This book contains the papers presented at a conference on Mercedes Viale Ferrero, held in 2009 both at the Teatro Regio in Turin and the Giorgio Cini Foundation, Venice and promoted by the Study Centre for Documentary Research into European Theatre and Opera and by the Massimo Mila Regional University Centre for Music. The aim of the conference was to pay homage to the life and work of Mercedes Viale Ferrero, a leading scholar of the history of opera. An expert on the dramatic, figurative and architectural developments in opera, she was an irreplaceable presence at numerous conferences devoted to Italian and international musical life organized by the Cini Foundation in 1970s and ‘80s. Together with the late Francesco Degrada she also promoted the study of Disposizioni sceniche (“Stage Instructions”) published in the series which she edited for the Milanese publishers Ricordi.
The various essays in this volume deal with aspects in the history of opera from the points of view of the scenographical imagination and staging music, always considered in Viale Ferrero’s studies as parts of a “complete art work”, which is intrinsic in the very idea of opera. The book opens with tributes to Viale Ferrero’s life and studies from Pierluigi Petrobelli Alberto Basso, Franco Pulcini and Daniela Goldin Folena. They are followed by essays on the Barberini and Roman opera by Tamburini; the Baroque stage designs of the Bibiena by Pigozzi; the stage-settings of Metastasio and Goldoni by Sala di Felice; and issues involved in staging the music of Martin y Soler, Rossini, Verdi and Ravel by Culturato, Sala, Conati and Girardi. The volume ends with theoretical reflections on the study of 19th-century stage design by Biggi and Jesurum; two essays on Luigi Illica’s librettos by Olivero and Bernardoni; and an essay on set and costume designer Caramba by Crespi.
The book has a complete bibliography of the writings of Mercedes Viale Ferrero.