IMAGO MUSICAE: FEDERICO TIEZZI DAL TEATRO ALL'OPERA

Since his debut with the company “Il Carrozzone” (1970), Federico Tiezzi has stood out because of his peculiar dramaturgy which makes of figurative arts its hallmark.  In fact his contemporary education as art historian entails a fruitful permeation between stage and icon which allows him to establish himself as a precursor of the so-called “image theatre”.  In all the plays and operas he has put on, his rigorous visual grammar brings about suggestions and interferences that deeply innervate his scene setting. Moreover, reference to Aby Warburg’s teachings clearly shows up in his way of portraying the character on an intertextual backdrop, as well as in his pondered development of gestural expressiveness that he derives from the Pathosforlmen’s theory.  
The aim of my paper is to investigate Tiezzi’s poetics through the analysis of some of his theatrical plays that clearly display the osmosis between the scene and the figurative arts.  
The first case study is about the debut of Tiezzi as opera director in 1991 with Bellini’s Norma at the Teatro Petruzzelli of Bari with the unusual collaboration of Mario Schifano, star of the Pop-Art, in making the stage curtains and backdrops. The naïf art of Schifano fits within a neoclassical set with explicit references of the paintings of Jacques-Louis David creating an evocative contrast both aesthetic and semantic.