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In the following text, you will find an abstract of the opera.
Fragments of the opera can be found at multimedia section

The contemporary opera Fortuny Venise

The nucleus of FORTUNY VENISE is the fascinating and versatile personality of Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, son of the painter Mariano Fortuny.
Diego Dall’Osto, the composer, and Lluís Meseguer, the writer, explore from a contemporary point of view, the exciting and complex time lived by the artist; his personal and artistic relations with famous personages; his aesthetic and industrial creations.
The current knowledge of Mariano Fortuny’s life is based on the impressive Museum of Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, on scholars as Guillermo de Osma, Marzia Maino and writers as Pere Gimferrer.
Text, music and staging, under the direction of Rafel Duran, form a continuum where the different languages are interrelated. The opera Fortuny Venise proposes a series of lyric visions across which the protagonist offers some poetical and reflective, historical and aesthetic issues, which allow to understand his time, which is still ours, and perhaps that of the world and the humanity.

CREATION AND PRODUCTION OF FORTUNY VENISE

The opera is a production of ACTEON, in collaboration with CASTELLÓ CULTURAL, INSTITUT VALENCIÀ DE LA MÚSICA, and METRÒNOM

CREDITS

DIEGO DALL’OSTO (Composer)
Diploma in Organ and Composition at the Conservatory of Music of Vicenza and in electronic Music in Venice. At present, he is a teacher in the Conservatory of Mantua (Italy).
( more information at : www.dallosto.com )

About the musical concept he says:
The musical elements present multiple facets: completely synthetic, obtained materials ex-novo thru synthesis of computer music; acoustic materials processed with computer programs; recorded audio materials from the daily reality; traditional materials with a popular character, from which new materials are derived; ranging between immaterial expression and descriptive sense.

LUIS MESEGUER (Author of libretto)
He is writer and a Professor of Literature at the Jaime I University (Castellon de la Plana, Spain).

Of the literary concept of the obra, he says:
The needs of writing a libretto for a contemporary opera have guided the creation of a text under three main conditions: (a) to determine the formal, semantic and phonic characteristics, within a complex idea of the music and the space of the opera; (b) to extend the lyric style towards a polyphony of possibilities in monologue, dialogue, journalistic text, and technical text; and (c) to combine the contemporary style with the verbal and expressive references of the historical time of characters

SYNOPSIS

Part I
In the island of the Giudecca in Venice, a fire in the Stucky Mill damages the textiles preserved in the neighbor factory founded by Mariano Fortuny. The Egyptian businessman Samir Riad, current owner of the factory, complains about the losses and evokes Mariano. With a flash back, Henriette Nigrin, wife and collaborator of Fortuny, accompanies him, who is moribund, evoking the lost past time.

Part II
In the contemporary Venice, filled with mass tourism, the name of Fortuny resounds hardly. In contrast with such a problematic present time, a century earlier, Fortuny and his lover Henriette, the ex-model newly come from Paris, play with sensual complicity in the palazzo Orfei-Pesaro of Venice, sharing the ideal of art, against the limits and the conventions imposed by the Venetian bourgeoisie. Finally, they intone a duo, exalting youth and freedom.

Part III
Fortuny is alone in his study of Palazzo Orfei, in a feverish and solitary search for the renewal of contemporary scenery and lighting. He is working on Tristán and Isolda, trying to improve the disappointing theatrical experience lived in Bayreuth. Looking for a natural resolution of lighting, in an unexpected way it discovers the effect of the indirect light, which causes the invention of a special dome. Than enters Henriette, who is working on a system for pleating textiles, presenting the first model of suit: the Delphos. In a creative crescendo, with the Collaborator, they programme the creation of companies and ateliers for the international diffusion of Fortuny’s inventions and patents

Part IV
The creations of Fortuny advance across the XXth century, with an increasing tension between creation and of market rules . From an initial success, difficulties for the creation are growing.
Fortuny experiences several successes: at the theater of Countess Martine de Béarn, in collaboration with the director Adolphe Appia; in Germany, where several theaters are interested in his lighting system ; he collaborates with Gabriele D’Annunzio and Eleonora Duse; the american collaborator, Elsie McNeil, popularizes his fabrics and dresses in the United States. Nevertheless, several projects are obstructed by bureaucracy, technicians and theatrical workers, and the finacial crisis of 1929 completes the critical situation, which reaches a climax, leading to a final concertato, in a belligerant and threatening conclusion.

Part V
Marian and Henriette are inside a tent of Arab type, installed in the lounge of Palazzo Orfei, trying to protect themselves from the cold. They suffer the consequences of the Second World war. Across the oscillating signal of a malfunctioning radio, the death of Mussolini is known. In such a situation the past is abolished as the ideals of the Belle époque, and the future is not possible anymore. Mariano dies. Henriette sings an elegiac and shaded aria on the loss of the beauty. Elsie McNeil appears with the will of recovering the firm “ Fortuny Venise “.

Part VI
Three years after the fire of the Stucky Mill, the company celebrate an international reception to commemorate the centenary of the first design of a Fortuny’s fabric. Designers, aristocrats, architects and personalities, meet in the Giudecca. They acclaim the quality of the Fortuny style, attended by Samir, who presents the handmade quality of the production. In an intense aria, he asks the eternal open question: who can quantify the price of beauty?