Since the Rossini Opera Festival began in 1983, no opera production has garnered as much controversy both on and off the stage as Graham Vick’s Mosè in Egitto, Rossini’s biblical drama. From the myriad reviews in the Italian and foreign press to the vociferous audience reactions to Vick’s staging the opera in today’s Middle East, one may ask, were the theatrical consequences worth all the uproar? There were so many ingredients mixed into this operatic salad bowl, it’s a toss up as to what was sweet or sour in the production.
Vick’s theatrical vision for Mosè turned out to be the polar opposite of what Rossini and librettist Andrea Tottola’s originally intended. Written for the 1818 Lenten season, the work was called an Azione tragico-sacra, in which all the ensembles were geared to reflect the biblical references of Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt and into the promised land. The composer and librettist also recognized they would need to add a little romance to the work if they were to attract an audience. This part of the plot involved the Pharaoh’s son Osiride and his secret marriage to Elcia, a Hebrew and a devoted follower of Moses.
Vick decided he wanted to mount the opera in a way that would be meaningful to today’s audiences, but he filled the production with so many references to the current state of affairs in many parts of the Middle East, there was hardly any room left for the Egyptians. He bunched together enough political ideas to divide audience reaction from acclaim to boos and uneasy rumblings.
Starting with Zelmira in 2009, ROF moved all their performances from a smaller tiered theater to a bigger auditorium that holds up to 1200 people at the Adriatic Arena. But the move has had an adverse effect on the singing, since the space has very little resonance. So this year, ROF opened up a temporary roof all the way to the top rafters hoping that the sound would ring out. It succeeded, but the intimate performances that the festival has always specialized in are a thing of the past. A bigger space, however, means higher attendance and more revenue for the financially-strapped festival.
There was no doubt that Stewart Nunn’s sets and costumes reflected Vick’s depiction of terrorism in today’s world. The set had three levels. The bottom one was for the Hebrew choruses to inhabit as they sang the beautiful vocal ensembles that Rossini and Tottola created for them. It was the middle level which ran the full width of the stage where most of the opera’s action took place which showed off the singers’ voices. And the upper level was designed to give the set the height it needed to represent the full range of the ruler’s living quarters. The set mirrored one of Saddam Hussein’s many bombed-out palaces that were pictured in the news at the beginning of the Iraq War.
But Nunn’s costumes were the focal point of all the brouhaha.
The Hebrews appeared in garb resembling Osama Bin Laden’s insurgents with Riccardo Zanellato’s Moses in one of Bin Laden’s attires, which upset many in the audience. In Act Two, Vick had Zanellato appear with a Kalashnikov assault rifle in reaction to the Pharaoh’s decision to renege on his promise to let the Hebrews leave Egypt. In Act Three, Vick had Moses hold up the rifle above his head during the beautifully serene prayer, “Dal tuo stellato soglio,” that Rossini and Tottola had inserted in the 1819 revised version. The contrast between the warlike gesture and the supplicating prayer did not bring the positive audience approval that Vick and conductor Roberto Abbado had hoped for with this great piece of work. For the last performance, they directed Zenellato to use a more appeasing gesture by keeping the rifle down close to his chest. Abbado made the scene even more effective by pushing the chorus to sing out in full force the last few measures of the prayer which brought ardent approval from the audience.
Some of Nunn and Vick’s costume and prop choices were baffling.
A question to as why Nunn dressed the Pharaoh in a white military jacket with a chest full of medals was answered by looking on either side of the auditorium walls where pictures were placed of former Jordanian King Hussein and Queen Noor — he dressed in a black military jacket covered with medals. In Act Two, Vick had two Egyptian guards lead a couple of hooded Hebrew men on all fours who portrayed sniffing dogs looking for bombs. Some reviewers and many in the audience took this as an example of Guantanamo. It really exemplified Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but any close approximation would suffice for Vick’s vision that terrorism is all around us. There were some annoying bits with chorus members in bloodied garb walking through the audience holding photos of loved ones during Rossini’ plaintive opening chorus, and at the end of the opera, the Egyptian soldiers were running around pointing Kalashnikovs in every direction except stage front to where the Hebrews were crossing the Red Sea.
If the artistic directors of Adelaide di Borgogna had no compunction in replacing a recently restored and more challenging aria* with a mediocre one, nothing seemed to stop those overseeing Mose‘s production from going one better: they decided to cut two major arias out of Charles E. Brauner’s critical edition which went unnoticed in the Italian and the foreign press. Perhaps Vick thought that including the Act Two aria, “La pace mia smarrita,” sung by Amaltea, the Pharaoh’s wife in which she confesses her torment about her conversion to Judaism, would slow down the pace of the drama. Vick also chose to exclude Mosè’s aria, “Tu di ceppi m’aggravi…” which comes at the very end of a confrontational scene between the prophet and Pharaoh, Vick sensing the aria would lessen the dramatic tension between the two leaders. Does this mean the dramatic effects in future opera productions at ROF will carry greater weight than the critical editions?
The singing was also a mixed bag. In previous productions such as Tancredi, La Cenerentola, Matilde Di Shabran and Torvaldo e Dorliska, the vocals were on an even keel. If there were one or two performers in one of these productions who did not reach the dizzying heights of the rest of the cast, their vocals did not show up in a lesser light in comparison with their colleagues. But in Mosè, not all the voices were consistent with the vocal demands of Rossini’s music.
Alex Esposito’s Farone was vocally explosive and dramatically intense in his portrayal of a tortured ruler conflicted by indecision while Riccardo Zanellato’s Mosè paled in comparison. The bass wasn’t able to bring the sufficient vocal and dramatic stature required for a leader of a people headed for the promised land.
The vocal differences were even more striking between Sonia Ganassi’s Elcia and Dimitry Korchak’s Osiride. In their first act love duet, Korchak’s vocal attack was pointed and accurate as he rode the high-flying vocals that Rossini always composed for his tenors. Ganassi, whose dramatics were intense and moving, did not fare so well vocally. The mezzo, an audience favorite at ROF, was singing a soprano role, a career choice she started in 2004 with Elizabetta, Regina D’Inghilterra and again in 2008 with Ermione. Today, her voice doesn’t have the vocal ease in the coloratura passages it once had, and it has taken on a covered, and at times a hooting quality which didn’t mesh well with Korchak’s vocal finesse.
Since Amaltea’s aria was cut, we didn’t get an accurate picture of Olga Sendersk Aya’s vocal abilities, but we did get to hear how Yijie Shi’s as Aronne has grown as an artist since his ROF debut at Count Ory in 2009. His appealing lyrical tenor now resonates with an evenly produced technique that allowed his voice to easily carry throughout the house. And Enea Scala’s Mambre showed, through vocal means, his distaste for the Hebrew’s plight.
The real winner in this operatic paradox was Roberto Abbado. His conducting was not only musically astute, but it displayed a profound understanding of Rossini’s opera resulting in one of the best orchestral performances that he and the Orchestra Del Teatro Comunale Di Bologna have ever given at the festival. The tremendous acclaim he received at his curtain call confirmed that his conducting was the artistic highlight of the entire production.
* see 2011 Rossini Opera Festival Part One