Scenographies Section
INTRO
The staging of the comedy “I Quattro Rusteghi” (The Four Curmudgeons) was planned for the centenary of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s birth (1876-1948).
As Enrico Magni Dufflocq reported in his “History of Music” in 1937, Wolf-Ferrari, taking the Goldoni theatre as a cheerful inspiration for its works, discovered that “the musicality of the 18th century was made in such a way that it gave a special seal to its modern and refined technique”, where, however, “the faux 1700s was neither false nor 1700s. It was blunt 1900’s, though respectful for the purpose, the consumed, the calm”.
Gambino, depicting the facades of the palaces that over time had hosted Goldoni’s character, could not but be anxious to revive its atmosphere, and he did it in the only way natural to him: trough a total immersion. With dedication and enthusiasm, without presumptions.
Ennio Pouchard
[… “I Quattro Rusteghi”] were my first debut in opera; we first staged it in Padua and right after in Treviso, in a co-production with the theatres of Treviso, Rovigo and Padua. Then they were staged again at La Fenice in Venice, I think in 1980, and in Treviso in 1986, it seems to me, and in 1993 for the bicentenary of Carlo Goldoni’s death. On that occasion, the German critics, that considered “I Rusteghi” a work of repertory as the “Bohème”, published an article where they said that the combination of scenography and direction was perfectly made. Pino and I worked together for months. I played to him the Goldoni lines by heart, while he jotted drafts and colours down. I said to him “mind that there’s a fixed rules: the first scene must vanish in one minute and twenty, at the most one minute and a half, and behind, already assembled, there must be the bower”. Then he had the brilliant intuitions of the red rag hanging from the bower and that of the tip of a house coming out, as you can see in the original drafts.
We made together the lights; he told me: “look at that blue that you used: I think we need a more tender tone, because it kills that other colour.” I recognised that he was right. At the end, we both were in seventh heaven.
Paolo Trevisi
His wife Lidia gladly remembers the great appreciation that his work has received, especially by the great actor and director Giorgio Albertazzi and his last call.
I QUATTRO RUSTEGHI (19/02/1980)
