Eine Florentinische Tragödie
O. Wilde / A. Zemlinsky

Set design........Rifail Ajdarpasic
Costume design........Ariane Isabell Unfried
Light design........Norbert Chmel
Fight director........Claude Duprez
Conductor........Kirill Karabits

première: 14 September 2006
company: Opéra National de Lorraine

Reviews

Nancy - Eine Florentinische Tragödie
Producer Wagner decided to lose the Florentine Renaissance setting and update the action to a reasonably contemporary draper's shop. Rolls of utilitarian material made up the décor, making Guido and Bianca's passion a workplace romance --- The upfront rapport between the lovers could not have left Simone in any doubt of what was going on, but this knowledge only served to heighten the two men's ambiguous verbal sparring. The duel scene was thrillingly staged, and only the final moment of the opera seemed misjudged. Here the director avoided obvious eye contact between the characters in favour of an isolated reappraisal of their feelings, which seemed too clever an idea for its own theatrical good.

Opera News

Eine Florentinische Tragödie
If the libretto of Eine Florentinische Tragödie places the action in Florence, in the house of a rich merchant, the staging of Carlos Wagner prefers him in a contemporary cloth warehouse. Thus the piece loses the shimmer of a nostalgic dream, and the plot gains a sharp roughness instead, like an inevitable dramatic downward spiral. So, the enumeration of silken treasures, of brocade and embroideries contents itself with the feverish unrolling of utilitarian materials, which underlines the horrible commercial profit that Simone succeeds in making of an evidently domestic situation.
One could name numerous examples of this kind, skilfully streched along this brief work, intelligently contrasting the lyricism of the score as it hurries to its conclusion. Equally, literary references are being emphasized in a way that elucidates them ---
However, one sometimes has to know when to stop: The fact that Simone's suitcase contains the fencing outfits indicates that the merchant only left his lodgings for a brief time, instead of going on a long trip, implying that everything was premeditated. This option is more interesting, but to weigh it down with the presence of an electronic counter of a fencing match, not only interferes with the perception of the drama, but throws the scene into anecdote, which until now had so wisely been avoided.

Anaclase

Le Texier master of the "in camera"
The few whistles addressed at Carlos Wagner the evening of the premiere seemed harsh: Was it the transposition from Wilde's fifteenth century setting to a contemporary timeless context? To us, on the contrary, it seemed rather efficient to disassociate the drama of any precise reference, in favour of a conflict between characters that seemed timeless: The negligent husband mocked, the wife neglected, the seducing fop trapped --- The few semantic conflicts between libretto and scenic reality, are nothing much in view of the essential: the mastery of a subtle game of cat and mouse between three beings that observe each other, tempt each other, give in only to be more triumphant, or fall into the laid out traps. Beautiful idea in any case, to take up identically, before the lovers finally fall into Simone's nets, a scenic carbon copy of the initial love scene. The merchant Simone is a deus ex machina omnipresent, perverse, insidious, a master of his strategy.

Forumopera