After many years Alfredo Casella’s opera-fairy tale La donna serpente (1928-31) returns to the stage. Maestro Fabio Luisi (picture: BALU Photography) will conduct the performances in Martina Franca on July 18, 20, and 26. The production is made by Festival della Valle d'Itria and the Fondazione Teatro Regio of Turin.

La donna serpente is an opera-fairy tale in a prologue and three acts. Its libretto is by Cesare Vico Ludovici and is based on a play of the same name by Carlo Gozzi. The opera was first performed in 1932 at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome.

Casella stated that he had been fascinated by the “extraordinary musical possibilities” of Gozzi’s fairy tale as well as by its “grandiose, larger-than-life style, made up of Baroque heroism, dramatic passions, tragedy, and clownish, down-to-earth comedy.”

He added that models like Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff and the operas of Mozart - the former through their melodramtic force; the latter through their “marvellous music, which always leaves the singing unobstructed, though supporting it with a timbric and polyphonic contour that can without hesitation be defined as magical” - guided the Neoclassical development of his poetics in La donna serpente.

The stage direction for the production is by Antonio Cirillo, the scenery by Dario Gessati, and the costumes by Gianluca Falaschi.


Alfredo Casella: La donna serpente
Opera-fiaba in a prologue and three acts 
3. 2.corA.2.bcl.3.dbn / 4.3.3.1 / timp, xyl, perc / strings 
ALTIDÒR, King of Tiflis, T - MIRANDA, a fairy, Queen of Eldorado, his wife, S – ALTIDRÙF, one of Altidòr’s archers, T – ALBRIGÒR, Tògrul’s servant, Bar – PANTÙL, Altidòr’s tutor, Bar – TARTAGÌL, low minister, T – ARMILLA, Altidòr’s sister, warrior, Tògrul’s wife, S – FARZANA, fairy, S – CANZADE, amazon, MS – TÒGRUL, faithful minister, B – DEMOGORGÒN, King of the Fairies, Bar – La Corifèa, S – A voice in the desert – Smeraldina, fairy (can be the same voice as La Corifèa) – Badur, treacherous minister, Bar – First Messenger, T – Second Messenger, Bar – Il Corifèo, Bar – The voice of the wizard Geònca, B (can be sung by the same voice as Tògrul)