• Director, Ella Marchment
• Il Letto (The Bed) was a co-production created by Helios Collective, Buxton International Festival and Copenhagen Opera Festival
• Buxton, England
• Copenhagen, Denmark
• July / August 2022

It is where we give birth,
It is where we would like to die.
It where we make love,
It is where we lie next,
(to each other).
Each day we make it,
Leave and come back again.
The infinite variation in repetition.
We pray at its feet when we feel our pain.
Il Letto, our consoler.
The house of our nights,
Where we sleep our lives.

Wives and Heroines and Muses

Elvira Bonturi – wife of the celebrated composer Giacomo Puccini – prays at the foot of her bed, trying to hold back a rage that no woman could be expected to bear.

Rage when she realises that every aria Giacomo ever composed was about a woman he was having an affair with.

Rage when she realises that her personal maid has been humiliating her in her own home.

Rage when she realises that none of Giacomo’s lauded and most beautiful music is about her.

Rage when she realises how easily she has been fooled.

Rage, rage, rage, and rage again.

Three days later a body will lie dead.

Life in the Puccinis’ lakeside house will never be the same again.