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The Florentine Straw Hat by Nino Rota in Florenze


Nino Rota:
IL CAPPELLO DI PAGLIA DI FIRENZE
(The Florentine Straw Hat)

The Florentine Strawhatt. Opera by Nino Rota. Photo Marco Borrelli

Florence, Italy
Teatro Comunale
2013 december 5th

Direttore, Andrea Battistoni
Regia, Andrea Cigni
Scene e costumi, Lorenzo Cutuli

Review by Fabio Bardelli, Photos: Marco Borrelli

Composer Nino Rota wrote Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (The Florentine Straw Hat), his best known opera, in 1945, but this delightful work was staged for the first time only in 1955, with great success

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. The libretto, written by the composer himself together with his mother, Ernesta Rota Rinaldi, from an amusing play by Eugene Labiche, is structured as scenes, duettos, concertatos illustrating the light plot (a straw hat has been eaten by a horse, with the following events and misunderstandings).

The Florentine Strawhatt. Opera by Nino Rota. Photo Marco Borrelli

Rota’s musical language and also of this opera, even if it was written in 1940-1950 years, is quite tonal, and the musician was constantly reproached for this, as if tonal language was something definitively overcome by musical, stylistic and formal twentieth century events and language. The accusation of not following the musical language of the1900s Rota always led him to be considered as a second rate musician.
Considering the liveness and fluency of this music we must admit that Rota’s language is always agreeable and his compositive skill really great
. His models, in this particular case of Il cappello di paglia di Firenze, are operetta, opera buffa and french vaudeville, mixed with a great sense of theatre
. He doesn’t look for a particular psychologic depht or evolution for his characters, everything is light as a sparkling wine
.

The Florentine Strawhatt. Opera by Nino Rota. Photo Marco Borrelli

Rota was a subtile and curious musician, and in his music we can perceive the many humours of contemporary and previous music, almost with quotes from other composers, always rendered with sharp spirit and intelligence.
With regard to the plot, the libretto and its stage effectiveness, first of all we must praise Nino Rota and his mother, who wrote a little jewel both for its language and its theatrical style, surely coming from French theatre (Labiche, Feydeau), operetta and vaudeville.

 

The Florentine Strawhatt. Opera by Nino Rota. Photo Marco Borrelli

It’s easy to have fun with this opera full of humor and with perfect mechanisms, specially if the staging is lively and amusing like this one by Andrea Cigni.

The scene is the same all along the opera, a climbing floor representing a view of Paris, city where the plot takes place, and just from many trap doors of the floor the various characters magically come out, like from Mary Poppins’ bag. As furniture, there are multicoloured posters and few other elements. A really excellent staging, I hope it will be performed again elsewhere, so that also other audiences may see what a skilled team can create when the budget is limited but there are ideas and creativity
.

The vocal cast is well matched, all the singers made a good ensemble work together with the conductor, young Andrea Battistoni, who made the orchestra play with rhythm and many colours.

The only small reproach one could do to him, is that he seems to take too seriously the light-hearted score.
Any of the singers stands really out from the others, but we must remember the global property of tenor Filippo Adami as Fadinard, a not very easy role that was even sung by first class singers such as Juan Diego Florez.
The other singers were of an average level but on the whole acceptable.
Scenes and costumes by Lorenzo Cutuli were very amusing and witty.
At the end, the audience tributes a warm success, but the house was half-empty: almost a shame for the Florentine public, to be absent for such an amusing and not easy to see opera.

Fadinard, Filippo Adami
Nonancourt, Gianluca Buratto
Beaupertuis, Mauro Bonfanti
Lo zio Vézinet, Stefano Consolini
Emilio, Francesco Verna
Felice, Gregory Bonfatti
Achille di Rosalba, Saverio Bambi
Una guardia, Leonardo Melani
Un caporale delle guardie, Massimo Egidio Naccarato
Minardi, Ladislao Horvath
Il pianista della Baronessa, Andrea Severi
Elena, Laura Giordano
Anaide, Marta Calcaterra
La Baronessa di Champigny, Romina Tomasoni
La modista, Irene Favro

Orchestra e Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
Maestro del Coro, Lorenzo Fratini

 

Review by Fabio Bardelli
translation from italian Bruno Tredicine

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