L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JULY 13, 2017 www.italoamericano.org 28 L'Italo-Americano A fter La Cleopatra and the Amazons in the Fortunate Isles, Director Céline Ricci takes another Italian opera to stage. After welcoming the modern world premieres of two Venetian operas, San Francisco is now home to La Circe Opera by Ars Minerva arts organiza- tion, whose mission is to engage new and younger audiences in classical music through innova- tion. La Circe opera had its first performance in Vienna in 1665: while the occasion was the Roman Emperor Leopold I's birthday, the opera was never performed again. However, the manuscript, now at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, still exists. Attributed to Pietro Andrea Ziani, it comes together with the libretto by Cristoforo Ivanovich, the first historian of the Venetian opera and the organist at the St Mark's Basilica in Venice. Sung in Italian with English subtitles, the opera will feature eight singers, an acrobat, and a small orchestra of five instru- mentalists. We talked to director Céline Ricci and learned more about La Circe character and its uniqueness within the Italian opera scenario. "This is the third Italian opera that I take to stage", Mrs Ricci tells us. "The Amazons and La Circe are connected through the Greek mythology liaison. There is also a connection with La Cleopatra, that is also linked to the two others through the topic: the Mediterranean atmosphere, alongside the hero and heroine's figures, is crucial in all of the operas I worked on so far". The role of women is crucial in all the operas you directed... At the beginning, this choice was not on purpose, however it's interesting to see that operas in general do have women as their main, strong characters. Many operas talk about women and we can recreate part of the society of that time. It's fascinating to show how women can make choices of any kind. Tell us about Circe's char- acter. I like Circe because she is not apologetic for what she is or she does. She has the right to not be as nice as people would want her to be. She has powers and uses them, not always in the best way. She is a goddess and she repre- sents women's empowerment also in our reality. Even though not everybody knows who Circe is, mythology is fantastic so are the stories it brings to us. Why did you choose Circe and her controversial figure? Circe's figure is controversial but she also gives a wider spec- trum of how human beings who SERENA PERFETTO Ars Minerva's La Circe on Stage at the ODC Theatre can be a bit of everything. Circe can be loving too, she is passion- ate, and she would do anything - also in a lonely way because there is nobody she can keep in her life. She does terrible things but, at the same time, she is also vulnerable. Is there room for a positive message at the end of this opera? I'd say that the positive mes- sage is that the spectrum of the human being is large. This is true for all characters in the opera. It shows many different facets of people's personalities: in the end, human beings can be fragile and strong at the same time. Tell us about Pietro Andrea Ziani… There are some laments, especially for Andromaca and Glauco, that I thought were interesting. I fell in love with them and wanted the audience to know and listen to them. Also I listened to a recording of the Complesso Barocco and loved the music. The whole opera is interesting and enjoyable in any single moment. "The good thing of the opera is that it's actually a human adventure. This is what I love the most of it", Mrs Ricci tells us about her passion for this job. "If you think of human adventures, coming from the mythology, they travel through the 17th cen- tury and from there somebody writes them again and they come all the way to our time. It's a three-steps process: it's like div- ing in our roots, with millennials of our history, through music. We find a connection between times, how we can be similar and different, how things come back after so many years. This goes beyond music and history, it's very much spiritual." Which was your favorite opera among the three? I love them differently, like they were my babies. Every per- son brings something to each opera, in order to make it the best. I love the way people have different reactions and ask dif- ferent questions about the opera: that happened for Cleopatra and I hope it will be the same for Circe. The more you do, the more you learn. There are chal- lenges to overcome, but it's an interesting evolution and path. For me, at this point, it is all about fighting to help arts stay alive. The opera La Circe will be presented on September 8 and 9 2017 at the ODC Theater (3153 17th St, San Francisco). L'Italo- Americano readers can get 10% off on silver and gold tickets with the code ITALY. More info at https://www.arsminerva.org/ Mezzo-Soprano Céline Ricci, born in Florence of Italian and French parents, studied in Paris and continued her post-graduate studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London SAN FRANCISCO ITALIAN COMMUNITY

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