VII. THE RING OF MAY, 1979-1981
In 1976, Massimo Bogianckino from Rome, the former artistic director at La Scala, became the Superintendent of the Teatro Comunale in Florence, a position he held until 1982, when he was called to the Opéra in Paris by the then minister, Jack Lang. Bogianckino took the decision to produce in Florence Luca Ronconi and Pier Luigi Pizzi’s tetralogy, of which only La Walkiria (1974) and Sigfrido (1975) had been staged in Milan, amidst some heated protests. The Ronconi-Pizzi partnership had already met with phenomenal success at the Teatro Comunale, when Riccardo Muti had been artistic director, thanks to their production of Gluck’s Orfeo e Euridice (1976) with its explicit references to Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead, which Margherita Palli also used in La Scala’s production of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos in 2000. The conductor called upon to lead the orchestra was Zubin Mehta, with whom the director and set designer had a relaxed relationship. Das Rheingold debuted at the 42nd Maggio Musicale Fiorentino on 23 May 1979; Die Walküre at the winter opera season on 20 February 1980; Siegfried at the winter opera season on 25 January 1981 and Götterdämmerung at the 44th Maggio Musicale Fiorentino on 10 June 1981. This time success was unanimous and triumphant for all the performances with their dazzling formal beauty.
Between 1975 and 1979 much changed. Boulez and Chéreau’s Ring became a touchstone and the creative lives of Ronconi and Pizzi gained much acclaim. Therefore, this was not simply a revival, but a sort of rewriting, of La Scala’s two productions, which, when inserted between the new Rheingold and Götterdämmerung, assumed a whole new meaning. The antirhetorical, if not intimist, visual structure, (at least in Die Walküre), remained, but everything was lightened, moving to a gradual elimination of interpretations, including the ideological, which were beginning to appear superfluous in that they had already been digested. And so, in Siegfried, the dragon, unlike at La Scala, lost its human form to resume that of a monster, while the palace of the Gibichungs in Götterdämmerung appear to be populated by soldiers and officials who might be descendants of Visconti’s Ludwig. What seemed to unify the Florentine Ring, which has never been performed consecutively in its entirety, was a parabolic slide of mirrors in Das Rheingold, upon which extras playing the undines of the Rhine moved naked, while the singers were in the orchestra pit; the scandal aroused by the naked breasts and pubes faded into insignificance in comparison to the battles seen at La Scala.
In 1977, with Mozart’s Don Giovanni at Turin’s Teatro Regio, Pizzi turned director. Ronconi, after leaving the Venice Biennale, began his experience alongside Gae Aulenti – well-known in the dressing rooms of La Scala’s La Walkiria – with the Laboratorio di Progettazione Teatrale in Prato (1976-1979). His production of Euripides’ Bacchae seemed to contain references to the brick walls of the Nibelheim or the iron bedstead in Mime’s cave. The risk was, then, that the Florentine Ring might be an impeccable result of a previous season. Ronconi and Pizzi worked together one last time on Salieri’s Europa riconosciuta, with Muti on the podium, to celebrate the completion of La Scala’s restoration in 2004. And the cypresses of Böcklin, the painter that Wagner would have liked to have had at Bayreuth, were there.
