Palermo, Rossini's Semiramide returns after 150 years, in a staging that blends Kubrick and haute couture.

After a century and a half of absence, Semiramis returns to resonate Palermo with the strength of a great event. Wednesday 11 March at 8.00 pm the curtain of the Massimo Theater rises on the masterpiece of Gioachino Rossini, absent from the city scene for 150 years, in a staging that relaunches its relevance with a decisive cut and contemporary vision.

Neon lights, black marbles and noir atmospheres define the visual impact of a production coming from the’Opera of Rouen-Normandie and signed by the French director Pierre-Emmanuel Rousseau, also author of sets and costumes. The Assyro-Babylonian court is thus transfigured into a ruthless and vertical metropolis, nourished by cinematic suggestions that recall the aesthetics of Stanley Kubrick is Tony Scott.

On the podium of theOrchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Massimo — prepared by the Master Salvatore Punturo —the American director comes up Christopher Franklin, a leading interpreter of the Rossini repertoire. In the title role, a leading actress makes her debut as Vasilisa Berzhanskaya (alternating with Maria Grazia Schiavo), called to confront the part that Rossini conceived for his muse Isabella Colbran.

Next to her, the mezzo-soprano from Palermo Chiara Amarù plays Arsace en travesti — alternating with Ginger Costa-Jackson —a pure and tormented figure who traverses a universe dominated by corruption. The cast rounds out Mirco Palazzi is Nahuel Di Pierro (Assur), Maxim Mironov is Antonino Siragusa (Hydreno), Francesca Cucuzza (Azema), Adriano Gramigni (Oroe / The shadow of Nino) and Samuel Di Leo (Mitrane). The lighting designer collaborates on the staging. Gilles Gentner, which shapes the space with an intense chiaroscuro, Achille Jourdain (assistant director) and Charles D'Abramo (mimic actions).

The directorial imagination draws as much from the ritual suggestions of Eyes Wide Shut as from the dark and vampiric charm of The Hunger, dressing the protagonists in the haute couture of Yves Saint Laurent is Hubert de Givenchy. In this decadent landscape, a vision dominated by oppression and an inescapable fate takes shape: power reveals itself to be a destructive force, capable of corrupting the most sacred bonds, transforming the marital bond into a murderous conspiracy and the maternal one into a fatal deception.

Semiramide emerges as a predatory sovereign, driven by a dark sensuality but ultimately overwhelmed by her most intimate wound, revealing herself as a desperate mother and a victim of her own past. Rossini's score thus becomes a relentless dramatic engine, plumbing the depths of a corrupt society and leading to the final catharsis, in the darkness of Nino's mausoleum.