– Stefano Poda, one last lap in Lausanne
The Italian performs “Nabucco” by Verdi at the Lausanne Opera. Interview with a creator of total art and a look back at his rich career during the Vigié era.
Published today at 8:57 p.m.
“Nabucco” by Giuseppe Verdi, rehearsal at the Lausanne Opera of the production by Stefano Poda who, as usual, is responsible for the direction, sets, costumes and lighting.
JEAN-GUY PYTHON
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The giant ring of “Faust”, the deceitful wheat field of “Ariodante”, the macabre cabinet of curiosities of “Tales of Hoffmann”, the metallic UFO of “Alcina”, the bare and floating tree of “Norma”: none other than Stefano Poda sculpts opera in this way. The collaboration of the Lausanne Opera with the Italian director marked the last years of Eric Vigié’s mandate.
Since 2016, with his assistant Paolo Giani Cei, Stefano Poda has been able to develop his singular symbolist language through an impressive series of productions (read below). We met the astonishing Transalpin during a new production of Verdi’s “Nabucco”, to be seen from June 2 at the Lausanne Opera.
Verdi’s first big success was also the first title, with “Don Giovanni”, which Stefano Poda directed. He is on his eighth interpretation: “I do not have the absolute truth to say how this work should be. I go a step further each time. I was initially bothered by the Manichaeism of the libretto, sublimated by the music. Today, I am beyond. I show how each character makes a conversion, whether religious, spiritual, philosophical, whatever. Everyone becomes someone else.”
Still little known when he was invited to Lausanne to produce “Faust” and “Ariodante” in quick succession during the 2016-2017 season, Stefano Poda has since taken off on a truly international level. As proof, the Verona arenas put back last year’s “Aida” on display this summer, in view of the popular success, and even rescheduled for next year. Before a new “Nabucco”!
The person concerned nevertheless remains attached to the Lausanne stage: “It is the theater where I was able to create the most creations. Thanks to its intimate dimension, and a fantastic technical team, we were able to carry out extraordinary projects there. Lausanne offered me a luxurious laboratory in which to experiment, to speak to a very close audience on very different works.”
How to define Stefano Poda’s work on the great masterpieces of opera? There is a refusal of updating in him: “I hate having a political message,” claims the director. At the opera, we sing, we don’t speak! THE Regietheater is not my language. Opera offers access to a parallel world which brings us to the Source of emotion and the universal mystery of man. With him, the stage space is generally bare, purely symbolic, stripped of the concrete references of the libretto.
Stefano Poda, in Verona eleven years ago.
PRISKA KETTERER
What most of the time saves this aesthetic from a disembodied abstraction à la Bob Wilson, is a mixture of archaisms and contemporary accessories, costumes of incredible refinements, and infinite care given to nuances of lighting. : Stefano Poda’s visual universe is immediately recognizable and always surprising. He speaks of it as “calligraphy”.
The striking visions of Stefano Poda
Ariodante’s oppression
Ariodante, crushed by his destiny
MARC VANAPPELGHEM
Stefano Poda’s visual grammar already exploded in 2016 in Handel’s “Ariodante”, with a giant palace whose rubble is made of eyes and ears, with these men and women dressed in leather and heavy togas, who eye each other, spy on each other, love and betray each other. A dome rising and falling constantly, revealed on the sky side a field of golden cereals and, on the earth side, a forest of giant hands, a tangle of threatening roots which will come to crush the heroes.
Lucia’s madness
Lenneke Ruiten, memorable as Lucia prisoner of her madness.
ALAN HUMEROSE
The red of blood, the black of the collapsed soul, the blinding white of neon lights. In 2017, “Lucia di Lammermoor”, by Donizetti, is experienced as an endless metaphor for prison. The soprano Lenneke Ruiten in the title role may well be corseted by her cobweb cage, she will end up tearing this veil of injustice, but the cage of her madness will be even greater. This bloody and dark production will have been illuminated by the last performance of Jesús-López Cobos at the head of the OCL.
Hoffmann’s obsessions
In 2019, Jean-François Borras played Hoffmann from Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffmann”.
ALAN HUMEROSE
A new cage than that of Hoffmann’s bedroom in Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffmann”, which begins to turn on itself, like the poet’s disturbed brain. Thanks to a setting infinitely multiplying the hero’s fantasies, Stefano Poda creates a fascinating plastic installation and at the same time touches the essence of Hoffmann’s drama, the women objects he collects, and the triumph of the devil. Nicolas Courjal, who played Méphistophélès, will be Zaccaria in “Nabucco”.
Matthew Chenal has been a journalist in the cultural section since 1996. He particularly chronicles the abundant news of classical music in the canton of Vaud and French-speaking Switzerland.More informations
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