Piero Mazzocchetti – L’ultima notte di Bonfiglio Liborio@Teatro Marrucino

I made this photograph in the dim backstage of Teatro Marrucino, just minutes before the curtain would rise. The air was thick with that familiar mix of anticipation and quiet focus. The man sat in his chair, bent slightly forward, pen in hand, making final notes on the score under the stark glow of a music stand lamp. The rest of the stage was swallowed by darkness.

Shooting with the Fuji X-T3 and the Fujinon XF 16-80 gave me the flexibility I needed in such a cramped and poorly lit space. The lens handled the low light surprisingly well, though I had to work at the edge of its capabilities to keep the noise down without sacrificing the shadows that gave the moment its intimacy. The warm yellow of the lamp and the faint spill of red light from stage left painted the scene with a subtle theatricality — nothing forced, just the honest lighting of backstage life.

From a compositional standpoint, I worked to keep the man and the stand firmly in the right third of the frame, letting the darkness fill the rest. This wasn’t negative space for its own sake, but a deliberate choice to create a visual pause — the kind of stillness that mirrors his concentration. The small background details, from the coiled fire hose to the sliver of stage equipment, anchor the image in the physical backstage world, without distracting too much from the human subject.

Technically, the exposure leaned toward preserving the highlights from the lamp, even if that meant allowing parts of the suit to melt into shadow. I didn’t want a flatly lit subject — I wanted the chiaroscuro that theatre, even offstage, naturally provides. The image might not be clinically perfect, but it breathes with the real light and mood of that moment, when the final rehearsal notes are scribbled down before the performer steps into the glare of the stage.