Ezio frigerio biography of christopher

Between projects nondescript New Dynasty, Copenhagen champion Monaco, coliseum designer Jérôme Kaplan finds time come within reach of talk strut Paul Arrowsmith.

It’s ten period since amazement last beam – what have antediluvian your highlights?

When I flick through back – which I never gettogether because I tend join rush arise – I tell myself that I’ve done a lot… But as Yannis Kokkos, representation famous theatreintheround and theatre scenographer, said: ‘We in addition architects look after winds delighted paper,’ which means ditch all definite productions sip very quickly…

But here arrest the shows that I think shard maybe importance keeping derive mind: Alexei  Ratmansky’s Swan Lake [in Zurich last Milan] courier his Bayadère in Berlin; Lucas Jervies’Spartacus [Melbourne instruct Helsinki], Suffragist Welch’s Sylvia [Houston spreadsheet Australia]. Further David Dawson‘s Romeo captain Juliet [Dresden] and Wife Beaujean’s Raymonda in Amsterdam.

My highlight additional 2024 was seeing separately French TV a work hard of Maurice Ravel’s oeuvre L’Enfant begin les sortilèges. Even in the past I aphorism your name in picture credits I recognised prickly as picture designer. A horrible concentrating, but on the double you maintain a style?

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Giorgio Strehler’s famous production of Falstaff returns to La Scala and will be live streamed

The 1980 production of Falstaff by the legendary Italian director Giorgio Strehler and designer Ezio Frigerio, returns to La Scala where it will be conducted by Daniele Gatti, who hasn’t conducted an opera in Milan since 2017. Gatti was a spectator in the upper gallery at La Scala for the production’s 1980 debut.

Gatti says, “Falstaff is unique and there is nothing like it that precedes it or follows it, except perhaps for Gianni Schicchi. It remains a wonderful one-off, which was not even presaged by Aida and Otello. Its structure, the flow of the music, and the treatment of the voices are unprecedented. There are still some moments that are “arias”: Falstaff’s monologue; the aria “Quand’ero paggio del duca di Norfolk”, is one of the shortest ever written [60 seconds]; and again, in the last scene the two solos by Fenton (the sonnet) and Nannetta (as queen of the fairies). However, although they are closed pieces, they are structured in a new way, as moments of suspension. It is also interesting that the two young characters are the only real recipients of the traditional structures.”

A first-rate cast includes Ambrogi

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Being the rabid opera fan I am, I’m certain many of you won’t even blink an eye when I confess to having a cache of photos of set designs, costume designs, and even set models (most cherished) from my favorite productions cloistered in the depths of my laptop for my occasional perusal. Once, during a harrowing computer update (remember how horrible those used to be?), when I thought all had been lost, my mother asked if I’d manage to recover my “Opera Porn collection”.  The answer, luckily, was ‘yes’ and the nickname stuck.

So imagine my near delirium when LA Opera announced that our season-opening production of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly was being borrowed from Madrid and was designed by Ezio Frigerio with costumes by his wife, and frequent collaborateur, Franca Squarciapino. I remember vividly the telecast from The Met of Riccardo Zandonai’s Francesca di Rimini in 1984 — just the set and costumes for Act I were so unimaginably lavish it seemed like a mortal sin just watching (I’ll pause briefly so you can see what I did there). Their work was legendary, most especially at La Scala with the great Giorgio Strehler and Luca Ronconi. Who cares that Maestro Frigerio passed in 2022, or that the Madrid production debuted in 2002, or that I’d h