ABSTRACT

The theatre of the twentieth century has associated experimentation on oneself in search of new languages, making it problematic to frame a case like Maria Callas where innovation matures within a “traditional theater” which is strengthened by it.
The essay shows that the interpretation of this actress-singer constituted a theater within theater and that this theatre shared the reformist demands of 1950s and has supported contemporary theatrical experiences and re-theatralized the world of opera, thus developing the ability to intervene, not only on vocal techniques and the interpretation of the part, but also on the contexts and formats of the artistic operation. Hence the polymorphic, creative and unstable character of Callas’s concerts, which, as far as it was possible to deduce from the audiovisual recordings, are never made up of pure and simple sequences of vocal pieces, but are defined by dramaturgies of the event that adapt to the concert modalities the functions of interpreting. I’m talking about playing music, relationships with space, empathy with the public and the fragmented confrontation with the part, which, in this context, is produced and suspended in relation to each single performance, gradually establishing a chain of metamorphosis that objective the symbiosis between the lyric artist and his repertoire. Experimenting with formats and interpretative variants, the concert activity of Maria Callas has avoided the stiffening of the performances always equal to themselves, focusing on the return of the sense expressed by the music: sense that can be picked up by singing or stubbornly escaping, and that, in any case, is different from time to time because the way it is grasped and manifested through the person is different.

 

BIOGRAFIA

Gerardo Guccini è Professore di Drammaturgia al DAMS dell’Università degli studi di Bologna. Nel 1995 ha fondato con Claudio Meldolesi la rivista “Prove di Drammaturgia” che attualmente dirige. Ha dedicato diversi studi al teatro di narrazione curando, tra l'altro, i numeri monografici di ‘Prove di drammaturgia’ Per una nuova performance epica (2004), Ai confini della performance epica (2005) e il volume La bottega dei narratori. Storie, laboratori e metodi di Marco Baliani, Ascanio Celestini, Laura Curino, Marco Paolini, Gabriele Vacis, Roma, Dino Audino Editore, 2005. Si è occupato inoltre di teatro d’opera scrivendo diversi saggi su volumi e riviste tra cui Verdi regista: una drammaturgia fra scrittura e azione, in JeanJaques Nattiez, Enciclopedia della musica. Storia della musica europea, Torino, Einaudi, 2004; La regia lirica, livello contemporaneo della regia teatrale, in ‘Il castello di Elsinore’, 2010. Dal 2018 è Responsabile Scientifico del Centro La Soffitta del Dipartimento delle Arti (Università degli Studi di Bologna)

gerardo.guccini@unibo.it

 

 

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