Il Cappello di paglia di Firenze

An Augmented Comedy

A musical farce in four acts premiered at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo on 21 April 1955

Opéra de Wallonie-Liège – 19 novembre 2025
Nino Rota
Leonardo Sini
Damian Michieletto

Music 5 *****
Staging 5 *****

Il cappello di paglia di Firenze is a lyrical adaptation of Le chapeau de paille d’Italie, a five-act comedy by the French playwright Eugène Labiche that premiered in Paris in August 1851. The play is still regularly staged to great acclaim and is considered a classic example of a comedy full of misunderstandings, dramatic twists, and turns, with a script brimming with witty repartee.

On the day of his wedding, Fadinard’s horse eats a young woman’s Italian straw hat. Unfortunately, this straw hat belongs to a young woman who is busy with her lover. She orders Fadinard to find a replacement immediately. We encounter an irascible father-in-law, a deaf uncle, a society baroness, a virtuoso violinist, a cuckolded husband, and policemen. All of this occurs in a “universally accelerated movement.”

But did this frenzied comedy gain anything by becoming lyrical?

Composer Nino Rota and director Damiano Michieletto prove it is possible with their “augmented” version of Le Chapeau de Paille d’Italie, entitled Il Cappello di Paglia di Firenze.

Rota and his co-librettist and mother, Ernesta Rota Rinaldi, have made a few changes to the plot and characters’ names but have retained the play’s energy, liveliness, and fast pace.

Above all, Nino Rota enriched it with a delightful score.

When we think of Nino Rota (1911–1979), we immediately think of the composer of music for 170 films, including those for Fellini of course, but also The Godfather, Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, Visconti’s The Leopard, and Rocco and His Brothers.

His fame in cinema has overshadowed his more “traditional” work: symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and operas, including Il cappello di paglia di Firenze, created in 1955.

Quotations, parodies, and pastiches

Rota’s score is delightful, complementing the lovely work perfectly. Rota plays with his notes as Labiche plays with his characters. It is music that carries you away and brings a smile to your face. It abounds in quotations, parodies, and pastiches, repeating insistently yet always lightly. For instance, it invokes the style of Wagnerian tragedy for a story about painful shoes that are too small and calls upon Rossini for comical confrontations. In Liège, Leonardo Sini conducts with precision and joy, inspiring an orchestra and opera choir that are clearly delighted to be there. At the heart of the orchestra are a few instrumental passages that capture the essence of the piece. Indeed, this score enhances Labiche’s work.

Damiano Michieletto sets all this in a sloping, rotating set by Paolo Fantin. This set transports us from one place to another. It is a minimalist set with all the necessary doors and a few essential props, such as an orange tree that sheds and regrows its leaves. Above all, as always in his productions, he gives the adventure a flawless tempo sostenuto. He has a knack for attitudes, gestures, tics, and placements that reveal the characters and situations they are in. The production is also beautiful, thanks particularly to Silvia Aymonino’s costumes and Luciano Novelli’s lighting. Exciting, funny, and beautiful!

Appropriate touch of irony

Needless to say, the singers have a field day: they can overdo it, and it will still be just right, with the appropriate touch of irony in their interpretation. Their undeniable talents, each in their own “register,” appearance, stage presence, and vocal ability, all “bring them joyfully into play”! The cast includes Ruzil Gatin as Fadinard, Pietro Spagnoli as Nonancourt, Maria Grazia Schiavo as Elena, Josy Santos as the Baroness of Champigny, Marcello Rosiello as Beaupertuis, Rodion Pogossov as Emilio, Elena Galitskaya as Anaïde, Didier Pieri as Uncle Vezinet, Lorenzo Martelli as Felice, Elisa Verzier as the Modiste, Blagoj Nacoski as Achille di Rosalba, Marc Tissons as the Captain of the Guard, and Leonid Anikin as Minardi.

This opera? A beautiful and joyful musical comedy!

Stéphane Gilbart