«Un fatto teatrale di prim’ordine». Intorno alla prima italiana (Firenze 1972) di «Die Soldaten»

The Italian première of Die Soldaten took place (June 1972) in the frame of the 35th ‘Maggio Musicale Fiorentino’ Festival, in a production by Deutsche Oper am Rhein which had debuted the year before in Düsseldorf, and was then circulating in other European Festivals. Through archive documents, two main issues are discussed: - the scheduling inside a festival, which Roman Vlad planned as an almost-monographic program around 2nd World War, both chronologically and – in an extremely enlarged perspective – thematically. - how the work was received by Italian reviewers, who awaited Die Soldaten as a referential title on the recent West-German and worldwide horizon. Apart from melo-maniac critiques, the most important reviewers recognized the work’s relevance, even if with different undertones.