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E Lucevan Le Stelle
The Opera Season at the Theatro Municipal of São Paulo
Alberto Gazale, Italian baritone, as Tonio in Pagliacci.
The full story can be read exclusively in the desktop edition.
Words and images by Renato Amoroso
São Paulo, Brasil, 2014
At the invitation of the board of the Theatro Municipal, I photographed the 2014 opera season.
My father, a great admirer of this type of music, instilled in me a certain appreciation for opera. I say “appreciation” because it’s a very particular musical style, and a bit difficult for me to truly love deeply — but he made me pay attention to many details. And as the enthusiast he is, even today, during Sunday lunches, he explains to us countless particularities of the performances as if we were talking about a brand-new work — when in fact it was premiered in 1840.
As a child, sitting on the living room floor, one of the records I used to listen to was The Barber of Seville, which had on its cover a majestic set with a staircase leading to the square where Figaro proclaimed the famous aria. The richness and scale of that set mesmerized me. My father would say that we didn’t have that kind of production here because of the exorbitant costs of such scenery, and I would think, “Of course — imagine having to bring a square that big, with staircases and columns, all the way from Europe. Not to mention the weight — you couldn’t even fit something like that on a plane.”
Naively, I had no idea that it was all just a set — fake, built and torn down countless times — and that all of it would later become part of my life in theater and cinema.
Bizet's Carmen
Ambrogio Maestri enters singing from the wings as Verdi’s Falstaff.
The make-up dressing room of Pagliacci.
The American tenor Stuart Neill, as Mario Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca.
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Extras from the circus in Pagliacci.
Pagliacci's final act
I began my professional artistic career in the theater, and to this day I’m deeply enchanted not only by the performing arts but by the entire stage space itself. There is an energy in this kind of place that fascinates me — the backstage, the rehearsals, the personal relationships, those artists who are far more complex than the characters they portray, that place that gradually becomes your home, the tension of a live performance.
Within this universe, the Theatro Municipal stands as the ultimate exponent — a truly sacred space — and opera amplifies all of it at full volume, with its exaggerated dramatic weight. So much energy is deposited and shared there that it’s very easy to feel this almost latent vibration, whether you’re in the audience, in the wings, in the dressing rooms, up in the fly system — anywhere.
The Municipal is a labyrinth, full of winding paths, underground passages, and a multitude of identical-looking little doors: open one, and you might find yourself in a hallway with a giant shirtless tenor; open another, and you’re on a velvet staircase surrounded by elegantly dressed people holding glasses in their hands.
The Italian baritone Luca Grassi, in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci.
The last act of Tosca, just before the famous aria “E Lucevan le Stelle.”
In the end, celebrations spill through dressing rooms and corridors
giant bouquets, artists, crew members, and audience mingling as plans form for bars or restaurants. And then, suddenly, the theater is empty once more.
There is a particular phenomenon in these live performances that always catches my attention. During preparation, you spend days in that space and begin to feel at home — you have a little spot you’ve chosen to leave your things, a place where you meet someone, a coffee corner — you build a sense of intimacy. And then, suddenly, an hour before the show, everything changes: security guards appear who were never there on previous days, and they start trying to stop you from entering certain areas; professionals you knew now have urgent tasks that didn’t exist before and they’ve transformed — some aggressive, some throwing tantrums. Friends suddenly appear in the audience and sometimes even backstage, in this place that’s almost your home, yet you had no idea they were coming. The worlds blend together, and it’s a bit confusing.
The performance unfolds — so much energy in those hours, unexpected events, memorable performances, for better or worse — until the climax of the applause at the end. After the curtain call, there’s celebration in the various dressing rooms: some filled with huge bouquets, others more restrained, others without flowers at all but with people planning to celebrate somewhere else. And suddenly, the theater is empty again.
Now you can walk through all the rooms once more without anyone asking for your badge, and the theater — like an atomic power plant, with the hum of elevator machinery and air conditioning — remains there, impassive, waiting to start it all over again the next day for another unique and magical night.
John Neschling, the maestro and artistic director of the theater, steps forward to receive the evening’s final ovation.
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