Rossini la scala di seta

Rossini – La scala di seta
A new Punto Arte production, premiering at the Tonhalle Zürich

With La scala di seta, Punto Arte presents its newest opera production. Director Eva Buchmann and conductor Jan Willem de Vriend join forces once again. The first performance takes place at the Tonhalle Zürich on 11 December 2026, during the Friends’ Gala Concert, followed by performances on 12 and 13 December with the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich.

A familiar partnership
Eva Buchmann and Jan Willem de Vriend have worked together for many years, and their collaboration has become a recognisable part of Punto Arte. In 2018 they staged Haydn’s Lo speziale for the Punto Arte Festival, set in and around a Fiat 500. That production has since toured across Europe. La scala di seta continues their playful approach to opera.

A television as a stage
This time, Eva Buchmann sets Rossini’s farsa comica in the 1950s, inside a television set. For its first viewers, television felt like magic. The characters seemed to step right into your living room, and more than one person checked behind the set to make sure nobody had slipped out. In this production, that is exactly what happens. The set, designed by Eva Buchmann and Herbert van der Brugghen, opens up and turns around, and the characters climb out of the screen onto the stage. Jorine van Beek’s costumes bring the colours, cuts and patterns of the 1950s to life.

The story
Rossini wrote La scala di seta early in his career for the Teatro San Moisè in Venice, where it was first performed in 1812. At the centre is Giulia. She loves Dorvil and secretly lets him into her room at midnight by way of a silken ladder. Her guardian Dormont, however, has chosen Blansac for her. Giulia would rather match Blansac with her cousin Lucilla, and Dormont’s servant Germano has a soft spot for Giulia too. How many people fit on a silk ladder, or inside a television? And whose love wins in the end?