Teatro alla Scala has announced today a new exhibition at the Museo (alla Scala), which opens to the public on December 15, 2006. But since you are all lucky enough, blessed enough, and special enough to know the elusive, extraordinary, well-connected-to-Milanese-insider-happenings Miss Opera Chic, I am privileged to let you all have a wee-sneak-peak and a clandestine preview of what’s going-on behind the heavy velvet curtains of Teatro alla Scala.
For one month, the opera house will host a new exhibit, “Aida, l'invenzione del vero (1871-1933).” (For you English-only speakers, it is translated as, “The Invention of the Truth”.) Unfortunately, the official press release is, at this time, in Italian-language only. You can run it through Bablefish for a very mixed-up version…but remember that, “Verdi” translates literally in English as, “Greens”. lol the greatest Italian composer of the 19th century is named like American baggies of frozen veggies lol.
The occasion for this exhibition collaborates with official, trademarked omg LA PRIMA omg, which is the legitimate inauguration of the Teatro alla Scala season beginning every year on December 7 (which is also Milan’s Festa di Sant'Ambrogio). And guess what? La Prima this year is Verdi’s Aida, with a brand-new, spiffily re-designed version by our favorite fave sweetheart Franco Zeffirelli (YAY FRENGO!), who last designed the Aida run in Milan from 1976 – 1985. Also awesome is that we have Violeta Urmana as Aida, and Roberto Alagna as Radames. (btw, when I was at the salon a few days ago, I picked-up the Italian Vogue, which had a feature on Urmana.)
Also significant of this event is that Casa Ricordi will use the exhibit to publicize and celebrate their bicentennial, as they had originally published Verdi’s scores (and later his records, and later his 8-tracks, and later his tapes, infinity infinity forever: JINX) two-hundred years ago.
The press release goes onto explain that the Museum of Teatro alla Scala will be hosting various autographs and manuscripts of Verdi. Also part of the exhibition will be loads of sketches, figurines, and photos that he used to study his first representation of Aida in 1872, because he became quite a collector of Egyptian archeological relics to aid his research for visualizing Aida. But the most super-sexy part of the exhibit will be a virtual reality time-machine (1.21 gigawatts!!), where you can go back in time to Cairo, 1872, and wander around the antiques and archeological findings of ancient Egypt. The significance of the time-machine is that Verdi never actually went to Egypt to study the staging and direction for Aida; instead, he used his imagination to, "inventare il vero" (to invent the true).
And then, the press release goes on and on and on about all the kewl things you'll be able to do in the time machine. I personally think someone’s flux capacitor is wound a little too tight. Time-machines make me think of some smelly, stale, outdated Natural Science Museum, and god knows that anyone under the age of sixteen is just not allowed inside Teatro alla Scala anyway.
(btw, click here for the Opera Chic flickr photostream set of “Aida, l'invenzione del vero 1871-1933".)