La scala di seta –
Opera in one Act to a libretto by Luigi Giuseppe Foppa [sung in Italian with Italian and English surtitles]
Dormont – Enrico Iviglia
Giulia – Hasmik Torosyan
Lucilla – Mara Gaudenzi
Dorvil – Alasdair Kent
Blansac – Iurii Samoilov
Germano – Paolo Bordogna
Orchestra del Teatro Communale di Bologna
Iván López-Reynoso
Damiano Michieletto – Director
Paolo Fantin – Set and costume designer
Alessandra Carletti – Lighting designer
Reviewed by: Curtis Rogers
Reviewed: 13 August, 2026
Venue: Teatro Rossini, Pesaro, Italy
Presented alongside another early farsa in this year’s Rossini Opera Festival, this La scala di seta (1812) contrasts sharply with the traditional setting and direction of the exactly contemporary L’occasione fa il ladro. This is already the second revival of Damiano Michieletto’s production of the former (also to be found on DVD from its first showing in 2009) but it is still fresh and energetic, even as it doesn’t impose any divergent directorial concept on the work but reconfigures it imaginatively in a present-day domestic setting.
Such comic operas of the late 18th and early 19th centuries are notable for their frenetic bustle, usually within a single location, and Michieletto observes that here. Giulia’s apartment is constructed and fitted out from a floor plan on the stage during the celebrated Overture, and even she and her secret husband Dorvil are wheeled on as though statues to take their part as fixtures in this place of intrigue. The audience is given a view above the action in addition to the conventional horizontal perspective from the auditorium, on account of the reflection in a mirror raised over the stage at a 45-degree angle, giving us perhaps just the illusion of some oversight or control over the hectic action. Walls and doors are omitted from the scenery, but the characters mime their movements around and through them, adding a visual analogy for the opera’s make-believe world of misunderstandings and knowledge hidden in plain sight. We also only see the silken ladder of the title in the mirror’s image as Giulia allows Dorvil up into her bedroom for their assignations.
If the set becomes virtually a protagonist in itself, then the action revolves around the busybody figure of the servant Germano, here a vaguely androgynous domestic who bustles around cleaning and keeping house while also engaging in eavesdropping and gossiping which usually furthers misunderstanding and chaos. Paolo Bordogna delivers a virtuoso performance, both in acting and singing, remaining on stage most of the time and so becomes the comedy’s beating heart. His gestures and behaviour often gently ironise or satirise the other characters’ words or actions and the florid musical conventions deployed in the score. Like the mirror, he serves to channel our engagement with the opera from outside of the drama itself, almost as though a Momus-like figure in his inadvertent comments on the whole spectacle.
Hasmik Torosyan brings charm and clarity as Giulia, saving herself for an eruption of vocal sparkle and ebullience in her aria near the finale. Alasdair Kent’s Dorvil is as lithe of voice as he is of body in negotiating his comings and goings through the window, and reaching up to the highest notes without difficulty, expressing unease at the thought that Giulia has lost interest in him in favour of Iurri Samoilov’s more swaggering Blansac. Although her father, Dormont, would pair her up with the latter, she introduces him as a suitor to her relative, Lucilla, evinced by Mara Gaudenzi with a certain coquetry. Enrico Iviglia is a good-humoured Dormont in the limited role he plays.
Iván López-Reynoso leads the Orchestra del Teatro Communale di Bologna in a detailed and responsive account of Rossini’s delightful score, leading off with the scurrying Overture and continuing with a reading that is as well delineated among the different instrumental sections as the singers in playing their parts in the narrative. If ensemble between orchestra and soloists is occasionally a little mismatched, that hardly matters. Giorgio D’Alonzo’s playing on the fortepiano in the recitatives makes up for that, as it becomes a character in its own right, commenting on the dialogue and action with its own idiosyncrasies and aural jests. It sets the seal on a production in which musical and stage performances are finely calibrated to bring off a bubbling comedy.