BIANCA E FALLIERO

Melodrama in two acts by Giuseppe Felice Romani

Music by Gioachino Rossini.

Critical edition by the Rossini Foundation, edited by GABRIELE DOTTO

Conductor ROBERTO ABBADO

Director JEAN-LOUIS GRINDA

Settings, Costumes RUDY SABOUNGHI

Lighting designer LAURENT CASTAINGT

Cast

Priuli NICOLÒ DONINI

Contareno DMITRY KORCHAK

Capellio GIORGI MANOSHVILI

Falliero AYA WAKIZONO

Bianca JESSICA PRATT

Costanza CARMEN BUENDÍA

Ufficiale / Usciere CLAUDIO ZAZZARO

Cancelliere DANGELO DÍAZ

CORO DEL TEATRO VENTIDIO BASSO

Chorus Master GIOVANNI FARINA

ORCHESTRA SINFONICA NAZIONALE DELLA RAI

New production 2024

Click Here for Italian Version

“E se il destino

Ci volesse divisi ed infelici….” (1)

In 1820, in Milan under the Austrian government, Gioacchino Rossini presented the opera Bianca e Falliero. It was a public success with thirty-nine performances, yet the critics were very negative.

It is an old polemic. The eternal conflict between spectators and reviewers can be merciless. Just the time judges, organises the values, eliminates the dross of contemporaneity. Free from superstructures, later, the winner appears, and regularly, the public implacably defeats the haughty vanity of the envious and boring journalists.

This is what happened to the opera Bianca e Falliero in Milan. Time awarded Rossini and his music. The critics became “un venticello” dissolved under the implacable blows of the composer’s art.

A new production of Bianca e Falliero is performed at the 2024 Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro.

The director is Jean-Louis Grinda; the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Della Rai is conducted by Roberto Abbado. The singers are:

Priuli, Nicolò Donini

Contareno, Dmitry Korchak

Capellio, Giorgi Manoshvili

Falliero, Aya Wakizono

Bianca, Jessica Pratt

Costanza, Carmen Buendía

Ufficiale/Usciere, Claudio Zazzaro

Cancelliere, Dangelo Díaz.

The libretto by Giuseppe Felice Romani narrates the story of 1600’s Venice. Venice is already decadent. Romani intertwines four different personalities: the young Bianca, her father, Contareno. Bianca loves, and is loved in return, by the war hero General Falliero. But, Bianca has already been promised to Capellio by her father.

Bianca is brave, she must fight the sense of guilt instilled by her father and her heartbreaking love for the general.

Despite having to face three determined, powerful, quarrelsome men, Bianca is the decisive one, managing to break her father's pride and convince the illustrious suitor. In the happy ending, Bianca and Falliero can love each other freely: “la natura trionfò”. (2)

The modern side of the plot is Bianca, a woman who affirms herself.

Jean-Louis Grinda's direction is interventionist. He makes absolutist choices. The location is always Venice, with the doge and his aristocracy, but the 17th century has disappeared. Now, the story is adapted to an uncertain, ambiguous contemporaneity. The scene plays on this contrast to create a utopian setting. Therefore, the scenographic blocks move, turn, rise, fall, change like a transformer into mini stages to enliven the performance.

There is a further addition; an enigmatic and mysterious character. An elderly, sick woman. She is always accompanied by someone. She has never spoken, she simply observes, or she looks irritated. His meaning is perplexing. This woman is not in the libretto, so it is only the result of a bizarre direction.

Rossini's imposing music accompanies the text with vocal virtuosity, celestial harmony and a majestic chorus. It is the victory of the Milan public in 1820, Bianca e Falliero is a triumphant opera.

Two thoughts about the 2024 edition of the Rossini Opera Festival. The renovated auditorium arrives after years of work. However, it has an identical structure to the previous one: a sports hall. There is no creative interpretation, no architectural virtuosity, no elegant exegesis, or a national-popular exegesis. The steps are immense, uncomfortable, messy. The balustrade is annoying. A very dangerous stumble threatens the audience's physical integrity (forcing a steward to warn, one by one, of the danger).

Fortunately, there were few people present, so it was possible to move into more comfortable seat. Even from a distance, the view is excellent.

The many empty seats, or rather the countless empty seats, are a bad sign. Years ago, every performance was sold out; now the theatre is vacant.

What happened to the numerous buses of melomaniac parked in the streets adjacent to the theatre? And the Japanese and Korean melomaniac walking around the city waiting for the show?

(1) Bianca and Falliero, Act I, tenth scene

(2) Bianca and Falliero, Act II, last scene

Bibliography:

Bianca and Falliero with texts by Gabriele Dotto, Giovanni Carli Ballola, Alessandra Palidda and notes by Jean-Louis Grinda, Rossini Opera Festival