Enchantment and memory – Il Sole 24 ORE

Among niche publishing houses, the editions of the Amici della Scala occupy a very special role in the European panorama. The scientific curatorship of Vittoria Crespi Morbio makes them so.
Vivid intelligence, Visconti-Achmeist taste, very solid cultural foundations of the theatrical galaxy and beyond, all nourished in a family milieu intimately devoted and patron-like towards the main stages of cultured dramaturgy (where La Scala and Il Piccolo represent the wards of the Crown), with Milan obviously acting as an iconic magnet.

The volumes proposed in 2024 are confirmed as astonishing. Dedicated to Luciano Damiani, the principal, and to Franca Squarciapino, Anna Anni, Luisa Spinatelli and Gabriella Pescucci the ancillaries, they give the reader the emotion – like the previous ones – of unearthed treasures, renewed stage emotions and a critical phrasing that fears no comparison of authoritativeness.Certainly Vittoria Crespi Morbio’s editorial freedom is absolute; but how well placed! The exegetical gaze ranges from the exquisite Oxoniense intuition (with a dictation worthy of Walter Pater) to the knowledge of Italian workshop schools, for a reconnaissance capable of embracing the matter and spirit of stage life.

Damiani Scaligero and that of Piccolo

The Scaliger Damiani and that of Piccolo therefore come to life once more: metaphysical, material, anarchic, sublime. As the subtitle says: the theater of an innovator. The narrative choice was difficult: do Le Baruffe wrong by quoting Macbeth, dominated by an archaic material, copper, capable of projecting the staging into the absolute classics of the theater as far back as 1975? To neglect The cherry orchard per The magic Flute? Impossible. Damiani was a man of shy genius, alien to worldly rites. Monacale, VCM himself recalls him in a small portrait that is a corollary to the actual essay, with the anxiety of a Borgesian character for the cataloging and the 1:1 scale sketches. The epic of the Theater and its incurable nostalgia. Truly Orpheus in the Elysian Fields. The four agile frame volumes give us, among other things, The Marriage of Figarothat is, those rooms made immortal by the scenographic genius of Ezio Frigerio and the direction of Giorgio Strehler, where Franca Squarciapino’s costumes hide and stand out, in an oxymoron of impalpable and graceful gradations. The partnership between Anna Anni and Franco Zeffirelli weaves the red thread of the volume dedicated to this costume designer with a precocious vocation and an affirmation, if not late, soberly deferred, almost timeless, like the Rustic cavalry which from 1981 to today remains the reference model, the paradigm. Luisa Spinatelli accompanies the last half century of ballet at La Scala; it was she, just twenty-four years old, who designed the stage space for Carla Fracci as Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini in her debut as a set designer at the Piermarini; she then she debuts once more, but in costumes, with the Concerto of the albatross, music by Giorgio Federico Ghedini (who had been Guido Cantelli’s Maestro). More Scala than that! Gabriella Pescucci (like Oscar-winning Franca Squarciapino), boasts the Visconti and Pasolini ancestry metabolised by the undisputed Master of Italian costume, Piero Tosi; her and she was therefore the only one who might accept the challenge of one Traviat a post myth, that is, the one forged by Visconti and Lila de Nobili, with the Divina. Her challenge was won with a rigor that was perhaps surpassed, in terms of geometric but warm essentiality, only ten years later with A masked ballEach work dedicated to the protagonists of La Scala by Vittoria Crespi Morbio is therefore ineffable, the result of a philological legislation developed behind the scenes of the Theatre, in its fabulous archives, in the laboratories and in a reference library of the highest quality.