Ominous Vistas

When the curtain rose on Mozart's Don Giovanni at Spoleto, Italy, last week, the traditional 17th century Spanish capes and courtyards were missing. Instead, singers in vaguely funereal costume drifted through bare spaces that seemed to recede into infinities of aquamarine. Massive bands of grey rock jutted around and above them. The eerie landscape was punctuated by spare, brooding pieces of sculpture: a huge, reclining nude in gleaming green; two spiky, dead-white trees; labyrinthine arch forms like vast bleached bones; a series of angular, menacing mummies.

The designs were the first stage settings by the great English sculptor, Henry Moore, 68, and were the sensation of the opening week of the tenth annual Festival of Two Worlds. When the festival director, Gian Carlo Menotti, first suggested the idea, Moore was reluctant. After all, for years he had declined Sir Laurence Olivier's entreaties to design a production of King Lear for Britain's National Theater. But then Moore agreed to let Italian Designer Fiorella Mariani adapt settings from his existing works. When he saw the results, he was so pleased that he immediately set to work chipping, modeling and painting the pieces himself. "Marvelous, fascinating," he said. "I never knew the life behind the creation of a spectacle like this."*

Menotti says of the unusual collaboration: "We both wanted simplicity, universality and timelessness, eliminating all the unnecessary claptrap." In the flexible, open spaces, Menotti deployed his accomplished cast of American and Italian singers in fluid lines and ghostly dances, spelling out his concept that "the whole opera is based on the characters' search for each other." The designs simplified rather than complicated his problems of staging. Moore's sets "do not swamp the opera but bring out its tragedy and symbolism," Menotti says. "His sculptures are passionate and compassionate: they seem to be listening to Mozart's music, moving to it."

The audience seemed undecided whether Moore's stark emblems smacked of outer space or, as one observer said, of "instant Stonehenge," or what. Moore saw it all as "a whole new vision of my work." Perhaps more important, it provided a whole new vision of Mozart's masterpiece, paring away all but the essentials of the drama, freeing the music to soar and reverberate in ominous vistas of eternity.

*Another admirer of the spectacle was retired perfume manufacturer (Faberge) Samuel Rubin, whose New York-based Samuel Rubin Foundation last week gave the Spoleto festival a gift of $1,000,000.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.