PUCCINI E LA FANCIULLA | adrianachiesaenterprises.com

"PUCCINI’S SUITCASE"
INTERVIEW PAOLO BENVENUTI
BY MICHELE GUERRA

I remember one day in Pisa, at Paolo Benvenuti’s home, when this great figure of Italian cinema, with that disconcerting simplicity so characteristic of him even when he says or does the most extraordinary things, said to me: "Come, let me show you a film clip of Puccini that I’ve found". Just then on his computer images appeared that left me speechless: Giacomo Puccini, in person, moving, playing music, writing, smoking, taking a walk in front of his villa, going hunting on the Massaciuccoli lake. An epoch making discovery that put us before something of infinite value historically, cinematically, sociologically, and for its media potential. Something that had come to cross the determined and philologically exemplary path that was carrying Benvenuti towards the making of his long-awaited film "Puccini e la fanciulla".

Your cinema is experimental, before, after and during the film itself. Would you like to tell us how you found the Puccini film, what the main phases of your research were?
First of all, the research was not only mine, but it was also conducted by a group of sixteen young people from Intolerance, the film school of Viareggio. It all began when these young people wanted to know how I wrote my screenplays. I explained to them that behind every one of my screenplays there was in-depth historical research. The students wanted to experience this for themselves, by starting a historical research project that might eventually lead to a screenplay. This was in 2001. We decided to learn more about the story of Doria Manfredi, Giacomo Puccini’s maid servant, who committed suicide in January 1909. It was a subject that I had covered in the past with other students and that I was still nurturing. The young people began interviewing the older people of Torre del Lago but came up against a strange code of silence, almost mafia-like. And so they gave up the interviews and began studying the immense bibliography on Puccini and the letters kept at the Centro Studi Pucciniani in Lucca, particularly those written between 1907 and 1910. Doria had been accused by Elvira, Giacomo’s wife, of being her husband’s mistress. Elvira claimed to have caught them in the act (which later turned out not to be true), but nevertheless Doria did not defend herself. Other questions came up, that were difficult to answer, but, as the study continued, one student was struck by a statement he had come across in a book that was interesting, though of minor scientific value, entitled "Puccini minimo" by Aldo Valleroni. The words that threw new light on the research were more or less this: "the famous Don Juanism of Puccini was not an end in itself, but was functional to his creativity". That is, every time Puccini was to compose an opera, he felt compelled to fall in love with a woman who resembled the heroine of his drama, a woman with whom the Maestro began an affair while writing that particular work. And, inevitably, with the completion of the opera, the affair too would end. Though the author of the book gave various examples of this (from "Bohème" to "Butterfly" to "Turandot"), he could not seem to find any corresponding figure for "La fanciulla del West". This quite struck us: Doria committed suicide while Puccini was writing "La fanciulla del West" - could she have been the model for Minnie? As we looked for comparisons, it became obvious that she had nothing to do with it. Therefore, either Minnie had no real-life corresponding model, or else there was another woman. The students went back to Torre del Lago and discovered there was another woman, Giulia. She was Doria’s cousin and the daughter of Emilio, the owner of the famous restaurant/chalet in front of the Puccini villa. A strapping girl of 1 meter 80 who could match any man, she hunted, could shoot a rifle like any of them, and so forth. When it came to Giulia, the code of silence shattered. Everyone sneered, remarked, and it turned out that not only had Giacomo and Giulia been lovers, but Giulia (who never married) even became pregnant, according to everyone, by Puccini. And so, we then set out to find the child born of this liaison and discovered that he had lived in Pisa, but that he had died and was survived by a daughter. We traced his daughter and found her. She told us the tragic story of Antonio Manfredi, who had always lived far from his mother (Giulia had remained in Torre del Lago and in fact did not even wish to see him) and his unknown father. In 1976 Giulia died, and Antonio was called to Torre del Lago to collect some of his mother’s belongings. These were packed in a suitcase that Antonio, after returning to Pisa, hid away and did not even open, as if trying to bury his past and his mother’s. For thirty years no one ever thought about the suitcase. Until January 2007, when I turned up and started to ask questions. I told Antonio’s daughter that she could be Puccini’s granddaughter, (you saw the photos and the incredible resemblance), and after talking about all of this, she suddenly remembered the suitcase. In it I found photos and letters from Puccini to Giulia of their undeniable affair, written from 1908 to 1922, and then an envelope with about thirty letters from friends, relatives, lawyers about Doria’s suicide. Here was evidence of what we more or less had imagined. Underneath these papers were also two biscuit tins, round ones, and inside them the films. I tried lifting the strip from one of the films – they were all stuck together – and I glimpsed a frame of Puccini at the piano. I almost had a heart attack. I took the films to Rome to a laboratory that did restorations and here we now have this exceptional document.

When you presented part of this film as a preview at the last Venice Film Festival, you were asked by many people after the conference if you would use the film in "Puccini e la fanciulla". But you insisted on the fact that the life of this document was different and independent of that of your film.
Yes, exactly. Anyway, the film belongs to a later period than the events related in my film. And then, I don’t want to mix reality with filmic reconstruction, the two clash. Riccardo Moretti, who plays my Puccini, though he resembles the composer, is nevertheless not Puccini.

In terms of gestural and decor reconstruction, however, this discovery represents an unexpected and exceptional resource.
Absolutely. By knowing the film by heart, frame by frame, it is as if I have been put into contact with Puccini himself, with all his ham acting, his provincialism, that comes across so obviously in the way he moves and, above all, with his extraordinary virility that he only fully expresses when at the piano. This is a characteristic that particularly interests me and I would like to try to express it through Riccardo Moretti’s acting: it is not a matter of exterior resemblance, but rather an interior one.

You are considered a "niche" film director who is particularly admired by attentive and refined film buffs. Now for the first time you find yourself in the limelight and in all the major international newspapers. Starting from the Puccini film clips, they all have talked about your project: from "The Times", to "The Guardian", to "Observer", "El Pais, and "Corriere della Sera" and then recently "La Repubblica", and others such as papers in Hungary, Japan, Latin America...
The spotlights are on Puccini not on me. The 1915 film that I found in the suitcase will have its own life, and there are already a lot of ideas around it. The aim will be to talk about historical research, about my method, and only after that about my own film, Puccini e la fanciulla, which is something else. Yet, it will be good for the film, people will be curious to see the result from all this research on the screen.
(Pisa, October 2007)

THE SOUND PROJECT
BY SOUND DESIGNER mirco mencacci

"Puccini e la fanciulla" (Puccini and the Girl)
THE SOUND PROJECT BY SPHERICAL SOUND ®
An innovative sound recording system by sound designer Mirco Mencacci

A courageous and formidable task was undertaken by sound designer Mirco Mencacci: a high definition sound recording system that renders an image of sound that is closer to reality and memory than what is obtained from the sounds themselves. Spherical Sound ® is a system that, beginning with a conventional sound recording, uses 5 microphones joined to a holophone to produce a horizontal and vertical dimension of sound. This results in a different cinematic perception of the sound that reaches the ear. This perception is richer and more evocative, charged with olfactory, visual, sensory and emotional memories that plunge viewers into the scene they are watching. The equipment for classical music was applied for the first time to record a film. To achieve a more realistic sound for the pianos (studio recorded for the purpose of shooting), a sampling was taken of all the sounds of the environments of the scenes in which the pianos were played. These were then used in post-production to recreate the atmosphere of a live recording.
The sound project was very ambitious not only from a technical point of view, but also since the "sound vision" was the responsibility of a non-seeing person, Mirco Mencacci, the film’s sound designer. Working in close collaboration with sound engineer Alberto Amato, it was hoped to achieve a sound recording that, in correlation with the image, would be coherent with the microphone systems used(applied for the first time on a film set). Thus “Puccini e la fanciulla” ("Puccini and the Girl") becomes a film in which music and sounds are syntax and grammar, poetry and metre, filling the absence of dialogues with a sensory tracing of time and space perceptions. These bring to the surface, to the conscious level, all that is normally buried in the depths of our acquired memory in terms of sound. All of the sounds to which we are accustomed and that we no longer recognise. Indeed, these are abandoned under the debris of a constant selection we are forced to make from the multitude of sounds that permeate our daily lives. An archaeological expedition into the globalised dumps of our ’sound present’, to unearth all that certain places have preserved of sounds over the course of time. This means to search at the lake, among the reeds of the woods, in the meadows, in the trees, amidst the leaves, that which has remained of the music and sounds from the days when Puccini composed and played his celebrated arias. Of course they still remain sounds, they are still music. Yet, to make a parallel with the written word, the difference is like reading a caption or reading poetry.