At the age of 78, Milo Manara made his debut in opera, designing sets and costumes for Mozart's 'Così fan tutte', a new production that on 20 October inaugurates the 56th Opera Season of the Teatro Pergolesi in Jesi (Ancona). He accepted after a long 'courtship' by the artistic direction, "convinced - he tells ANSA - by his love for Mozart, whose whole thing fascinates me, including the Requiem Mass. Also, for a proposal like this you have to have time and I always work a lot. Finally, I found a scenographic key for the set-up and I said yes."
The key is to create a series of drawings with an erotic background, reproduced enlarged on canvas on stages depicting nymphs, satyrs, cupids and gods, from Apollo to Venus, from Minerva to Mercury, with a transparent curtain in pink tulle, a proscenium in the middle and a backdrop depicting the sea in the background.
The plot of the opera, with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, plays on an exchange of couples and disguises that prompted Manara to be inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses.
"Precisely in this consists the audacity of the work," observes the designer, "not so much in affirming that so are all the same, but in recognizing the right of women to make love, even without being married or in love, without condemning them if they cheat."
At the same time as the opera, an exhibition of the 24 sketches made for Mozart's masterpiece was inaugurated at Palazzo Pianetti, in Jesi.
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