Soprano Jamie Groote, who plays the style-savvy character of La Ciesca, couldn’t stop raving about the flattering era. The ensemble cast in the Canadian Opera Company’s Gianni Schicchi. Period furniture, with its uncomplicated ornamentation, helps the singers portray their characters in a neutralized setting in which their fashionable garments pop. McDonald and Lane analysed the characters closely to understand their back stories and allow the chosen period, itself, to assist in visualizing this. How best to capture different characters and personalities than with the wonderful selection of colour and accentuated fashion features of the 1950s? Schicchi has been praised as an opera that showed remarkable inventiveness and imagination in its time. The one-act opera is set in the bedroom of the dying Buoso Donati where all his relatives have gathered to mourn his passing. I truly felt we could make the characters stand out knowing that we were also limited in finding existing costumes to repurpose and add an extra special touch.”
It was a period of great style and I, personally, have a nostalgic connection to this decade and Florence. When you’re in a crunch, usually the first instinct works and that was the 1950s. When asked why he chose this era, McDonald said, “we started preparations and planning while in lockdown knowing that this production would happen in a few short months. Bottom: Select costumes by Antony McDonald from Gianni Schicchi. Top: Retro 1950s fashions that inspired Antony McDonald’s costumes in the Canadian Opera Company’s Gianni Schicchi. Award-winning opera and theatre designer, Antony McDonald, was the creative mind behind the COC Schicchi’s 1950s inspired set and wardrobe. Especially in a world where we are still hoping to enter the post-pandemic chapter of the last year and a half, set and costume designers have faced many challenges when planning both video and live performances. Of course, beyond the musical preparation, there is the story of what motivates the designer’s particular set and costume choices. Staged by theatre director Amy Lane, this lighthearted, brilliantly paced comedy features some of the composer’s most unforgettable music, including the memorable soprano aria, “ O mio babbino caro ”. 30 th as the next installment in the COC’s free streaming series.
The Italian master’s take on ‘Family Feud’, Gianni Schicchi, will be available starting Saturday Oct. While the Canadian Opera Company prepares for its return to live productions with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in February, another Puccini opera is set to launch on the company’s virtual centre stage.
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