Butterfly blues

eatro d’Ombra

Thanks to
Fondazione Teatro Ragazzi e Giovani onlus of Turin and Città di Grugliasco
With
Antonella Usai, Marco Intraia,
Cora De Maria, Alberto Jona, Jenaro Meléndrez Chas

Reciter voice Eliana Cantone

Much has been said about the female figures of Puccini's musical world, but Butterfly is by far the most peculiar character among all. The various Manon, Tosca, Mimi, even if rated to death, are heroines who love and are loved far from the image of the seduced and abandoned one, as well as the little Liù, who kills herself for unrequited love. Above them all, Butterfly seems to fit the female archetype that Puccini chased and love all his life: corsetier, milliners, fragile maidens of the shadowed world, bound to suffer a cruel love fate. The show starts with Puccini in his death bed at an hospital in Brussels. Mute, with radioactive needles skewering his throat for therapy like a butterfly pierced in a showcase, the Maestro is waiting to die. In his half-sleep delirium, the woman who is taking care of him appears as a blurred, confuse image of relief and anxiety, as mysterious and enigmatic as a figure of Noh theater, who finally embodies Butterfly herself. Through music, words, shadows and dance, the show tells a story of seduction, abandonment, expectation, deception and su***de; but in the end the mask falls and Butterfly reveals herself, looming magnificent and relentless on Puccini. The musical choices follow the Butterfly tragedy, shattering it and rebuilding it as it were a mosaic of memory, while the scenic space, in constant motion, is a succession of surfaces that collect the world of shadows, in a continuous invention of different psychological spaces. The text of the show was entrusted to the Turin writer Rosa Mogliasso, the new musical interludes are by Andrea Chenna.