With thirteen solo singers, a brass-studded orchestra, and thirty percussion instruments divided into two groups, Giorgio Battistelli tackles the 1762 play “Le baruffe chiozzotte” (Brawling in Chioggia). In the 1920s, Carlo Goldoni’s witty farce – a sketch of the daily life of fishermen in the lagoon town of Chioggia by Venice – was set to music by Franco Leoni and Gian Francesco Malipiero. Commissioned by La Fenice, Battistelli’s opera was originally scheduled for world premiere in 2020, but had to be postponed due to the epidemic. Venetian stage director Damiano Michieletto helped the composer in the adaptation of the sung text, whose fringe dialect already sounded exotic to the 18th-century urban public.
The technical cast includes: Giorgio Battistelli (composer), Enrico Calesso (conductor), Alfonso Caiani (chorus master), Damiano Michieletto (stage director), Paolo Fantin (sets), Carla Teti (costumes), Alessandro Carletti (light designer), Thomas Wilhelm (coreography movements).
The artistic cast includes: Alessandro Luongo (Padron Toni), Silvia Frigato (Checca), Valeria Girardello (Madonna Pasqua), Francesca Sorteni (Lucietta), Enrico Casari (Titta-Nane), Marcello Nardis (Beppo), Rocco Cavalluzzi (Padron Fortunato), Loriana Castellano (Madonna Libera), Lombardi Mazzulli (Orsetta Francesca), Pietro Di Bianco (Padron Vincenzo), Leonardo Cortellazzi
(Toffolo), Federico Longhi (Isidoro).
Website: www.teatrolafenice.it
Location: La Fenice Opera House, Venice
Schedule: February 22 –-March 4, 2022
