Rome, Arnalta Cafè at the Orsini Chapel, rarities and first performances between Baroque opera and cafè chantant

To Rome, in the suggestive setting of the Orsini Chapel, built on the ancient remains of the Teatro di Pompeo, Tuesday December 6, 2022 (19.30) goes on stage Arnalta Cafe, an unmissable gem that sees Luca on stage Cervoni – tenor with a solid reputation as a Baroque artist – e Alessandro Quarta, multifaceted conductor and conductor, creators and protagonists of an extravagant and original metatemporal experiment between baroque opera and café chantant: a fun and sophisticated show that brings to the fore a dozen seventeenth-century nurses interpreted in the salacious spirit of the Italian cabaret of Petrolini and Poli.

The world of Baroque opera, with its en travesti singers, its myths and its sonorities so different from those that surround us, appears very far from our daily life, but it bevy of Nurses that Luca Cervoni is Alessandro Quarta they recovered from rare and sometimes very rare pages of 17th century Italian opera it succeeds very well in bringing it closer, breaking down every cultural wall, entertaining and intriguing without deviating a millimeter from the most rigorous musical philology.

Luca Cervoni, Alessandro Quarta and theRoman Concert Ensemble they bring the audience onto a crowded stage “of middle-aged ladies with extravagant names, like in a 1960s telephone directory from the Po Valley; here – explains the Company – costumes and disguises do not include peplums, buskins or crinolines, but modest vintage dresses stolen from a Paolo Poli or a Franca Valeri in the mood for understatement. In an instant their feelings of cutting truth, sometimes dirty, sometimes tender, maternal or irreverent and cynical, become our amarcord of grandmothers, aunts, schoolteachers, figures of a much more recent past; archetypes of a status of femininity that still exists and perhaps will exist forever, the pulsating subject of cabaret: popular theater but of the highest lineage.”

And it is in this continuous dialogue between high and low, between philological correctness and absolute "betrayal", in this fusion of temporal planes, that lies the irresistible charm of this gala of supporting actors who have finally come to the fore: Desba, Dirce, Nerea, Nisbe, Pasquella, Plancina, Rodisbe, Delfa, Filandra, Lenia, Gilda – and of course the eponym Arnalta, with his painful, soured or affectionate humanity; they go beyond the centuries and above all the clichés and preconceptions of those who think that they could never, ever enjoy an air of Horses or Monteverdi, or the lesser known Melani, Stefani is Sartorius, among many.

And if it is true that the directorial reinterpretation in the opera has accustomed us to the actualizations, the total and perfect fusion of two well-coded genres such as baroque opera and cabaret is instead an absolute novelty, unsettling precisely because it is perfectly successful. And it is even more surprising since it was born from the creativity of two artists with an impeccable curriculum and a well-established career, with two perfectly predictable professional futures on already traced paths; but the eternally daily humanity of these women, who sing of Gods as of our neighbor, has overwhelmed them in their normal madness. .