Edipo Re / Oedipus Rex - Edipo ReTeatro Alla Scala
Claudio Abbado's programs at La Scala already reveal the cultural approach that would develop years later in the famous concert cycles at the Berlin Philharmonie.
In 1969 Abbado presented a diptych dedicated to the figure of Oedipus: in the first part Giorgio Albertazzi and Anna Proclemer played Oedipus and Jocasta in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex with stage music by Andrea Gabrieli;
Edipo Re / Oedipus Rex - Oedipus RexTeatro Alla Scala
in the second part Lajos Kozma and Marilyn Horne played the same characters in the oratorio by Jean Cocteau and Igor Stravinsky, which in 1963 had been presented at La Scala with the composer on the podium.
Oedipus Rex / La Sagra - Oedipus RexTeatro Alla Scala
The director was Giorgio de Lullo; sets and costumes were by Pier Luigi Pizzi, who soon embarked on an exclusive career as a director, signing, among other things, two Season openings at La Scala.
Pizzi was a highly innovative costume designer, open to the suggestions of art and even architecture. At the time his research took on an experimental character, especially in the choice of materials: stone, glass and even plastic.
Jocasta, costume, Oedipus Rex by Pier Luigi PizziTeatro Alla Scala
For Oedipus Pizzi had taken his cue from a phrase by Cocteau stating that "characters inhabit their costumes". Inspired also by the monumental and architectural character of Stravinsky's music, Pizzi imagined rigid shells similar to shellfish ones. Dresses that prevented movement: the singers were transported on stage on treadmills or elevators.
For Jocasta the costume designer completely transformed some iconographic elements of the Russian tradition, as Stravinsky had done in the musical field. The singer is placed in a wrapping that has the shape of a matryoshka, covered with eggs in an ironic reference to Fabergé.
The material, however, is very modern: a felt larva stiffened by a glue and covered with thermoformed bubbles that turn Jocasta into an enigmatic presence, with an explicit and disturbing reference to motherhood.
Edipo Re / Oedipus Rex - Oedipus RexTeatro Alla Scala
The singers, exempted from acting, had a lot of fun: in particular Marilyn Horne, who would later collaborate with Pizzi in many Rossini productions.
Teatro alla Scala
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