Merano comes in scene.
Here lies the deeper meaning of theater, of what is offered for your view.
Scene is the stage on which actors act, but it is also the canvas on which a painter paints.
Scene is what is given to your view. But it is also the castle of Scena in which Johann of Habsburg lived.
The dream is the perfect liason between Merano and Scena.
Hence the title: Merano comes into, moves and points up towards Scena where the Genius Loci Johann stands.
It is the dream of Archduke Johann of Habsburg which still reigns the foundations of castle Scena .
Among these mountains, among the hills, he advances with the pace of a wayfarer on the sea of fog, a slow and measured pace of a farmer,
with that bold passion of the lover.
Johann of Habsburg taught this Tyrolian lands to dream of neat rows of vines growing. Turning into todays precise vinyards of Pinot noir vines,
Chardonnay, Riesling are queueing up on the stage of South Tyrol. Where others see only a bunch of grapes Johann sees the potential of the land.
Where others see only a bottle of wine, Helmuth sees a festival in Merano.
My imaginative, dreamlike tale is set in the dream. The archduke scans the horizon with a spyglass, Helmuth contemplates
the figure of Johann because he knows that only by climbing on the shoulders of giants can we see farther.
The settings and sets move between the medieval castle in Scena where Johann lived and the Puccini Theater in Merano, in the
Jugendstil style. The archduke's costumes, the result of careful historiographical research, are from the early 19th century; the dominant heart of the music is
taken from our live recording with maestros Roberto Barrali and Giorgio Fiori. The harmonic, ostinato and ascending accompaniment is
an hommage to the opening part of Franz Schubert's Andante con moto, 1827,Op.100.
The archduke searches for suitable soils, studies botany, plants young vines shooting them like arrows in the Tyrol. Helmuth dreams of meeting him
and thus it happens at the Puccini Theater, in the proscenium.
The archduke gives him an ancient key with which to open new scenarios in the world of wine.
The dream key belongs to those who sincerely believe..
28.10.2022
Carlo Guttadauro
Picture Philosopher, Photographer, Screenwriter and Director