Exhibition – 10/27 March 2022
Auditorium Parco della Musica – Foyer Santa Cecilia and MUSA Museum of Musical Instruments
Hours: Monday-Friday, 2:00-6:00 PM/ Saturday-Sunday 11:00 AM-20:00 PM
On Accademia concert days, the exhibition will remain open until the interval.
The performance of Turandot conducted by Antonio Pappano will be enriched with the display of some costumes and stage jewellery from the opera’s world première (Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 25 April 1926). The chance discovery of the materials dates to the early months of 2018, when a mysterious trunk containing material from the wardrobe of the soprano Iva Pacetti was offered for sale to Prato’s Museo del Tessuto. The studies that were done then allowed two costumes and two stage jewels to be recognized as among those designed and made by La Scala costume designer Luigi Sapelli for the opera’s première, worn at the time by Rosa Raisa, the first soprano to play the role of Turandot.
Thanks to the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Italy, the exhibition will also display a costume from the Beijing Opera’s Turandot, produced by the China National Peking Opera Company and Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione. The garment is designed based on a Mang costume, revisited with a Western cut. The main fabric is silk, in keeping with Chinese tradition, and it is decorated with images of phoenixes, the symbol identifying the noble princesses, and of the waves of the sea and cliffs, representing the beauty, regality, and elegance of the figure of Turandot.
In collaboration with
Thanks for the support to the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Italy
