Michele Mariotti: “Debut in Santa Cecilia with two Russian authors, music unites it does not divide”

“We propose two Russian authors in the face of those who would like this looting, both of artists but also of culture. There is never a war that can be justified, there is never a valid reason for war and there are never winners. , war is always wrong. But blaming art and culture or using them to create barriers, to create good and bad, is contrary to art itself which instead unites, has no barriers, has no religion, does not belong to States”. So Michele Mariotti, the musical director of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, who tomorrow at 19.30 (repeats Friday 15 at 20.30 and Saturday 16 at 18) in the Sala Santa Cecilia of the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome debut (“I had been waiting for a long time”) on the podium of the Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia conducting the ‘Overture on Jewish themes’ by Sergej Prokofiev, the second ‘Little Russia’ symphony by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and the piano concerto by Benjamin Britten with Alessandro Taverna as soloist. “There is a common thread that binds all three songs, including Britten’s, and it is a perennial melancholy, a tragic joy – explains Mariotti – Prokof’ev uses always tragic themes that combine the grotesque, the bitter and they make us laugh while we cry. There is always this tragic happiness. A characteristic of Russian culture that is also present in Tchaikovsky: we would like to do something but there is always an event above us that prevents us from doing so. it is like a disenchantment, a learning to laugh while suffering. This is also the frame of Britten’s concert which is very varied and highlights the pianist’s virtuosity, with a second very interesting movement, a waltz that combines the grotesque with the circus , to the deformed and that reminds me of some passages from Bulgakov’s ‘Master and Margarita’ “. Mariotti also clarifies what his future opera and symphonic directorial choices are, with “an opening to the twentieth century which is the natural step after my years in Bologna (he was musical director of the Teatro Comunale from 2015 to 2018, ed). I really like to combine Russian music with French “. And he announces that he will face authors of late romanticism and the twentieth century, from Wagner to Prokof’ev, Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc, of which he will direct ‘The dialogues of the Carmelites’ at the Rome Opera. ‘To attract young people you need to involve them with open rehearsals and make them participate’ The conductor of Pesaro then focuses on the technical difficulties experienced by the world of music during Covid, with distances in the orchestra that required enormous changes to the playing techniques. “We got used to anti-musicality – observes Mariotti – with distances that went against the principle of making music together by playing on each other, listening to each other. The distancing inevitably made us soloists, instead now it is gone and finally we are back to being part of the group, to be two orchestral musicians per lectern “. As for the public, according to Mariotti, symphonic music concerts” have more problems filling the hall than the opera that fills the theaters. In Rome with ‘Luisa Miller’ who is neither ‘Turandot’ nor ‘Boheme’, we had five sold out performances “. What is the recipe for attracting the public and especially young people? “I am not a social director, I am very shy and I maintain a certain reserve, but I think that dialogue is needed by opening the theater or the concert hall during rehearsals, because showing what happens during rehearsals means making it clear that a theater is a place where you work, sweat, laugh, joke. But there is still little culture and little knowledge of what happens in a theater. Our duty is not to make you fall in love with the musical opera, but to do know and make them understand what it is. So – he concludes – for me the recipe is to involve young people, talk to them, make them come to the tests, explain to them the reasons for some interpretative choices, make them participate. In short, involve them “.