The virtual exhibition Caruso, Di Stefano, Corelli. The legendary Italian voices will go online on Monday 2 August. For one year, visitors to the portals italiana.esteri.it and teatroallascala.org will have the opportunity to discover and explore the extraordinary lives of the three great tenors and experience the unique atmosphere of one of the world’s most famous theatres.
An initiative by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, created by the Teatro alla Scala Foundation, Museo Teatrale alla Scala and curated by Mattia Palma, the exhibitioncelebrates a triple 100th anniversary: the death on 2 August 1921 of Enrico Caruso and the birth in the same year and just a few months apart of Giuseppe Di Stefano and Franco Corelli, unforgettable protagonists of the national and international opera scene.
With this unique, interactive and engaging programme, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs continues to promote Italian Culture. Thanks to the Embassies, Consulates and Italian Cultural Institutes, the exhibition will travel around the world, allowing anyone, anywhere, to get to know three of the most representative artists of the Italian opera scene, who brought the 19th-century myth of the tenor into modernity.
By visiting Caruso, Di Stefano, Corelli. The legendary Italian voices, the public will have the opportunity to move freely around the virtual space of the Teatro alla Scala – also a protagonist of the exhibition in a totally new 3D rendering combining real spaces with entirely virtual architectural settings. By interacting with sensitive points (hotspots), visitors will explore the themes and contents of each section in greater depth, and access the videos produced by Punto Rec Studio, which developed the virtual space with an architectural setting designed by Lorenzo Greppi (Studio Greppi), with footage provided by Rai Teche and Warner Classics.
The exhibition begins with Enrico Caruso, a pioneer of music recording and a symbol of the new sensibility of an era in which nineteenth-century tenor heroism gave way to more bourgeois and intimate performances, and continues with Franco Corelli and Giuseppe Di Stefano, who were the protagonists alongside Maria Callas of the opera scene in the 1950s. Through press reports and stage photographs, this section of the exhibition recreates the artistic climate of the years when La Scala and its artists were icons of Italy’s post-war recovery and economic boom. The exhibition ends with a grand finale with the “impossible concert”, a virtual performance of the three artists performing the same aria: Vesti la giubba from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci.
italiana (italiana.esteri.it) is the portal of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation dedicated to the promotion of Italian culture, creativity and language. Launched in March 2021 with the aim of proposing a new narrative of Italy abroad and open to culture in its broadest sense (music, literature, theatre, dance, cinema, visual and performing arts, comics, digital art, design, architecture, history, archaeology, food and wine…), the site features audio-video content, in-depth information, interviews, calls for proposals, opportunities and much more, with updates on social networks and a periodic newsletter containing all the latest news.