FULL FRANCISCA (Colazzo) Rovereto 2021 Roberto Abbondanza, Patrizia Zanardi

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: Francisca   
• Composer: Colazzo Cosimo  
• Libretto: Giuliana Adamo based on Maria Attanasio "Correva l’anno 1698 e nella città avvenne il fatto memorabile" - Sellerio  
• Venue & Opera Company: Teatro Zandonai, Rovereto, Italy  
• Recorded: October 30, 2021
• Type: Concert Live
• Singers: Roberto Abbondanza, Patrizia Zanardi, Giuseppe Calliari
• Conductor: Cosimo Colazzo  
• Orchestra: Sayophone Quartet  
• Stage Director:   
• Costume Designer:   

Information about the Recording

• Published by: PIAZZA DEL MONDO Associazione Culturale  
• Date Published: 2021  
• Format: Unknown
• Quality Video: 2 Audio:2
• Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs, gensubs  

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

LIBRETTO
The opera Francisca, music by Cosimo Colazzo, libretto by Giuliana Adamo inspired by a story by Maria Attanasio (Sellerio author), deals with the theme of identity and gender relations, of diversity, of the Other, of how all this becomes highly problematic – to our gaze and to the social gaze – when a subject thought of as unitary shows within itself the forms of otherness, of the double, of the polymorphic.
Francisca is a woman, but the circumstances of her life have led her to assume virile behaviors and appearances necessary for her survival. This creates a short circuit, up to the deflagration of a refusal by the community, which accuses her of witchcraft. The inquisitor, enlightened, will send her acquitted.
We are at the end of the 1600s, in Sicily, in Caltagirone. Francisca, a young widow, pauperrima and illiterate, condemned by her time to be a prostitute or to enter a convent as a servant, instead decides to remain in the world assuming a double identity in order to work as a daily labourer. She becomes ‘Huomo-Fimina’, a choice of hers which gives her the reputation of a witch who lies with the devil and which brings her before the Tribunal of the Inquisition to be judged. The people expect the death sentence. The Inquisitor, Don Bonaventura Cappello, listens to her, is debated within her. He is developing an intimate conviction that diverges from the crowd that claims the scapegoat. Finally he saves her from her, blessing her from her, assuring her of her protection and legitimizing her future “that di Fimina operated di Huomo”.
He lives on a fault line, on a historical dividing line: he forewarns the new century which leads to a more secularized vision of things and of the world, but, due to his role, he must preserve the tradition that sinks into the past. He will make a choice that is the mirror of a real historical turning point: certain truths received as absolute diminish in value, are relativized, are ascribed to the prejudice critically observed by reason.

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