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Il Signor Bruschino
Gianni Schicchi
Il Viaggio a Reims
Guillaume Tell
Albert Herring
La Belle Hélène
La Traviata
Pirame et Thisbé
Le Comte Ory
Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Rigoletto
Werther
La Bohème
Platée
Il Giasone
Castor et Pollux
Faust
Don Pasquale

Il Signor Bruschino →
Gioacchino Rossini

Opéra de Lausanne
Premiere: September 11th, 2004
Sets and costumes: Julia Hansen
Light design: Hervé Audibert
Conductor: Corrado Rovaris
Orchestre de chambre de Lausanne
Photos: © Monika Rittershaus

Bruschino Padre: Roberto de Candia
Gaudenzio: Giorgio Caoduro
Sofia: Corinna Mologni
Florville: Riccardo Botta
Marianna: Delphine Gillot
Filiberto: Evgueniy Alexiev
Commissario: Stuart Patterson
Bruschino figlio: Humberto Ayerbe Pino
Factotum: Alexandre Diakoff

Gianni Schicchi →
Giacomo Puccini

Gianni Schicchi: Roberto de Candia
Lauretta: Corinna Mologni
Rinuccio: Riccardo Botta
Simone: Alessandro Svab
Zita: Cinzia de Mola
Marco: Giorgio Caoduro
Ciesca: Delphine Gillot
Gherardo: Stuart Patterson
Nella: Katia Velletaz
Betto: Evgueniy Alexiev
Doctor/Notary: Alexandre Diakoff
Pinellino: Gabriel de Weck
Guccio: Pierre Portenier
Gherardino: Tristan Moreau

Il Signor Bruschino + Gianni Schicchi

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Two operas in one evening, and such different ones as a farsa by an inexperienced Rossini (Il Signor Bruschino), and the final piece of a triptych, the realization of Puccini's lifelong dream of composing an opera after Dante: Gianni Schicchi. One cast for both pieces. The challenge was to stage a consistent evening without imposing an artificial link between the two works.
Schicchi is a timeless opera, and its depiction of human greed can well be modernized; but in the end, what is perhaps most original in the piece is the unconditional love of Florence and of Tuscan culture which it reveals. In which other opera does a tenor sing of Giotto? This led us to conceive a Renaissance Schicchi set in an Italian palazzo full of frescoes — the highly coveted house of Buoso Donati.
The evening, however, opens with a contemporary Bruschino: same Italian palazzo, but in its present state, with an elevator (a most important and facetious character in the piece) built in the fresco-decorated wall of what has become a busy (if somewhat run-down) city hall. Only after the break does the audience discover the palazzo in its “original” state, and one is thus led to wonder: have we jumped seven centuries back?
Are we seeing ghosts from the past? Are the Donati and the Schicchi families the ancestors of the Bruschino characters (with costume details building fine bridges between the modern and the ancient figures)? Or, as the stylization of the singers' movements and postures might suggest, have the frescoes suddenly come to life?
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