La Cenerentola
Teatro Alfonso Rendano Cosenza 2008
LA CENERENTOLA
ovvero la bontà in trionfo
melodramma giocoso by Gioachino Rossini
libretto di Jacopo Ferretti
direction Roberta Cortese
conduction Roberto Zarpellon
scenes Simona Ferrari and Vittoria Papaleo
costumes Andrea Priori
with: Gianna Racamato, Rosaria Buscemi, Pamela Lucciarini, Alessandro Luciano, Carlo Agostini, Abramo Rosalen, Luca Tittoto
For this production of La Cenerentola I took inspiration from a detail at the beginning of the opera: the fact that when Alidoro, disguised as a beggar, asks for alms at Don Ramiro’s house, Angelina secretly gives him coffee. Not for nothing, since Ferretti’s plot is set in Salerno.
So I moved the story just slightly, to Naples – where drinking coffee is a ritual – between the two World Wars. The setting is a dilapidated mantion on the verge of being abandoned, with all furnitures already covered up with dust sheet. I then ‘transferred’ then the rotation mechanisms of the coffee grinder to all scenery pieces, which are mounted on wheels.
I also added a silent character to the story: the man sipping his coffee in the box next to the stage, to whom Angelina and Ramiro reveal their most intimate secrets, is a tribute to the Neapolitan playwright Eduardo De Filippo and the discourse about coffee in his play Questi Fantasmi.
photos © Gaetano Gianzi / sketches © Simona Ferrari & Vittoria Papaleo
