Jorge Takla / Recensioni

"In a festive atmosphere, last weekend on May 3, 4, and 5, 2024, "Carmen" returned to the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo, with all seven scheduled performances sold out. This production, which differs from the original, is set in the high fashion universe, where Carmen is a fashion icon also involved in the world of smugglers, placing the story around the late 1940s to early 1950s. Jorge Takla made a decisive contribution with his remarkable, meticulous, and emphatic direction, fully enhancing the voluptuous and passionate plot. The sets by Nicolás Boni are grandiose and function well with the lighting design by Mirella Brandi, and the costumes by Argentine Pablo Ramirez, both appropriate and luxurious, reflect the care taken in mounting the production and match Jorge Takla's vision. The choreography particularly stood out in the flamenco dances at the beginning of Act II and Act IV, receiving immediate and frenetic applause from the audience."

"Jorge Takla, alongside scenographer Nicolás Boni, costume designer Fábio Namatame, and lighting designer Ney Bonfante, created a dark "Rigoletto." The sets evoke the original setting of the story in an interesting manner. In the first act, the palace of Frederick II (whom Verdi is said to have inspired to create the Duke) appears majestic yet in ruins, fragmented; in the second act, the neighborhood of Rigoletto in Mantua also appears monumental, as do the imposing waters that dominate the third act's setting, disturbed by the storm in the sky preceding the murder on land, as Rigoletto describes the "night of mystery" that concludes the opera. The monumentality conveys the smallness of the human being, and in the ruins, the failure of an idea of civilization and a suggestive vision of the relationship with time—and there lies the overall proposal of the show, as the director says, to demonstrate that the issues raised by the opera remain current: sexual and moral harassment, corruption, sexism, social exclusion. As he previously proposed in Puccini's "Tosca," presented at the Amazonas Opera Festival in May, Takla's return to the past seems a reminder about the world we live in, of a country that imagines a supposed transformation from hatred, the individual prejudice that purports to be a collective desire, the aggressiveness that replaces public spirit. And of misogyny, which, as musicologist Ligiana Costa rightly notes in her text in the show's program, is one of the themes of the opera, showing women as victims of the male figure on various levels, whether through harassment or the protection of a possessive father."