Gaetano Donizetti was still under the tutelage of his teacher, Simone Mayr, in his native Bergamo when he started working on his opera buffa Le nozze in villa. With a libretto by Bartolomeo Merelli, based on a comedy by the German August von Kotzebue Die deutschen Kleinstädter (The Provincials), it was probably presented with little success during the 1819 carnival season in Mantua and, in the next couple of years, in Treviso and Genoa. After that, it totally disappeared from the repertory. Continuing a remarkable initiative – to stage every Donizetti opera on its bicentennial – Bergamo’s Donizetti Opera decided to revive the opera for this year’s edition of the festival dedicated to the composer. It was already a daunting task to start with, considering the fact that there is no original printed copy of the libretto, no autograph score and, on top of that, a second act quintet – “Aura gentil, che mormori” – was completely missing. So, in order to succeed in their endeavor to bring the opera back from the realm of the forgotten, the festival commissioned a new version of the quintet from Elio and Rocco Tanica with the collaboration of Enrico Melozzi that, truth be told, seamlessly blended with the rest of the score.
There were obvious additional challenges in the current environment. Instead of presenting Le nozze in villa in the newly renovated theater, the third Donizetti opera was presented online, filmed in a spectator-less opera house. Always following social distancing rules, director Davide Marranchelli and set designer Anna Bonomelli tried to take advantage of the situation, coming up with an imaginative mise-en-scène. The orchestra was placed on stage with the wind players behind a plexiglass screen. The auditorium was covered with green strips of artificial turf and, in a preamble to the performance, five mask-wearing youngsters used the area for a little soccer game. Conductor Stefano Montanari seized the football, punctured it with several dagger blows, and then raised his baton to signal the start of the overture.
Donizetti’s Wedding in the Villa has a predictable underlying story. Don Petronio wants to marry his daughter Sabina to a certain Trifoglio, but she is in love with Claudio. Surprised with a portrait of her lover, the girl makes her grandmother Anastasia (and hence the entire village) believe the image is actually that of the King. After all sorts of misunderstandings, learning that there is no dowry, Trifoglio decides to give up the girl's hand and Don Petronio agrees with her marrying Claudio, indeed a wealthy landowner. The synthetic green lawn proves to be a metaphor for the entire stage concept. The 18th-century villa of the original story is transfigured into a kitschy contemporary conveyor belt-like wedding venue with huge white cakes and swan sculptures made from balloons. Sabina is a photographer, her father – sporting a tricolore sash – is the mayor who officiates the rites, Trifoglio, her betrothed, is a sort of master of ceremonies and the soccer players from the beginning are attendants working on the premises. Dressed by costume designer Linda Riccardi, Trifoglio and other characters are, in the director’s words, true “tamarri”, the Italian term denoting ignorant and ill-mannered individuals.