Prato, the Textile Museum dedicates a major exhibition to Turandot with original costumes and objects

From May 22 to Nov. 21, 2021, Prato ’s Museo del Tessuto will host the exhibition Turandot and the Fantastic Orient by Puccini, Chini and Caramba, a tribute that the Museo del Tessuto Foundation wanted to offer to the history of opera theater and art of the first two decades of the 20th century, whose artistic, literary and musical scene was greatly influenced byOrientalism.

The exhibition is the result of long and painstaking research work carried out by the museum on the discovery of a nucleus of costumes and stage jewelry dating back to the premiere of Puccini’s Turandot and coming from the private wardrobe of the great Prato soprano Iva Pacetti.

Italian public and private bodies and institutions of great prestige have contributed to this highly evocative unprecedented exhibition with the intention of reconstructing the events that led Giacomo Puccini to choose the scenic genius of Galileo Chini to create the staging and sets for Turandot, which was first staged at La Scala Theater on April 25, 1926, conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

Co-organizer of the exhibition is the Museum System of the Florentine Athenaeum, in whose Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology is preserved a collection of more than six hundred Oriental relics brought back by Galileo Chini on his return from his trip to Siam in 1913 and personally donated to the Florentine museum in 1950. It also benefits from the collaboration of the Archivio Storico Ricordi of Milan, which holds an immense documentary heritage on the history and aesthetics of opera in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the Giacomo Puccini Foundation of Lucca created to promote and enhance Puccini’s rich heritage. Lending institutions include the Museo Teatrale alla Scala and the Archivio Storico Documentale Teatro alla Scala, the Uffizi Galleries-Modern Art Gallery of Palazzo Pitti, the Devalle tailor’s shop in Turin, the Corbella Archives, and the Società Belle Arti of Viareggio.

The idea for the exhibition was born in early 2018, when the museum was proposed to acquire a mysterious trunk containing heterogeneous material from the wardrobe of Prato soprano Iva Pacetti, who mysteriously disappeared decades ago. The museum’s conservator Daniela Degl’Innocenti conducted studies that made it possible to recognize in two costumes and two pieces of stage jewelry those designed and made by Teatro alla Scala costume designer Luigi Sapelli for the opera’s premiere and worn by Rosa Raisa, the first soprano in history to perform the role of the “Princess of Frost.”

The exhibition aimed to reconstruct the events that led to the design of these costumes, in the context of the genesis of the opera and the artistic partnership between Giacomo Puccini and artist and friend Galileo Chini and the subsequent involvement of the Teatro alla Scala costume designer.

From his Eastern sojourn, Galileo Chini returned with hundreds of artistic artifacts of Chinese, Japanese, and Siamese styles and production that influenced his artistic production even after his stay in Siam and later the figurative genesis of the sets for the opera Turandot.

The exhibition itinerary of the exhibition opens in the Room of Ancient Textiles with a selection of about 120 objects from the Chini collection from the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology in Florence. It will feature textiles, costumes and theater masks, porcelain, musical instruments, sculptures, weapons and artifacts of Thai and Chinese production, which were a continuous source of inspiration for the artist. It then continues upstairs with a section devoted to the sets for Turandot and the strong influence that the experience in Siam had on Chini’s artistic production.

Alongside works from private collections, unpublished and curious finds, the canvas depicting The Faith, part of the triptych The House of Gothamo owned by the Modern Art Gallery of Palazzo Pitti, is on view. The large canvas depicting the New Year’s Eve Festival in Bangkok, also belonging to the Gallery, is the subject of a multimedia installation that dialogues with a beautiful dragon head from the Chini Collection. Also on display are the five final sketches of the set designs for Turandot from the Archivio Storico Ricordi in Milan and two other privately owned versions. The exhibition concludes with the extraordinary costumes of the opera’s protagonist, accompanied by the crown made by the Corbella company of Milan as well as the original wig and brooch, also from Iva Pacetti’s mysterious trunk. Found in a poor state of preservation, the two costumes and stage jewelry underwent complex conservation and restoration work. The costumes were restored by the Tela di Penelope Consortium of Prato, while the jewelry by Elena Della Schiava, Tommaso Pestelli and Filippo Tattini. The restoration was made possible thanks to co-financing from the Region of Tuscany and a crowdfunding campaign organized by the Museo del Tessuto, to which nearly 170 individuals from eight different countries, companies and associations in the area contributed.

Alongside the works owned by the museum, thirty costumes from thearchives of Turin’s Sartoria Devalle are also on display, including primary and supporting roles (the Emperor, Calaf, Ping, Pong and Pang, the Mandarin) and secondary roles (the Priests, the Handmaids, the Guards, and the people’s characters): original costumes made for the same edition of the opera, which also initially disappeared, but then reappeared in the mid-1970s and became part of this private historical archive.

Also on display are some original sketches and pochoirs of the opera’s costumes by Filippo Brunelleschi, an artist initially designated by Puccini, the original poster of the opera’s premiere and the reduction for voice and piano published by Casa Ricordi and illustrated with the famous image of Turandot created by Leopoldo Metlicovitz, to this day one of the most iconic images of Italian melodrama.

The museum has dedicated a multimedia exhibition section to Iva Pacetti to conclude the tour.

For more info: www.museodeltessuto.it

Prato, the Textile Museum dedicates a major exhibition to Turandot with original costumes and objects

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