Monodramma giocoso da camera on a text by Renzo Rosso

Commissioned by the Almeida Festival in 2001, L’imbalsamatore (The embalmer) is Giorgio Battistelli‘s first opera direction.
The work deals with the relationship between the self-destructive Alexei Miscin and the corpse he is perennially embalming – that of the great Soviet revolutionary, Lenin.
The piece was written for a solo actor, instrumental group and live electronics. In a dramatic and grotesque monologue Alexej Miscin, the official charged with conserving the body of Lenin for the thousands of visitors that come to see it, by now an alcoholic and in the process of being abandoned by his wife, offers an account of the failure of his personal life. Miscin’s is a story that, unfolding alongside that of the illustrious corpse he protects, is bound up inextricably with the collapse of Soviet society.

Paolo Calabresi: actor
Erasmo Gaudiomonte: director
Orchestra della Toscana
Giorgio Battistelli: theatre director
Angelo Linzalata: scenes and costumes
Guido Levi: lighting
Alessandro Carletti: lighting assistant
Alvise Vidolin, Davide Tiso: live electronics
Damiano Giorgi: maestro collaboratore
Alessandro Carletti: lighting realisation
Roberta Traversa, Renzo Pardini: realisation of the dummy
Paolo Frassinelli: artistic co-ordination
Amplification system BH Service – Porto Garibaldi (FE)
production: Accademia Musicale Chigiana di Siena
a Fabbrica Europa and Fondazione O.R.T. collaboration