Pier Luigi Pizzi, La pietra del paragone

At Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, Italy – August 11 – 20, 2017

The revival of this production from 2002 signed by Pier Luigi Pizzi is back on the stage of the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Italy.

‘La pietra del paragone’ is a story of romantic entanglements unfolding in the house of a wealthy count. He has as guests a group of characters who, mostly, only seek to take advantage of his fortune.

Pizzi’s  subtly ironical production places the unlikely plot in an elegant country house equipped with swimming pool, hammocks, and large umbrellas in its garden, with costumes suggesting times from nineteen-twenties to the ‘seventies.

“I have changed the epoch because this story is universal”, Pizzi said in a previous interview. “Changing epoch in operas and other works is quite common. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. This time it is easy because the characters are found in everyday life”.

The fatuous, middle-class characters pass their days moving in an idle and relaxed life, eating, drinking, talking leisurely on the phone and playing tennis. Pier Luigi Pizzi imagined this plot in a house resembling the one he himself owned in the Italian town of Castel Gandolfo, and for this, he has recreated on stage a distinguished residence of architecture and contemporary interior design.