Deserta Immensitá

LFI: What is the significance of the figure of Madame Butterfly today?
Emanuele Scorcelletti: The heroines of classical operas are timeless characters, embodying universal ideals that can be applied to any era. In modern times, the young Madame Butterfly represents the strength to give oneself totally to somebody else, without asking for anything in return. This Puccini character stands out for her noble humility of spirit, a quality that is so difficult to find in our times. Madame Butterfly is a wonderful character capable of combining the purity of naiveté with a mature acceptance of the drama of loss that should always make us think. She renounces her own identity for the person to whom she decides to devote herself; she devotes her whole life to waiting for his return. I like the delicacy of this character, who lives courageously despite her disillusion. As she waits, she retains her proud dignity until the end, while facing the loss of everything for which she has sacrificed her life.

Why did you approach this figure photographically – and how?
I thought that a black and white narrative with the Leica Monochrom could bring to life the sensitivity of this female soul. The delicacy and, at the same time, the strength of the female figure are always present in my work, and when the opportunity arose to collaborate with the Bregenz Fest Spiele, I decided to involve a young soprano of the same age as Madame Butterfly, Maria Olimpia Renna. At the same time, I wanted to pay homage somehow to Japanese culture, on which the entire drama is built, by dividing the photographic narrative into the three acts of the opera, and combining each one of them with the elements of nature.

How do you capture loss photographically?
By using a particular technique, I tried to convey all the nuances of the soul of the protagonist into all the images of this project: she never abandons her elegant, delicate dignity despite the drama of her “loss”. The nuanced colour temperatures of light, studied and translated into images through significant gradations of grey, rendered by my Leica camera, make my images pictorial. The light becomes the means to interpret reality, which becomes fluid, evanescent, as if suspended in a magical atmosphere. The subjects lose their shape, the drama is thus translated into the “deserted immensities” of Madame Butterfly’s soul, reflected in the evanescent images made with a single shot with the Leica Monochrome, without any kind of retouching in post production.

How was your experience with the camera?
Just as the Impressionists tried all means to render the instantaneous nature and magic of light on canvas, Leica allows me to revive a pictorial rendering of light through a mechanical medium. This is possible thanks to the sensitivity of these cameras, which, by carefully studying the light, give me the ability to render the gradual transition from the deepest black to the most intense white. I use my Leica like a paintbrush, so the indefinite, soft lines that arise thanks to the infinite nuances of grey evoke Japanese fluids and inks in this work dedicated to Madame Butterfly.