked upon a successful solo career as a recitalist and concert artist. Between 1977 and 1983 she presented the award-winning programme "Music Time" for BBC One Television and made her operatic debut in 1983 at Welsh National Opera as a Flower Maiden in Parsifal and as Leonore (Fidelio). Her repertoire comprises more than sixty roles including the Kostelnika(Jenufa),Kundry(Parsifal), Sieglinde (Die Valkyrie), Gutrune,(Gotterdamerung) Brangäne (Tristan und Isolde), Emilia Marty (Die Sache Makropulos), Didon (Les Troyens), Marie (Wozzeck), Carmen (Carmen), Judith (Bluebeard’s Castle), Donna Elvira(Don Giovanni) and Countess Geschwitz (Lulu). She has

performed at all the leading British opera venues including the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, the Edinburgh Festival and Glyndebourne Festival as well as at major houses in the USA (Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera and Los Angeles) and in Europe (the Palais Garnier, Chatelet and Bastille, Paris; Lyons; St Etienne; Orange; Hamburg; Stuttgart; Berlin; Amsterdam; Genoa; Rome; Bilbao; Oviedo; Liège; Salzburg; Bochum.) . Kathryn Harries is highly active as a concert singer, performing with the English Northern Philharmonia, the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, as well as in The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the BBC Proms, in Bremen and Lucerne with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Among performances of the recent past are Kostelnicka (Jenůfa), Mrs. Sedley (Peter Grimes), Massenet’s Herodiade, Kabanicha (Katya Kabanova), Valerie von Kant (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant), Stolzius’s Mother (Die Soldaten), Mrs. Grose (The Turn of the Screw), the Old Lady (Candide) and Emilia Marty (The Makropoulos Case).

Kathryn Harries was appointed Director of the National Opera Studio in London in 2009 and she is gaining an international reputation as a voice teacher and coach. She is vocal consultant for the new NI Opera in Northern Ireland and she regularly gives master classes in the UK and abroad. Kathryn has been appointed senior judge for the Lexus Song Quest in New Zealand in 2014.

Nadja Michael grew up near the city of Leipzig. She studied the Art of singing in Stuttgart and at the University of Bloomington/Indiana, USA.

She regularly holds guest performances at the most famous operas of the world, singing for the most renowned conductors of our time. She sang in the Arena di Verona, in Glyndebourne and at the Salzburg Festivals. She worked together with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra more than once, for example as Brangäne in Wagners „Tristan und Isolde" under the guidance of Daniel Barenboim and also under Zubin Mehta as Didon in Berlioz’ „Les Troyens".

In February 2007, she had a great success with Salome at the scala of Milan, followed by an equaly impressive success as Fidelio, at the state opera of Vienna.

After such successfull productions like Salome at the ROH Covent Garden London, she had a spectacular debut as Médée by Cherubini at La Monnaie in Brussels, 2008. Her performance as Lady Macbeth/VERDI which she held at the opening of the 08/09 season at the Bavarian State Opera of Munich was embraced by the audience and feuilleton.

Nadja Michaels step into the Belcanto-Repertoire as MEDEA in Medea in Corinto by GS Mayr at the Bavarian State Opera of Munich was a triumph. Near the end of 2010 she successfully sang the role of Lady Macbeth/VERDI together with Thomas Hampson at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

In march 2011, she had her debut playing Marie in Wozzeck/BERG under Daniel Barenboim at the State Opera Unter den Linden.

Nadja Michael was awarded many prizes for her various opera roles and artistic performances. Especially noticeable was the granting of the goldenen Stimmgabel von Arte for her performance as Salome in 2008 and a nomination in the category Opera with Salome at the Royal Opera House in London, fort he highly treasured SOUTH BANK SHOW ITV AWARD 2009.

Up to the year of 2014, the following parts are time-phased as new productions: Lady Macbeth in „Macbeth" by Verdi at the Metropolitan Opera New York, „Médée" by Cherubini at the Téâtre des Champs Élysées Paris, as well as Poppea in „L’Incoronazione di Poppea"/Monteverdi in Madrid and at the Théâtre du Châtele in Paris. Judith in "Blaubarts Burg"/Bartok at the Metropolitian Opera of New York.

Available on DVD: DON CARLOS (State Opera Vienna), SALOME (Scala di Milano, Royal Opera House Covent Garden London), TOSCA (Bregenzer Festspiele), MEDEA in Corinth (Bavarian State Opera Munich).

MEDEE/Cerubini (Théatre de la Monnaie/Brüssel) will be released.

Founded in Milan in 1993, the Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra of Milan is now an undisputed protagonist on the Italian cultural scene and not only, as testified by a Grammy Award, numerous international tours (the last one, in 2013 to London for the prestigious BBC Proms), the rich discography. Set up by Vladimir Delman and today led by Zhang Xian, the Orchestra was created to broaden the fruition of classical music even for the public that had never attended a concert hall; to provide a cultural and social service to the city and the country; to offer a job opportunity to young talented musicians. Having achieved the objectives, as evidenced by the quality and professionalism of its musicians and directors who have succeeded as regulars or guests, there are 200,000 spectators who attend over 250 concerts offered each year. This musical activity now takes place all year round and is rewarded more and more by the success of the public, the appreciation of the critics, the attention of the media. Among the many examples, the two concerts in the Sala Nervi in the Vatican for Pope Benedict XVI and the recent performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony conducted by Riccardo Chailly. The music is by all and for all: over the years the Verdi’s activity has been supported by the Symphonic Choir, the Barocca Ensemble, the Children’s Choir, the Amateur Orchestra "laVerdi for all" and by the Junior Symphonic Orchestra, for children under the age of 18. The Verdi Orchestra is the only Italian musical institutions that is the owner of its headquarters, the Auditorium of Milan Cariplo Foundation, built in 1998 and purchased in 2008.

Principal Conductor, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano "G. Verdi"

With an extremely vast repertoire, innovative programs and charismatic style of conducting, John Axelrod continues to stand out as one of the most interesting conductors on today’s scene and is requested by orchestras around the world.

After successfully completing his five-year office as chief conductor of the Luzerner Symphony Orchestra and music director of the Lucerne Theatre and being appointed Music Director of the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire (ONPL), in April 2011 John Axelrod was appointed Principal Conductor of the Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra of Milan.

Since 2000, John Axelrod has conducted over 150 orchestras, including the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester of Berlin, NDR Symphony of Hamburg, Gürzenich-Orchester, Gewandhaus Orchestra, Dresdner Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de Lyon, Royal Philharmonic of London, London Philharmonia, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI of Turin, Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice of Venice, Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo of Naples, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Danish National, Oslo Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Orchestra, National Philharmonic of Russia, Toronto Symphony, ORF Vienna, Salzburg Mozarteum, Camerata Salzburg, Warsaw Philharmonic, among many others.

His international profile as a guest conductor in the United States and Asia sees him engaged with the Washington National Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, Kyoto Symphony, National Philharmonic Orchestra of Taiwan and the Shanghai Symphony.

His operatic work includes new productions of Bernstein’s Candide at the Théâtre du Châtelet and the Teatro alla Scala. In recent seasons he has conducted Tristan und Isolde for the Angers/Nante Opera, Kehraus um St. Stephan of Krenek at the Bregenz Festival, the new productions of Kaiser von Atlantis, Rigoletto, Rake’s Progress, Don Giovanni, The Threepenny Opera, Idomeneo - all for the Lucerne Festival. In 2013 he conducts the Kammersymphonie Berlin in Der Kaiser von Atlantis by Ullmann in a special concert form at the Museum Topographie des Terrors. In February 2014 he conducts Eugene Onegin at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.

John Axelrod, who is a passionate advocate of new generation musicians, has worked with various professional youth orchestras, going on tour with the Schleswig Holstein Festival Orchestra at the Salzburg Festival, the Italian Youth Orchestra in Italy, the Accademia della Scala in Muscat, the North Deutsche Junge Philharmonie in Germany, the Iuventus Symphony in Poland and the Jeunesse Orchester Vienna in Austria.

As First Guest Conductor of the Sinfonietta Cracovia (2001-2009), John Axelrod has conducted group formation training in the most prestigious concert halls in Europe, worked with ARTE, and conducted the orchestra in Auschwitz for a film in memory of the Holocaust, produced by the BBC and winner of an Emmy Award in 2007.

John Axelrod regularly records the repertoire of both traditional and contemporary artists including Veronique Gens, Rachel Kolly d’Alba, Martin Grubinger, Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Dietrich Henschel, for labels such as Sony Classical, Warner Classics, Ondine, Universal, Naive and Nimbus. The next recording project Brahms Beloved comprehends Brahms’ complete symphonies with the Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra of Milan, combined with the Lieder by Clara Schumann for Telarc coming out in the 2013-14 season.

He graduated from Harvard University in 1988 and was trained under the Bernstein tradition. He studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Ilya Musin in 1996, and participated in the program of the American Symphony Orchestra League.

Frédéric Fisbach, who graduated from the National Superior Conservatory of Dramatic Arts (CNSAD), is an actor, film and theater director who works in France and abroad.

He took part in the creation of four contemporary operas at the Festival of Opera in Aix en Provence and the Lincoln Center Festival.

He was the director of the Studio Théâtre de Vitry sur Seine until 2006.

His first film direction is La pluie des prunes, a film produced by ARTE and filmed in Tokyo, for which he won the award for best film at the Festival Tous Ecrans.

He is an associate artist of the Festival d’ Avignon 2007, and was involved with the opening of the Centquatre of Paris.

In 2011, he directed Juliette Binoche in Mademoiselle Julie and participated in the filming of the show for France 2.

Last November, he acted in Elisabeth ou l’equité taken from the novel by Eric Reinhardt.

Laurent P. Berger, visual artist who graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (Paris), lives and works in Paris. He received a scholarship from the French Academy to study in Rome and resided at the Villa Medici in 2000. He has taken part in numerous exhibitions in France and abroad: the Whitney Biennial in New York in 2006, the MACBA (Barcelona) in 2007, the Museu Berardo (Lisbon) in 2008, the Marrakech International Biennial in 2009 and the Cerere Pasta Factory in Rome in 2012. Simultaneously he works in the field of entertainment, theatrical representation, opera and dance, in charge of the sets and lighting of various projects presented in Europe, America and Asia. He worked in Paris for the Théâtre de la Ville, the Théâtre du Châtelet, Théâtre National de la Colline, the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier - Comédie Française; in Germany, at the Deutsches Nationaltheater (Weimar), the Ruhr Festspiele (Recklinghausen), the Festspielhaus (Baden-Baden), Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin; in Austria at the Weiner Festworchen; in the United States at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Perseverance Theater in Juneau, Alaska; at the Almada Festival in Portugal, in Belgium at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, and in England at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London. In 1998 he became a member of the European Academy of Music at the International Festival of Opera in Aix-en-Provence. In 1999 he received the Lavoisier scholarship from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to work alongside Robert Wilson at the Watermill Center in New York; with whom he will carry out various projects in Europe, including the Aïda, presented in 2009 at the Rome Opera. In 2006 he meets director Frédéric Fisbach with whom he stages Feuillets d’Hypnos in the courtyard of the Palais des Papes of the Festival d’Avignon in 2007, Descendents of the Eunuch Admiral at the TRAM in Tokyo, Mademoiselle Julie at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center in 2010 then at the Festival d’Avignon in 2011 and Elisabeth ou l’équité at the Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris in 2013. In 2006, along with his brother Cyrille Berger, architect, he creates the Berger&Berger with which he develops a series of architectural projects. The two brothers win the Nouveaux Albums des Jeunes Architectes et Paysagistes (NAJAP 2007-2008); the prize of the Ministry of Culture. From 2008 to 2009 Berger & Berger reside in Centquatre (Paris) and in 2010 they are selected along with other international teams, by Kazuyo Sejima (SANAA) for the 12th Biennial of Architecture in Venice. They have participated in numerous international competitions and produced Notus Loci in France in 2012, the extension of the Centre International d’ Art et du Paysage Vassivière. They won the competition for the expansion project of the Lambert Collection in Avignon, which will be concluded in 2015. They are represented by Galerie Torri in Paris.

Stage and costume designer Luisa Spinatelli was born in Milan where she studied stage design at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera and where she taught design methodology for the Performing Arts.

She made her debut as the youngest stage designer in 1965 at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan with Francesca da Rimini with Carla Fracci, choreography by Pistoni. Being assistant to Ezio Frigerio, she had the opportunity to meet Giorgio Strehler with whom she had the good fortune to work and acquire the way of "doing theater" that has accompanied her throughout her working life. She carries out her professional activity alternating among Prose, Opera and Ballet. She has worked in Italy and abroad with directors and choreographers who have included her in many important shows.

In 1990 she won the Premio Quadrivio 1990, "for her great contribution to art being a competent and highly valued professional ‘interpreter’ of her role as a costume and stage designer who knows how to give each of her creations a touch of sophistication and authentic cultural content, mingled with rich creativity of unquestionable artistic value. Luisa Spinatelli, well-renowned, yet a person full of humanity and culture, qualities that make her an esteemed and original interpreter in this challenging field of culture".

In the prose sector we recall: La grande magia by De Filippo, directed by Giorgio Strehler at the Piccolo Teatro, 1985/86; L’Illusion by Corneille (costumes) at the Odeon in Paris, 1984; Faust part I-II by Goethe at the Teatro Studio 1988/1992; L’Isola degli sciavi by Marivaux at the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, 1994/95.

She made her debut as "first woman stage designer" at the Arena di Verona in 1976 with the Nutcracker.

In 1987 she also designed for large space opera with 1300 costumes for Aida under the direction of M. Bolognini at the Sphinx of Giza with scenes by Tito Varisco, then staged at the large Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Canada in 1988, and costumes for Carmen directed by Pugelli.

For the Teatro alla Scala she created the costumes for The Condemnation of Lucullus by Dessau-Brecht in 1973,

for Attila in 1975, for La forza del destino with scenes by Guttuso, for Andrea Chenier in 1982, for Adriana Lecouvreur by Cilea directed by Puggelli, sets and costumes for Fedora by Giordano directed by Puggelli in 1994 at the Scala, at the Royal Opera House London in 1994 and at the Lyric Opera Chicago in 1995 and costumes for Mazepa with Rostropovic-Dodin-Borovski again at the Teatro alla Scala in 1999.

For RAI 1 she designed the staging of two major events "Europe ... mon amour" in Piazza della Signoria in Florence in 1996 and "Fiore di pietra" in the marble quarries of Carrara in 1997.

In the field of ballet, a sector in which she specializes, Luisa Spinatelli has designed the sets and costumes for many shows and has won major awards: in 1989 she received the Positano Prize "Leonide Massine"; in 1999 she was nominated for the "Benois de la Danse" for Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky-Barenboim with choreography by Patrice Bart for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, she won the AKIKO TACHIBANA award in Tokyo with Raymonda by A.Maki as best show of the year in 2005.