Carmen, more rebellious than ever

The Palazzetto Bru Zane’s awareness of the issue of ‘historical’ staging goes back to the early 2010s and our first encounter with the musicologist Michela Niccolai. A specialist in this field, she revealed to us the full extent of the extant sources (in Paris especially) related to nineteenth-century French scenography. To learn that there were in existence staging manuals (livrets de mise en scène), coloured designs for costumes and sets, placement sketches and movement diagrams for staging operas as well-known as Faust, Samson et Dalila and even Pelléas et Mélisande gradually prompted us to dream of the experience of reconstructing this visual apparatus. At the same time, research by Rémy Campos and Aurélien Poidevin brought to light the codification of body posture, movement and facial expression and the techniques used by nineteenthcentury artists to learn them. These scholars produced comparative analyses not only of the treatises published at the time, but also of a large number of studio photographs showing actors and singers in costume adopting highly studied positions: it was clear that the portraits in question were not governed by the mere whim of the artist who chose to strike such and such a pose, but by a precise and structured aesthetic of corporeal signification. There were poses ‘à la Mignon’, ‘à la Manon’, ‘à la Charlotte’, and so on.