Online from August 2 on italiana.esteri.it and teatroallascala.org
the exhibition presenting the three great Italian tenors
whose centenaries are celebrated. The exhibition is an initiative by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation
and it is organized by the Teatro alla Scala and the Museo Teatrale alla Scala.
One hundred years ago, in 1921, Enrico Caruso, one of the most famous singers in history, died in Naples. That same year two of the most important tenors of the last century were born: Giuseppe Di Stefano and Franco Corelli, both protagonists of some legendary performances at La Scala.
The centenaries are an opportunity to remember three artists who did represent and spread Italian culture in the world, bringing the nineteenth-century myth of the tenor into modernity through an online exhibition, which can be visited remotely. The exhibition ” Caruso, Corelli, Di Stefano – Italian Opera Legends” is an initiative by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, it is produced by Teatro alla Scala and made by the Museo Teatrale alla Scala. It will be accessible online on italiana.esteri.it the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dedicated to the promotion of Italian language, culture and creativity in the world, and on the Teatro alla Scala website www.teatroallascala.org from Monday, August 2, 2021, the centenary of Caruso’s death in Naples, for the duration of one year. The exhibition is curated by music critic Mattia Palma.
The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs continues its commitment to the diffusion of Italian culture in the world, together with the Teatro alla Scala which has been for over two centuries among the most effective ambassadors of the art and excellence of our country, thanks to its 161 tours, 896 curtain openings in four continents from 1878 to 2020 and the strength of a history known worldwide. Italian opera, a privileged vehicle of the Italian language on an international level, has also established itself through the legendary figures of the great singers who have achieved universal popularity. In order to reach a global audience and to become a vehicle for the Ministry’s cultural initiatives in various countries with the support of Embassies, Consulates and Cultural Institutes, the exhibition will be entirely virtual and will be available for free online in various languages.
The formula of the digital exhibition takes up and updates the innovative spirit of Enrico Caruso, a pioneer of phonographic recordings that have sanctioned his worldwide legend, resorting also today to the most advanced forms of technology and communication. Punto Rec Studio, Multimedia Factory for culture, art and music based in Turin, has created a virtual space articulated in different rooms that reproduce real spaces of Teatro alla Scala, immediately recognizable at international level, inserting a virtual architectural setting designed by Lorenzo Greppi (Studio Greppi). The exhibition will be articulated in different rooms in which the visitor will be able to move freely and, through interaction with sensitive points (hotspots), enter the themes and contents of each section, including the videos made by Punto Rec drawing on materials granted by “Rai Teche” and the listening made possible by the collaboration with Warner Classics.
The exhibition begins with the great Enrico Caruso, a sensitive and modern interpreter, capable of grasping the changes of his time not only because he expressed the change in sensitivity of an era in which late nineteenth-century tenor heroism gave way to more bourgeois and intimate interpretations, but also because he was a pioneer of recordings, recording, in 1902, the first 78 rpm recorded in Italy and thus becoming the first recording star of Italian music. The exhibition continues with the presentation of the most important roles and interpretations of Franco Corelli and Giuseppe Di Stefano who, together with Maria Callas, were the protagonists of the opera scene in the 1950s. Through press reports and stage photographs, this section of the exhibition restores the artistic climate of the years in which La Scala and its artists were the standard-bearers of the Italian post-war recovery and economic boom. The exhibition concludes in spectacular fashion with the “impossible concert”, a virtual performance of the three artists performing the same aria: “Vesti la giubba” from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci.
