Arnaud Bernard, Stage Director and Set Designer of La fanciulla del West, tells about the plan
– Why La fanciulla del West? Why the Mariinsky?
– With La fanciulla del West – Puccini’s most complex and most populated opera, with seventeen soloists – not every theatre can put together such a team, and with several casts too. After I vespri siciliani I realised how vast the Mariinsky Theatre’s resources are – how many high-class singers can be engaged in the production and what fantastic technical possibilities there are. We are staging a complex production with a huge amount of props and costumes, and in so much as my style is “cinematographic” for me it was important to have this “Hollywood” to hand. Together with maestro Gergiev I long discussed various titles, but we came to this opera by Puccini, which has never before been staged at the Mariinsky.
– Will it be another “film”, like I vespri siciliani?
– With Puccini it is essentially a western, there is no contradiction here. The words that are sung are important, the extensive remarks can be overlooked. The most difficult thing in staging it is to build a relationship between the performers on the stage, their words, their actions, their reactions. Here everything has to run like a Swiss watch, take one piece away and the mechanism will fall apart. Already in the first scene someone is shouting something, the ensemble is playing cards, in the next room they are starting to dance and the change of images is like in a film. For me secondary extras are as important as the soloists – that’s like in a film, where everyone in the scene has some significance.
– Whom did you yourself wish to perform in your production?
– No-one. I don’t have the time! Here there are no definitively kind and sweet people, evildoers or villains, each of the characters has his or her dark side. Minnie, the owner of the saloon who is constantly in contact with the gold prospectors, can be imperious, sharp and cruel, but in the love scenes she is a true lady – she flirts, gets embarrassed and weeps. The tenor is a thief, but, having fallen in love, he reveals unexpected facets of his soul to us. The baritone, with whom the tenor plays a game of life and death at cards, is the wicked one, though he portrays nobleness and so on.
– The sets that we see cannot really be associated with the image of the Wild West as seen in westerns. Where did that “brick factory” come from?
– One single construction allows us to bring all three acts together. The saloon, Minnie’s room and the forest – it can all be achieved by means of deconstruction, retaining just one silhouette. It is sufficient in Act III, which takes place in the forest, to throw open the windows and let the frost and the wind enter this hangar and the audience will feel cold and uncomfortable.
– In the opera, the singers have extremely demanding tessituras, they have to sing while running, act as if in a film and push through the quadruple cast of the orchestra. Do you make their lives any easier at all?
– Why? It’s a real challenge – to sing and to act Puccini.
– Which productions of La fanciulla del West do you like?
– I haven’t seen any. Or rather, I deliberately haven’t watched any.
– For you, is verismo the same as hyperrealism?
– It is indeed.
– And will there be horses?
– And not just the one.
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