VI. ANNA BOLENA E IFIGENIA IN TAURIDE, 1957

In the spring of 1957 Visconti took on two new productions for La Scala and found himself collaborating for the first time on sets and costumes with Nicola Benois, the theatre’s all-powerful head of stage production since 1937.  Gaetano Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, with a libretto by Felice Romani, had first been performed in 1830 at Milan’s Teatro Carcano. The new staging, which premiered on 14 April, was described as “the most influential Visconti production of all, marking the decisive turning point in the way opera is staged and, consequently, in the way we experience it.” On the podium was Gianandrea Gavazzeni, from Donizetti’s home town of Bergamo, while Maria Callas sang the title role. Visconti suggested that Benois take inspiration for his costume sketches from the work of Hans Holbein, a painter at the court of Anne Boleyn’s husband, King Henry VIII.

On 1 June La Scala premiered Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride, with a libretto by Nicolas-François Guillard based on Euripides’ tragedy. It was sung in Italian and conducted by Nino Sanzogno,with Callas, more of a diva than ever, in the title role. Visconti set the action within a single setting evokingthe period in which the opera was composed – it premiered in Paris in 1779 – rather than the era whenthe story takes place. So this was not the Greece of myth, but the Rococo world of the eighteenth century,still untouched (though the dates might suggest otherwise) by any hint of Neoclassicism. The visual models were drawn from the stage-design tradition of the Bibiena family and the architectural genius ofFilippo Juvarra, while the frescoes of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo inspired the costumes.