‘Accidenti!’ (‘Awesome!’), Rossini wrote in the autograph score of La scala di seta, at the end of the Sinfonia. An awesome work, indeed – one that exudes the same ‘magic that suddenly provokes and drives spectators to applause’Footnote ¹ today as it did when it was premiered in Venice (1812).

Its plot, a variation on well-worn love themes by librettist Giuseppe Maria Foppa, is plain enough to inspire a modern director’s creativity. At nights, the fitness enthusiast Giulia (played by Olga Peretyatko) lets down a silken ladder from the window of the bedroom of her own apartment so that her lover Dorvil (José Manuel Zapata) can climb up. However, her guardian Dormont (Daniele Zanfardino) wants her to marry Blansac (Carlo Lepore), a womanizer and vain narcissist whom Giulia would rather unload onto her cousin Lucilla (Anna Malavasi) – a man-eater disguised in a serious tailleur. After much misunderstanding and eavesdropping (hiding in secret closets, under a table, beneath pillows or behind a towel), the story ultimately comes to a happy end thanks to the servant Germano (Paolo Bordogna), who, unlike the operatic cliché, may not be very astute but is actually quite good with misunderstandings. This is the modernized reading of La scala di seta made by the then-young director Damiano Michieletto for the 2009 Rossini Opera Festival. This staging following the Festival’s 1988 production (recorded live by the Italian Television RAI),Footnote ² which was the first based on the critical edition prepared for the Fondazione Rossini by Anders Wicklund, and its 2000 production, musically directed by Alberto Zedda and staged by the Neapolitan theatre actor Luca de Filippo.Footnote ³ Announced as a low-cost production, given the Italian government’s drastic cuts to funding stage performances, the 2009 show turned out to be highly successful.Footnote ⁴

Like other works by Rossini, La scala di seta was ‘rediscovered’ back in the 1950s by the ‘Maggio Musicale Fiorentino’ festival, and since then has been performed according to an edition revised by Vito Frazzi.Footnote ⁵ The television film produced in 1983 by RTSI Swiss Italian Television eloquently describes the circulation of Scala before Wiklund’s critical edition.Footnote ⁶ Among other details, the single act was split into two ‘acts’ after the Quartetto (No. 4), and the second ‘act’ started with an interpolated aria for Dormont – ‘Qual tenero diletto’ from L’inganno felice. By choosing to employ Wiklund’s then-forthcoming critical edition, the Schwetzingen Festival’s 1990 production under the music direction of Gianluigi Gelmetti was more faithful to Rossini’s original intention. With its very classical sets and costumes designed by Michael Hampe, the production was recorded live at the lovely Rokokotheater Schwetzingen and is now available on DVD.Footnote ⁷

Michieletto is a controversial director who knows how to divide criticism and make conservative audiences angry. After all, as he recently said in an interview with the popular magazine Vanity Fair, ‘making the audience happy is not my job’, and more provocatively, ‘the audience does not exist per se’.Footnote ⁸ By 2009, two interpretative trends of Scala had been established: one more sentimental, the other more farcical. In ‘The Making of La scala di seta’ – the 22-minute bonus feature on this DVD – Michieletto says that he aimed to deliver the plot with immediacy, and thus to let it appear as modern, explosive and fun as in Rossini’s time. No problematic millennials (as in the 2012 Bohème), no rape (as depicted in the 2015 Guillaume Tell) – this production seems just as regular as a promising school homework. Thanks to some recitative cuts, the twenty-first-century Dorvil and Giulia can be simply lovers instead of secretly married. It’s unfortunate, though, that Dorvil still greets Giulia saying, ‘Vado, mia sposa! (‘I go, my wife!’) (Scene 2), and reveals to Dormont, ‘Di Giulia sono il marito’ (‘I am Giulia’s husband’) (final scene). Well, consistency was not a forte even in the original libretto, where Giulia’s cousin Lucilla in Scene 14 suddenly turns into her sister. Meanwhile, Germano’s character has been modelled on the Italian actor and comedian Marco Marzocca’s Ariel, a caricature of a domestic worker of Filipino descent. The basso buffo fights against language barriers – prepositions, articles, verbs and proper nouns, all the while showing an laudable commitment to learning new things, like what a rendezvous (more interesting if a double one) is.

As in the 2000 ROF production, this production also features an interpolated virtuoso aria for Blansac originally written by Rossini for a Venetian patron in c. 1813, ‘Alle voci della gloria’ (‘To the call of Glory’), here changed to ‘Alle voci dell’amore’ (‘To the call of Love’).Footnote ⁹ Richard Osborne, author of the liner notes, writes that the inclusion of the aria – which he mistakenly calls ‘Alle voce per l’amore’ – ‘helps solve a problem left by the original score’: the lack of an aria. This is somewhat misleading, since the interpolated arias are rather a matter of convenienze e inconvenienze teatrali (apologies to Donizetti). Rossini’s five one-act operas performed at San Moisé in 1810–13 call upon five to eight characters and feature either three (La cambiale di matrimonio and Il signor Bruschino) or four (La scala di seta and L’inganno felice) solo arias out of eight total numbers, always performed in alternation with ensembles. (Only in L’Occasione fa il ladro, a ‘burletta’, are there five solos out of nine numbers.) In none are the solo arias sung back-to-back. Furthermore, the creator of Blansac – Nicola Tacci, secondo buffo at San Moisè – sang no solo piece in Il signor Bruschino, the other farsa written by Rossini on a libretto by Foppa. In this production, the meta-theatrical device, used to interpolate the extra aria, features Blansac trying to mug attention during the intermission, another creative license from Michieletto that contradicts the nature of La scala. While singing, Blansac takes off his socks, makes a footbath and drizzles his feet with talcum powder, and the singers follow him with their own business, accentuating the aria’s extraneousness.

But this La scala production works – beautifully. The comedy unravels at a captivatingly fast pace. Gestures, facial expressions and movement follow the music. The set of the whole action is the open space of Giulia’s apartment – kitchen, living room and bathroom, furnished by Scavolini (an hommage to the Italian business, a long-standing sponsor of the ROF). The walls are virtual and the singers mime the opening and closing of doors. A huge hanging mirror reflects the floor and allows the audience to view the action from atop. Video director Tiziano Mancini plays with this double-perspective with abrupt cuts, quickly shifting from frontal to aerial viewpoints – is it a metaphor for the multifaceted perspective of the action, or simply a way to give the audience a complete view of what happens on stage? The image is often split into two or more quadrants so that the invisible walls appear as thick border lines, and imaginary doors seem to be moved for real. In ensembles, the characters are placed in their own quadrant, some zoomed-in, others zoomed-out.

The singers act with sparkling verve, game for whatever Michieletto asked them to do –for example, Peretyatko sings while doing fitness exercises. Their engagement allows us to overlook some performance excesses (endings on high notes) or vocal weakness. The least convincing is Zapata, whose clumsy portrayal does not succeed in imbuing Dorvil with an incisive identity. His voice loses strength in its upper register and sometimes exhibits intonation problems. The performance of Lepore is better, though his comedic spin on his extra aria does not bear comparison with Samuel Ramey’s warm voice, texture and elegance. With her seductive stage presence, Pereyatko gives Giulia the exuberance of a superstar demanded by Michieletto’s design; her darkly coloured voice is quite agile, notwithstanding some breathiness and hints of inhomogeneity. But the irresistible buffo Bordogna steals the show, with both brilliant voice and brilliant acting. Previous recordings might be at a higher level musically, but this production is evidence of continued attractiveness today of Rossini’s farcical spirit.