HOPERAPERTA

 Sipari

by Patrizia Catalano

He who seeks... finds.  Articles are often written out of a need for topicality, an imminent event, sometimes the writer falls in love with a theme, an image... the desire to go deeper is triggered, putting everything found along our search on a blank page. Next to a beautiful picture, of course. When I saw Rembrandt's painting Holy Family with Curtain, a small oil painting on a wooden board, I fell in love with it. I was looking for an attachment to a piece (this one) on the theme of Artist's Curtains, from Picasso onwards and, lo and behold, I found a piece that summed up the meaning of my research, or rather, anticipated it.

In Rembrandt's work (1646), he represents the theme of the Nativity by placing it on the stage of a small imaginary theatre. The simplicity of the scene contrasts with the richness of the wooden frame of the theatre: inside, on the left, the artist depicts a small manger with a straw mattress next to the Madonna as she embraces the baby Jesus. In the centre - contrary to tradition - there is a kitten crouching by the fire, while on the right only a wooden bench is visible. The rest is night, a deep darkness, which gives light to the admirable scene painted by the Dutch artist, bringing all his wisdom as a Counter-Reformation author into a classic theme of the Christian tradition. The simplicity, as we were saying, contrasts with the frame of the theatre, with columns and beams carved in gilded wood and applied with rich ornamental motifs. On the right, pulled aside, is a curtain in cardinal's red velvet, the curtain that has just been drawn back to allow access to the scene of the Birth of Jesus. The Nativity according to Rembrandt. Perhaps the magic of the theatre lies there, in its curtain that is raised and lowered, or simply drawn like a curtain, as is the Italian tradition, allowing one to enjoy the performance or to imagine what will happen next.  The curtain of wonders, in heavy fabric or preferably red velvet, better still if embellished with fringes and gilded tassels, is liked in its most classical and traditional version, as in Rembrant's painting, or as J. W. Goethe imagines it in the various depictions of itinerant theatre in his Wilhelm Meister (The Years of Apprenticeship, by Wilhelm Meister, 1795).

But... there are artists. And art exists. And, fortunately, art exists as a project of relationships between languages. And, in particular, the artists of the last century, who were freer and less constrained by today's narrow market laws and more experimental, tested many ways of working in art, of having fun. And the curtain has been one of the subjects with which famous and not-so-famous painters have tried their hand. With success, as it was for Pablo Picasso who, in 1917 in Paris, at the Theatre du Chatelet, signed Parade, an imposing work created to celebrate Djagilev's Russian ballet, a project born from the meeting of great personalities, in addition to the impresario Djagilev there were in fact the poet Apollinaire,  the writer Cocteau, the musician Satie, the dancer and choreographer Massine, as well, of course, as the Spanish painter who, for the occasion, abandoned the Cubist language for a return to a more classical style and the beloved themes of circus art and harlequins.

Many years later, in Berne, Surrealist artist Meret Opheneim decided to stage a work, and this time Picasso was the author of the script: 'Le Désir attrapé par la queue'. Composed in 1944, Grasping Desires by the Tail was presented on 27 November 1956, at the Klein Theatre, under the direction of Daniel Spoerri. And Opheneim, who was the translator and costume designer of the piece, was also an actress for the occasion, playing the role of Sipario (each played a wing) with artist Lilly Keller.

From the performance curtain (the two artists posed nude wrapped in a soft, almost transparent tulle) to the contemporary artist's curtain. Many theatres are now turning to the masters of contemporary art to create unprecedented curtains. The most active in this direction is the Vienna State Opera, which for the past 25 years has been turning to well-known artists to realise its annual Safety Curtain project, which transforms the curtain of the Viennese theatre into a space for contemporary art. This year Anselm Kiefer is the chosen author with the work Solaris, a homage by the German artist inspired by the 1961 science fiction novel of the same name by the Polish writer Stanisław Lem.

And in Italy? In the Belpaese for several years now, theatres have been involving artists for their curtains, not with the systematicity of the Vienna Opera, but in a more occasional manner (which also depends, alas, on the budgets that our opera houses have at their disposal), often due to a mentality that is generally a little more traditionalist. In any case, at the Duse in Bologna they are at the fifth edition of Sipari d'Artista, with Mimmo Clemente for the 22/23 season and Fabrizio Plessi for the 23/24 season, for the Regio di Parma in 22/23 the curtain was signed by Mimmo Paladino on the occasion of Parma capitale della cultura.