The show gave the tone. For its production of the Otello of Verdi, the festival Juillet musical of Trapani showed a photograph of a nude man, back, stained with blood, in which the curvature of the kidney was simply concealed by a line of bush. So, here are the flyers and posters placarded in the sicilian city that celebrates the 71st edition of its manifestation lyrical. The audience of the show signed Andrea Cigni, wisely installed under fig trees, the open-air theatre Giuseppe Di Stefano, was discovered more. Much more.

Luglio Musicale Trapanese

A rumor before the show. By entrusting the staging to the Tuscan Andrea Cigni, the festival organisers were playing with fire. After all, wasn’t it him who, last year, had transposed the Traviata in the world of the music-hall, to the great displeasure of the music lovers in the more conservative? This time, he has chosen to show the general venetian and his cronies at the beginning of the Twentieth century, in a barracks, anonymous an island in the Aegean sea.

” READ ALSO – Aida resounds to the stars in the gallo-roman ruins of Sanxay

“in The end, pornography is limited to water dripping on three soldiers who exposed themselves freely of their B-side and, more cautiously, their face – ”

Alberto Mattioli, La Stampa

Then, scandal or not? The suspense ended Sunday evening with the first. “After talking with the poster of Otello , reports the Italian news agency ADNKronos, the public was discovered in the first act, three soldiers are very athletic in the process of showering, naked as their mother made them, while Iago and Roderigo elaborate deception that will lead Othello to the disaster.” “We feared the worst for this Otello advertised as “hard” or even, in the words of one journalist thoughtless, as a “gay porn”, reports La Stampa . In the end, pornography is limited to water dripping on three soldiers who exposed themselves freely of their B-side and, more cautiously, their face A.” And, in fact, of scandal, there was, above all, a round of applause. “At the Scala in Milan and at the Teatro Regio in Turin, the “Poor Verdi” or “Outrageous!” would be cast at the sight of those magnificent buttocks of the garrison, and imagine the critic of La Stampa Alberto Mattioli. But the ladies of Trapani, once the surprise is gone, don’t have eyebrow. On the contrary, it would seem that they have enjoyed.”

The “real” provocation by Andrea Cigni lies probably elsewhere. In his notes of intentions, the director explains to want to emphasize the “machismo” that underlies all the work of Verdi and his librettist Arrigo Boito, inspired by Shakespeare. The story is known: duped by his enemies, Othello will eventually kill of his hands his wife Desdemona after a crisis of jealousy. The slap he receives from his wife when he addresses a prostitute, and the next, angry that he returns leave no doubt as to the outcome of the drama. The transposition of the work in the confined space of a barracks where blows a spirit fascisant adds to the gravity and to the masculinisme ambient. Offense supreme: the public begins to hate the man who made cry of generations of music lovers.

” READ ALSO – Sacrilege! At the opera of Florence, Carmen kills Don José

In Trapani, we do not speak of femicide, but you think about it, necessarily. As we remember this Carmen, conducted by Leo Muscato at Florence, which had caused much ink to flow. The Italian press was unleashed against this production which took place in a camp of Roma and at the end of which the cigarière killed her lover jealous. Scandal full scandal Weinstein and movement #meetoo. A year and a half later, the about Andrea Cigni does not seem far away. But the controversy will stop at a history of buttocks. In the proper sense.