Gaia Varon, New York University (Florence)
Television live broadcasts and recordings from opera houses are often regarded as ‘mere documentation’ of theatrical opera productions. To what extent can we assess a staged production through its video recording? What is the impact of the decisions made by filming crews on the video recording of a staged production? How many of these decisions are dictated by technical needs, and how have these changed over time? Is it possible today to reconstruct the production process and aesthetic decisions that informed video recordings of the past, and compare them with the parallel process that informs present-time live streaming?
To shed light on how multi-camera productions of operas have changed from live television broadcast to live streaming, this paper examines and compares the video recordings of two La Scala stage productions by Giorgio Strehler – Falstaff and Le nozze di Figaro – originally broadcast by the Italian public broadcasting company Rai in the 1980s, revived and re-filmed by Rai at different times, and recently screened again as part of the recent streaming offer by Teatro alla Scala. Capitalizing on interviews with practitioners from both Teatro alla Scala and Rai, I outline how production practices and aesthetic choices have changed over time, and how these changes impact the video productions. By focusing particularly on lighting, I examine how technical needs impose changes on Strehler’s staging conception, which was strongly based on the use of light.
Biography: A musicologist who loves to spread love for music, Gaia Varon is University Lecturer at NYU Florence and IULM University in Milan. She also authors and hosts music programmes for Rai Radio3 (among which all the live broadcasts from Milan Teatro alla Scala), Swiss Radio Rete 2 and television music channels. She has published articles and book chapters on operatic and symphonic music on screen, classical music recording style and technique, music in avant-garde short films, classical music in the Italian mediascape.