Matthias Schaller is a photographer who has created an unconventional, imaginative form of portraiture. His works, which he calls “indirect portraits,” represent his subjects through objects or spaces. Over the past twenty years, these have included the studios and homes of prominent German photographers who have influenced him, including Andreas Gursky and Bernd and Hilla Becher. Other examples of the subjects of these indirect portraits include empty astronaut suits, the desks of cardinals at the Vatican, and the artist palettes of some of the most renowned painters of the past two centuries. In the photographic series included in Bel Canto, we see Schaller’s portrait of the nation of Italy through a vast collection of photographs of its opera houses. From 2005 to 2017, Schaller traveled throughout the country to photograph 150 houses, both grand and modest. The title of his project, Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), is taken from the Italian national anthem. Schaller explains: “My initial intention was to create a portrait of Italy, not in an empirical way but rather metaphorical.” (Matthias Schaller, quoted in Elena Sommariva, “Fratelli d’Italia,” domus website, September 9, 2008, https://www.domusweb.it/arte/2008/09/09/fratellli-d-italia.html) He has further explained that he considers Italy’s opera houses to be reflective of the country’s political, anthropological, and historical dimensions. The buildings in Fratelli d’Italia form a cohesive collection, in part because they were nearly all constructed and inaugurated as opera houses during the 1800s, but also because of Schaller’s aesthetic choices. Shooting each opera house from the vantage point of the stage and desaturating the colors, he emphasizes the consistency of the architectural type. Taken as a whole, Fratelli d’Italia is a compelling testament to the power of opera in Italy and its remarkable ability to unify an otherwise diverse region through shared cultural experience long before it even became a country