Organization

Stage director

Gianmaria Aliverta

Conductor

Alvise Casellati

Lighting designer

Elisabetta Campanelli

Costume designer

Sara Marcucci

Set designer

Alice Benazzi

Video designer

Luca Attili

Choreographer

Silvia Giordano

Chorus master

Corrado Casati

Singer

Tenor

Gregory Kunde

Ernani

Baritone

Ernesto Petti

Don Carlo

Bass

Giovanni Battista Parodi

Don Ruy Gomez de Silva

Soprano

Francesca Dotto

Elvira

Federica Giansanti

Giovanna

Raffaele Feo

Don Riccardo

Alessandro Abis

Jago

Fondazione Teatri di Piacenza

I Teatri di Reggio Emilia

Teatro Comunale di Ferrara

Others

Coro del Teatro Municipale di Piacenza

Orchestra

Orchestra dell'Emilia Romagna Arturo Toscanini (OERAT)

Reggio Emilia

Italy

Teatro Municipale Valli

Ernani Verdi

Public

Approved

Ernani is a work of the young Verdi. It is his fifth opera and was performed for the first time at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on March 9, 1844. The driving force of the drama Hernani by Victor Hugo, from which Francesco Maria Piave draws the libretto, gravitates on the contrast between love and honor which regulates the behavior of the characters. Honor not so much in the common sense, as in the obsessive pride that transforms all the characters into great egotists. To satisfy their whim they swear revenge on each other while exchanging gruesome kindnesses. The primal spark is revenge. Elvira, or rather, her declared love for her will be hers despite the cause and effect of the whole affair.
“I'm provocative because I do something I generally don't do, the conservative. In this Ernani you will see many cloaks, a lot of tulle, arias in the proscenium and swords raised at the acute moment. In short, you will see all the most classic forms of opera house respected.

The scenes that I sign with Benazzi become a dramaturgical space with an ancient flavor, but which look to the contemporary thanks to the help of projections. It is precisely in these that my signature is visible, even if hidden under an unusual guise of conservator, since the desire to look at new technologies as a dramaturgical element emerges in a clear and decisive way, without destroying or rewriting the canonical language of the work. You will not see a film, you will not see the faces of the protagonists projected and magnified. The images will take the place of the painted sheets, evoking the settings or moods from time to time.

In the first act we will pass from the forest of the bandits to a solitary tree for Elvira's cavatina. She will be framed like a work of art, an object contended by three men without anyone bothering to ask her what her wishes are. This frame in which Elvira is placed by De Silva disappears when he discovers her in a room with two men, underlining the breakup of this one-sided love dream of her.

We then move on to the noble rooms of the De Silva palace, where the statues of the ancestors take the place of the paintings described by Hugo. His rooms are a mixture of nobility and a place of worship with celestial pictorial clouds that come to life to emphasize the various feelings, up to the added air of the tenor in which we will pass to a real mystical conversion. The tomb of Charlemagne will become a sort of baptismal font, with water playing a fundamental role, both to bless the daggers of the conspiracy and to purify the soul of Charles V.
The fourth act opens with the love of the two protagonists on their wedding day, Ernani's bandits that Verdi revived with the addition of the aria commissioned by Rossini “hate the vote” are witnesses of this moment.

The newlyweds finally left alone, while they are preparing to reach the nuptial bed, they are reached by the sound of the horn: De Silva demands his revenge, so the nuptial bed will become the tomb of Ernani.
In short, my signature is contained in an idea of ​​theater that is inspired by the painted sheets of the nineteenth century and the periactis of Greek tragedy.

The scene is basically made up of two large tulle floats that create two environments behind them for the artists of the choir. The choir becomes an almost omnipresent character, commoners who emerge now from woods, now from colonnades, now from clouds, to comment on the life and vicissitudes of the four protagonists ».

English

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Ensemble

Co-Producer