GIANNI SCHICCHI

Teatro nacional de sao carlos, Lisbon

Stage Director: Carmine De Amicis
Conductor: Renato Balsadonna
Set Designer: Gloria Bolchini
Costumes: C.De Amicis & G. Bolchini
Lighting Designer: Carlos Ramos
Videos: Leandro Summo

REVIEWS

‘What De Amicis succeeded in doing was creating a piece of theatre that allowed an ensemble cast to have the time of their lives. He brought out the comedy […] the roars of laughter emanating from the auditorium were proof of an audience that was so fully engaged with what they saw. There was a genuine sense of a group of people playing off each other, a dysfunctional family undoubtedly, but with performances so vivid and so compelling it was impossible not to be engaged.

‘This was an evening that really did give an immense amount of pleasure. De Amicis’ staging was clear and logical, and allowed the cast to bring the stories to life in a compelling and engaging way.’

‘A fulfilling evening in the theatre that gave us so much, that I’d happily sit through it again immediately.’

OPERA TRAVELLER

director’s notes about gianni schicchi

Working with just two operas from Il trittico felt like a rare opportunity and the right place to begin. This diptych offered a profound lens through which to explore the vast range of human experience: our capacity to rise to the most solemn heights and fall to the most vulgar lows. One tragedy, one comedy, together they form a meditation on the extremes we inhabit: how splendidly appalling and beautifully broken we can be; sacred and profane, luminous and base.

These two works, though seemingly opposed, reveal themselves as mirrors, not only of each other, but of us. Their characters exist in a liminal space, suspended between damnation and farce, with one foot in paradise and the other stubbornly in the mud. Death, too, takes on many guises: in Suor Angelica, it is transcendence and radiant release; in Gianni Schicchi, an inconvenience, where Buoso Donati’s corpse becomes a grotesque prop in a farce of greed. All the other characters exist in the parody of living, neither ascending nor descending, merely stuck.

The staging embraces a Shakespearean framework, interwoven with the spirit of Commedia dell’Arte, where masks reveal more than they conceal. The dramatic arc of five acts unfolds across both operas, allowing meaning and character to bleed from one story into the next. Allegories abound: humanity refracted through Dante’s moral vision, Puccini’s emotional virtuosity, and our own contemporary contradictions.

At the heart of this vision lies the tension between sacred and profaned death. The setting becomes a kind of earthly inferno: a birdcage suspended between tragedy and farce. In Schicchi, the damned play out their own Contrappasso; in Angelica, also echoes of Dante’s Inferno, emerge the wood of suicides, where birdlike beings claw at what remains of the soul. Fragile, captive doves and unbound greedy crows appear as recurring symbols of our dual nature, infused with hope yet stained by corruption.

Here, death is no longer an end, but a mirror: sometimes radiant, sometimes absurd, yet always truthful.

Benvenuti all’Inferno. And enjoy the comedy.