The magical story of the most famous living puppet of all time becomes a work in music: Pinocchio, a musical fable by the Vicenza composer Pierangelo Valtinoni with a libretto by Paolo Madron loosely based on Carlo Collodi's Adventures of Pinocchio, will be staged at the Malibran Theater in the period immediately pre-Christmas and as part of the Fenice Opera and Ballet Season 2019-2020.

The show, suitable for audiences of all ages, is a new production designed by the young and innovative director Gianmaria Aliverta, who uses for this production the scenes of Alessia Colosso, the costumes by Sara Marcucci, the light design by Elisabetta Campanelli and the choreographic movements by Silvia Giordano. The musical part will be entrusted to the maestro Enrico Calesso, who will lead the Orchestra of the Teatro La Fenice and the children's choir of the Little Venetian Cantors, prepared by Diana D’Alessio.

Five replicas this month, on 13, 15, 17, 19 and 21 December 2019; another five are scheduled for March 2020.

Pinocchio di Valtinoni and Madron was born in 2001, as a single act for the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza; but it is in 2006, at the Komische Oper in Berlin, that it really takes shape, "sculpted" in the two acts in which the libretto manages to condense, without sacrifice, the adventures of the puppet who wants to become a child with an urgent and involving dramaturgical rhythm. Since then, like his predecessor of ink and paper, Pinocchio has also traveled around the world, from Moscow to Madrid to Hong Kong, achieving unanimous success everywhere. At the Malibran Theater the final version will be proposed - always in two acts - represented for the first time at the Teatro Regio in Turin in May this year.
Benedetto Croce called it "the most beautiful book of Italian children's literature" and certainly Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, since his birth in 1881, has known a success worthy of such fame. It has been translated into more than two hundred and seventy languages, told by all the arts, from cinema to comics, through dance and television, interpreted according to the most complex interpretations. "Pinocchio - according to Croce - which the children liked and liked so much, also pleases adults, and not because of the memory of the pleasure they once felt, or not only for this, but for himself. It is a human book and finds the ways of the heart ».
From the point of view of the staging, "scenes and costumes blink a little in the forties of the last century - explains the director Gianmaria Aliverta - an era that is beginning to be a little distant and in which the grandparents still recounted the fairy tales. [...] Within this setting I have also included elements that look and speak more directly to the contemporary, to make it clear that certain things can change in the form in which they occur but not in substance. My goal was not to "rewrite" Pinocchio, which has already been reworked by composer and librettist, but to highlight his being a timeless story. Sometimes I have also played with music a bit: many scenes are like closed boxes, and at a musical level they don't communicate with the ones that preceded them: I liked that this idea was also usable for the spectator, as if he were in in front of the episodes of a Netflix miniseries ».

The cast of this new Venetian setting by Pinocchio is undisputed prestige: the puppet will be played by the soprano Silvia Frigato; the carpenter Geppetto, from the low-baritone Omar Montanari; the fairy will be embodied by the soprano Giovanna Donadini while Chiara Brunello will interpret the cat and Dr. Gufo; Christian Collia the fox and Dr. Corvo; Rocco Cavalluzzi Mangiafuoco and the innkeeper; Lara Lagni Lucignolo and Arlecchino; and Rosa Bove tuna, snail and Pulcinella. To give voice to the gendarmes, the talking cricket, the rabbits, the choir of puppets, the children's choir and the choir of the fish will be the Little Venetian Singers. Pinocchio will also see the dancers Davide Bellomo, Matilde Cortivo, Eva Dabalà, Samuel Moretti, Ilario Marco Russo and Nik Simonetti.