The Most Expensive Papier-Mâché Nun In The World: What 1.2 Million Dollars Will Buy You at La Scala

 

The Edmonton Journal profiled six emerging Canadian talents from their local theater scene, the young playwrights and actors who are on the cusp of carving-out their careers.

Among the six Canadian theater geeks is stage designer Daniela Masellis, who spent 2007 in Milan at Teatro alla Scala as a backstage apprentice, and worked on the new Luca Ronconi 2008 Puccini Il Trittico production that OC bravely suffered through.

Ronconi's LSD-induced vision of Suor Angelica(literally a gigantic papier-mâché nun that served as a catwalk for the cast) clocked in (along with Gianni Schicchi & Il Tabarro) at $1.2 million dollars (USD). Ms. Masellis details:

"The scale is so huge," she says. "There's so much space and time. Preparations a year in advance, huge warehouses; the paint shop is bigger than most theatres." For Il Trittico, the Puccini opera on which Masellis interned, the set materials alone ran to some 800,000 euros ($1.2 million).

The market price of papier-mâché must have peaked in 2007 when they were building the sets. Now we know why Ronconi didn't show up on opening night to take his curtain call punishment: He took the money and ran!

Comments

[Giacomo]

AHHHHH! 'na Ronconata!

[pao]

Yes, huge: it fits Ronconi's ego ;-)

[aeric]

Nice post, OC!

[Linda Smith]

That nun would make a great art installation!

[walter]

Disgusting being able to get away with all that money thrown to the dogs, or to the madonnas, or, for that matter, to Ronconi!
I saw the production and I must say the huge madonna on the stage dwarfed everything else around it as if Ronconi was trying to hide the story line or he was embarrassed at the kind of delicate story it is. Whatever...
Not even the greatest onstage personality could have survived such "belittling"!

[deric]

I loved reading your insightful review, "Il Trittico @ La Scala: Mehhhhhh" -- wonderful! You ROCK, OC!

[Fidelio]

LOL I would have walked out of the opera house if I saw a giant blow up nun on stage. That's so ugly it's ridiculous. All for the low, low cost of 1.2 milllion. I hate to think what the really big productions cost!

[walter]

@Fidelio: That's not a blown up nun. It's a blown up Madonna! Yes it was quite ugly, to be sure. It was also very difficult to get over and around. The singers were put in such difficulty that everything suffered more than usual in that already difficult theater.
They really need an internal shakedown there to get things back on some sort of track, whether it be futuristic or traditional.