Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic In the labyrinthine library of a Benedictine monastery in northern Italy, a Franciscan friar is investigating a series of murders. Hooded monks, their habits cinched with rope, sing in a mix of Italian, German, Latin and Ancient Greek. Cryptic clues slip through their lips, hinting at the library\u2019s deadly secrets. Guglielmo da Baskerville, the friar, steps towards a central lectern, his fingers skimming an ancient parchment.This medieval intrigue unfolds not in a shadowy scriptorium but within the rehearsal rooms of La Scala\u2019s expansive workshop complex in Milan. The company is preparing Il nome della rosa, a new two-act \u201cgrand opera\u201d based on Umberto Eco\u2019s best-selling debut novel The Name of the Rose (1980). The piece will premiere on April 27 at La Scala with a separate French version to follow at the Paris Opera in three years.For the first operatic rendition of Eco\u2019s novel, La Scala has assembled a stellar creative team. Composer Francesco Filidei\u2019s score, which blends intricate orchestration with atmospheric Gregorian chant, has been entrusted to conductor Ingo Metzmacher, a master of complex musical worlds. Damiano Michieletto, the most celebrated Italian director of his generation, promises a visceral medieval staging packed with gory murders and ghostly apparitions. The cast is headed by baritone Lucas Meachem (Guglielmo), mezzo soprano Kate Lindsey (his novice, Adso) and mezzo Daniela Barcellona in the contralto role of the menacing inquisitor, Bernardo Gui.Condensing Eco\u2019s sprawling novel \u2014 600 pages dense with secret symbols, biblical analysis and medieval mystery \u2014 into a three-hour opera has been no small feat. \u201cThis project was a dream, but I was terrified,\u201d says Filidei, 51, taking a break from rehearsals in a nearby park. \u201cThere were moments when I asked myself, \u2018What am I doing?\u2019\u201dBy the time of his death in Milan in 2016, aged 84, Eco was celebrated as one of the great intellectuals of his time, as well known for his semiotic theory as for his magazine columns and seven novels. The Name of the Rose \u2014 at first glance, a highly readable medieval detective story \u2014 became a global phenomenon, selling more than 50mn copies in multiple languages. Guglielmo and Adso\u2019s investigation uncovers a poisoned copy of Aristotle\u2019s lost second book of the Poetics, hidden by a blind librarian who deems its contents too dangerous to reveal. The library\u2019s fiery destruction is memorably captured in Jean-Jacques Annaud\u2019s 1986 film adaptation.\u2018We used every sentence of Eco that we could\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009We aimed to recreate his language, following his thought process, as if the opera were one of Eco\u2019s novels\u2019Yet beneath its accessible prose lies a semiotic labyrinth. The novel is a web of literary allusions, 14th-century theological debates, and historical references, drawing on figures from Sherlock Holmes to William of Ockham. Eco himself saw it as a literary game, a playful yet erudite puzzle that invites the reader to decode its layers of meaning.Filidei emphasises his commitment to the original, describing his opera as a \u201ctranslation\u201d rather than an adaptation. \u201cWe used every sentence of Eco that we could\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009We aimed to recreate his language, following his thought process, as if the opera were one of Eco\u2019s novels.\u201d More than the murder mystery, he is drawn to what he sees as the book\u2019s central preoccupation: the search for identity. \u201cOpera has many strengths, but it\u2019s not the best medium for a detective story,\u201d he says.Like the novel, the score is multi-layered, an immediately intelligible surface concealing multiple substrata, including references to Verdi, Strauss and Saint-Sa\u00ebns. While the orchestra often plays softly, with just one or two instruments supporting the singers, an exception is the first scene\u2019s depiction of a church entrance: a cacophonous orchestral tapestry evoking angels, satanic beasts and the seven trumpets of the apocalypse. \u201cIt\u2019s enormous, like Messiaen,\u201d says Metzmacher during a break in rehearsals. \u201cIt\u2019s really wild.\u201dThere are no fewer than three choirs \u2014 including a 60-strong children\u2019s chorus \u2014 which variously sing onstage, offstage and on a curved elevated stand. \u201cWe\u2019ll need monitors to co-ordinate,\u201d Metzmacher says with evident glee. \u201cI love these challenges. The more people I have around me, the more excited I get.\u201dThe score is also a homage to 19th-century Italian opera, with 21 characters given arias and recitatives. While most of the singing is \u201ctraditional\u201d, Roberto Frontali\u2019s grotesque Salvatore, conceived as a buffo-inspired caricature, parps and grunts. Gui, Adso, and Ubertino are trouser roles, allowing for female voices. Three countertenors add further timbral variety.Milan is a fitting location for the opera\u2019s premiere. Born in Alessandria, in Italy\u2019s northern Piedmont region, Eco moved to the Lombard capital in the 1950s to work for the national broadcaster RAI. The city \u2014 Italy\u2019s hub for publishing, art, theatre, music and design \u2014 offered a vibrant creative scene. \u201cMilan was one of the great European capitals of culture, attracting young intellectuals who found Italian universities closed and suffocating,\u201d says Riccardo Fedriga, a university professor and former collaborator of the writer. \u201cThat\u2019s why Eco was here.\u201dFedriga is speaking at Eco\u2019s former home in the shadow of Milan\u2019s Sforza Castle, where I have arranged to meet Carlotta Eco, the writer\u2019s daughter. The vast apartment\u2019s walls are lined with endless towering bookshelves and garish neo-avant-garde art. As Carlotta explains, Eco, in his Milanese prime, would meet the likes of artist Enrico Baj and composer Luciano Berio, one of his closest friends, in the Brera district\u2019s watering holes. \u201cThey\u2019d hang out at the bars,\u201d she says. \u201cMy father would do the prefaces for artists\u2019 catalogues, and they\u2019d give him their paintings in return.\u201dFollowing its publication, requests to adapt The Name of the Rose flooded in. Eco rarely consented, and was initially \u201csceptical\u201d of Annaud\u2019s proposal to make a film, Stefano Eco, his son, says in a phone interview. \u201cHe respected the film medium a lot but didn\u2019t see it as a good match for this very complex and stratified book,\u201d Stefano says. Ultimately, Eco changed his mind after more fully appreciating the French director\u2019s unconventional approach to storytelling.Filidei, who admires Annaud\u2019s distillation of the novel\u2019s complexity into its essence, had long considered adapting The Name of the Rose. He discussed the idea seven years ago with a German opera house, although the project never materialised. Then, during the first Covid lockdown, La Scala asked him to compose an opera based on an Italian novel. As the Paris Opera had also approached him for a commission, the two theatres opted for a co-production, allowing Filidei to write both Italian and French versions \u2014 much like the grand operas of Rossini and Verdi.First, Filidei needed permission from Eco\u2019s heirs \u2014 Carlotta and Stefano Eco, and his widow Renate Ramge \u2014 who retain licensing decisions for his work. Gaining their trust took time. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t automatic,\u201d Filidei admits. \u201cIt was a long courtship.\u201dWhile Eco was no opera enthusiast, he was hugely interested in some contemporary music, particularly the kind produced by Berio. Filidei employed \u201cpolite insistence\u201d to win the family\u2019s trust, Stefano recalls. \u201cIt was a serious project\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009an intellectually stimulating challenge that \u2014 who knows \u2014 might have appealed to my father,\u201d he reflects. \u201cHaving major theatres involved also puts your mind at ease.\u201dThe composer argues that the true justification for the opera resides within the book itself. In an essay on The Name of the Rose, Eco characterised the novel as having \u201can opera buffa structure, with long recitatives and elaborate arias\u201d. He also revealed in interviews that Gustav Mahler\u2019s method of integrating disparate musical elements in his symphonies had influenced his approach to the novel. Filidei says Eco drew heavily from popular 19th-century French novels, The Count of Monte Cristo among them, inspiring his own decision to reference 19th-century Italian opera.It took Filidei a year and a half to craft the libretto, with regular meetings with collaborators to refine it. The result is a rigorously structured text. Eco\u2019s seven-day narrative remains intact, but Filidei swaps the original liturgical divisions for 24 scenes set in individual rooms, each centred on a single note a semitone shift up and down from the previous. \u201cTo create the musical world, I had to start with the structure,\u201d Filidei explains. \u201cIt was like Eco, who said he spent a year sketching the monks and mapping the space.\u201dMichieletto\u2019s staging is dominated by a suspended octagonal \u201ccathedral\u201d made from strips of illuminated gauze that gradually descends to form the labyrinthine library. As the lights are switched, monks arranged on the curved stand behind vanish and reappear. We also see one of the monastery\u2019s inhabitants fatally stung by a mechanical scorpion, another drowned in a vat, extras in colourful animal masks inspired by the medieval bestiary and a monumental polystyrene gate from which limbs protrude.Filidei says he has not finished exploring the book\u2019s many mysteries, noting that Eco once indicated that he had written a prayer to be said by Guglielmo that he later removed. \u201cI\u2019ve asked Stefano if this prayer still exists,\u201d he says. \u201cPerhaps one day I\u2019ll be able to read it and integrate it into the French version of the opera.\u201dApril 27-May 10, teatroallascala.orgFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic In the labyrinthine library of a Benedictine monastery in northern Italy, a Franciscan friar is investigating a series of murders. Hooded monks, their habits cinched with rope, sing in a mix of Italian, German, Latin and Ancient Greek. Cryptic clues slip through their lips,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":291659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-291658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291658"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291660,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291658\/revisions\/291660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}