<<  -- 9 --  Roderic Dunnett    LUCIANO CHAILLY

It was this surreal sense of humour that brought Chailly together with the Italian novelist and short story writer Dino Buzzati, a master storyteller on a par with Alberto Moravia, in a series of dazzling collaborations during the 1950s, which helped redefine modern Italian Opera. Chailly and Buzzati (whose texts were also set by Berio and the American composer Ned Rorem) soon became close friends, and collaborated on four operas and a ballet.

Arguably it was Chailly's experience of war -- he served with Italy's Alpine forces in the north towards the end of World War II -- which drew him to Il Mantello ('The Cloak'), Buzzati's stark and chilling racconto in which Chailly uses a kind of quasi speech-singing to underline the terror of a dead soldier's last encounter with his parents (he returns home for a last farewell : only at the end do they finally grasp that their visitor is the ghost of their dead son). The drama is palpable, and the opera (Florence, Maggio musicale, 1960) all the more powerful for its taut concentration.

Continue >>