Riccardo Zandonai

Conductor : Daniele Callegari

Designer : Francesco Calcagnini

Director : Gabriele Vacis

First performance : Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1925

The Cavalieri di Ekebu is, to put it mildly, an unusual opera. Based on a hugely popular Swedish novel which eventually won the Nobel Prize for its author, Selma Lagerlof, its plot reads like a weird Nordic Parsifal in which "happy ever after" arrives, not in the form of a messianic figure, but in the form of the local iron foundry: salvation through industrialisation. The story begins on a cold Christmas night as an alcoholic Lutheran pastor, Giosta Berling, collapses in the snow after offering his life to the devil in exchange for a glass of brandy. He is rescued by a local woman, La Comandante, who invites him to her castle to join the Knights of Ekebu, a group of destitute men whom she has provided with work. She also, it seems, takes care of their leisure activities: once ensconced at the castle, Giosta is inveigled into playing the part of a friar in a play.

Anna, daughter of the evil Sintran - who, it transpires, worked out the finer points of the brandy deal with the devil - is also in the play, and when Anna and Giosta get into a clinch on stage in full view of everybody, Sintran is enraged, and spills the beans on La Comandante; the success of her ironworks has, he declares, been based on yet another satanic deal whereby the soul of one of the knights must head hell-wards every year. Appalled, the knights banish La Comandante and take over the ironworks, but they make a poor fist of it and things get so bad that finally Giosta agrees to sacrifice himself to save the starving townspeople. In the nick of time, however, La Comandante turns up, blesses Giosta and Anna, orders the knights to reopen the ironworks and dies peacefully to the sound of hammers, fire and the knights singing in praise of the work ethic.

Gabriele Vacis

Gabriele Vacis is from Turin. He worked as an architect for a time, but in 1982, at the age of 27, he founded the Teatro Settimo theatre company, staging works by Moliere, Goethe, Borges and Garcia Marquez both in Italy and in festivals at Salzburg, Barcelona, Hamburg and Melbourne. His highly acclaimed 1996 production of Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo will be revived in Milan and Genoa next year. His recent operatic productions include Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor at the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona in 1994 and Macchinario by Nicola Campogrande at the Teatro Rossini in Lugo in 1995.

Strange, or what? Somehow the plot of Cavalieri di Ekebu is irresistibly reminiscent of the Chinese song from the Mao Tze-Dong era which rejoiced in the name of Oh, How Wonderful It Is To Carry Dung To The Top Of The Hill For The Commune. So is this a proto-Communist opera? No, says Gabriele Vacis firmly, it isn't. "It can be interpreted in a political way, but in this production we have tried to clear the piece of political resonance and concentrate on the sociological aspects. It is rather rare for an opera to deal with the theme of industrialisation - very few operas are set in the industrial period, and Puccini, for instance, recommended exotic subjects - so for that reason it's very contemporary and we have tried to stress that element." Although the opera was written in the 1920s, this production will be set at the turn of the century. "This was, it's true, when the two great opposing ideologies of communism and fascism were born, but it was also a time of incredible optimism, of looking towards the future - an optimism based, above all, on industry." And so, he says, they have made of the piece a kind of Christmas fairy tale. "We have tried to make it fun - I don't know what Zandonai would think about this, maybe not much, because he was a very serious person - but anyway, in agreement with the conductor, we have tried to lighten it because we think that elements of fun are the best parts. The original novel was very complex, there were many strands in it - but obviously melodrama cannot afford a plot like this, it has to be very simple." He describes the score as a melange of different influences, with motifs from popular folklore and song, as well as traces of Grieg. "I think if Zandonai were alive today he would be a fantastic composer of soundtracks - he could easily have done the music for Titanic, for example." In the Italian operatic tradition, however, Zandonai is seen as a successor to Puccini and Mascagni - are there not Puccinian elements, too, in the music? "Of course," says Gabriele Vacis with a smile, "Zandonai would have liked to be Puccini. About 40 years ago in Italy, there were two famous cyclists - one always came first, the other always came second. That was Zandonai - l'eterno secondo. But what Zandonai could do that Puccini could not do, was to look at the new musical ideas which were being produced around Europe at that time. Puccini's personality was too strong to be able to absorb such influences, but Zandonai could take advantage of new ideas and make them part of his own creative process."