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Samaritani at La Scala
by Vittoria Crespi Morbio.
Essay by Vittoria Crespi Morbio, The Twilights Man.
Appendices: biographical notice; catalogue of the works; chronology of stage designs.
Collection «Performing Artists at La Scala».
Amici della Scala – Umberto Allemandi & C., Turin, 2009.
Italian edition, pp.109.
The last great epigone of painted stage design, heir to the 19th-century school reinterpreted by the modern sensibility of Lila De Nobili, Pier Luigi Samaritani (Novara 1942–Rome 1994) is a transgressive traditionalist. He banned every aspect of folklore and affectation from his sets and in a long series of performances–still famous today–built his own poetics of nostalgia. These eclectic worlds, from the Spain of Carmen to Onegin’s Russia, are steeped in a melancholy twilight mood of exquisite delicacy.