Duetto to bring opera ‘closer’ to the audience

Andrea Bettinelli Dal Cin (left) and Peter Gordon

Set to bring back opera to the “special” stage of the Dom Pedro V Theatre, the Opera “Duetto,” by Peter Gordon and Andrea Bettinelli Dal Cin promises to familiarize audiences with the genre.

“We are precisely targeting people that never been to an opera and that is why [we chose] this ‘funny opera’. It is something that probably doesn’t have the grandeur of a ‘Tosca’ or an ‘Aida’ but can get close to the public,” Dal Cin said during an event included in the Macau Literary Festival. “Even the music is something we can call nowadays a crossover. We have a different concept [adapted also due to the space available] with one piano and four trombones; it’s something new and kind of tailored. […] If you have never been to an opera you might want to try to come to this,” he added.
The opera will be presented from March 30 to April 1, on three consecutive nights. It is a single story, merging two operas “La Serva Pardona” (The Servant Turned Mistress) from Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736) and “Il segreto di Susanna” (Susanna’s Secret) from Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948) that were adapted in a single story to be presented specially on the stage of Dom Pedro V Theatre. Speaking about the stage, Gordon said, “it’s unique. We wish to have one of these in Hong Kong but we don’t. It’s unique in all of Asia.”

Remarking on the content and approach of this new style, Dal Cin noted, “we want to make this relevant to the place where we are performing. So we ‘reset’ [the scenes] to take place in Macau [and] we put the second act to take place around 1965, so in this way we are narrowing the gap that usually [exists] between the audience and a grand opera that goes on the stage.” Dal Cin added, “usually people go and see the opera that [follows a story that] happens very far [away geographically] and that [features stories] that happened in 18-something or 14-something and it’s played as set in the time [when it] was originally written. Here we added this kind of contemporary element and the audience is somehow embedded into the story and we have combined a lot of theatre into the opera.” The writer-adaptor said the style was, “overall a completely new experience for us.”

Speaking about the idea of catering the performance to the public was the director, set designer, and costume designer, Gordon, saying, “the story may be universal but the stories happened a long time ago and if you [are] living in Asia, they happened in a place very far [away] and if it’s a grand opera you might be sitting a very long way from the stage.”

Gordon noted that the company is a small one and that one of their aims is to embed a “familiar bond” in the opera. He said, “despite the fact the story is very simple, about two people falling in love, there is a lot of distance between the audience and the story and one of the things we were trying to do is to shorten the distance between the audience and the story and to make these stories universal,” so they can be easily be perceived by the audience and “amuse” and “entertain” those that go to watch it.

As an example, Gordon noted, “we chose ‘La Serva Pardona’ exactly because it’s about a Maid Serpina that connives – nicely – to get her boss to marry her. I think everyone can relate to this topic around here right?” he noted in a humorous way.