Teatro alla Scala Roadshow 2019

Die Tote Stadt - Teatro alla Scala © Marco Brescia & Rudy Amisano i

Details

28 May 2019

Milan / Italy

Roadshow

After last year's event that celebrated the maestro Claudio Abbado, Teatro alla Scala presented the roundtable "Die Tote Stadt - femme fatale fra reincarnazione e desantificazione" (Die Tote Stadt - femme fatale between reincarnation and desantification). Organised by Franco Pulcini, Editorial Director at Teatro alla Scala, the conference took place in the Ridotto dei Palchi "Arturo Toscanini" on the occasion of the première of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's "Die Tote Stadt".

Three exceptional panellists discussed a lyrical masterpiece that was often left out by the greatest opera’s tradition, yet worth to be brought back to stage. Professor Marco Modenesi from the University of Milan, music critique and musicologist Giangiorgio Satragni and psychoanalyst Luigi Zoja were able to examine Korngold’s artwork through an interdisciplinary approach ranging from literature and composition to psychology.

“Die Tote Stadt"’s story stems from Georges Rodenbach's novel Bruges-la-Morte, translated first in a theatrical version, Le mirage, and finally in the four-handed libretto written by Eric Korngold and his father Julius, an authoritative music critic at the time, under the pen name of Paul Schott. In the passage from the novel to the play, two characters are added (the protagonist's friend and his housekeeper) together with a dream scene in which the dead wife appears to the man. But it is in the transition from the play to the libretto that the dream aspect predominates in two of the three parts of the work”. Renato Verga for Backtrack

Therefore, "Die Tote Stadt" appears like an oneiric opera: in a dreamlike atmosphere, a psychic theatre is created, where the characters represent the different elements of the author’s psyche. As a result of this Teatro alla Scala’s Round Table, “Die Tote Stadt” proves indeed to be a majestic work, the object of an interdisciplinary symposium between specialists from different fields.

To learn more about “Die Tote Stadt” at Teatro alla Scala, click here .