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From Seen and Heard International
By:José Mª Irurzun; Photo courtesy Gran Teatre del Liceau, © A. Bofill

SpainSpain Gaetano Donizetti, Linda di Chamounix: Soloists, Symphony Orchestra and Chorus Gran Teatre del Liceu, Marco Armiliato (conductor), Barcelona’s Liceu, 27 & 28.12. 2011 (JMI)

New production Barcelona’s Liceu, coproduction with Opera di Roma

Linda di Chamounix is an opera of full-blown maturity Donizetti. When it premiered in Vienna in 1842, Donizetti’s greatest hits were already well established. Only Don Pasquale (1844), among his best known operas, came later. Although Linda di Chamounix was a major success at its premiere and at its revival in Paris (revised and with the addition of its best-known aria), it is now one of the least performed operas by Donizetti. In Spain it was last performed in Bilbao in 1998 with Edita Gruberova in the title role. In major opera houses it was seen last season at London’s Covent Garden, but only in a concert version.

Now the Liceu in Barcelona has decided to bring it back on stage, and with an exceptional cast. Is the presence of two exceptional singers like Diana Damrau and Juan Diego Flórez enough for Linda di Chamounix to succeed? Alas, no.

Linda belongs among the semi-serious melodramas, which might have had its day, but not nowadays. There are exceptional lyrical pages in some Donizetti buffo operas, but no particularly successful lightheartedness in his lyrical or dramatic operas. Especially the quality of the music that Donizetti wrote for the buffo scenes of Marquis Boisfleury is poor. The libretto by Gaetano Rossi is weak enough to stand out even among other Rossini libretti and the music is very uneven, with outstanding moments (among them several of the main duets) right next to , but at times the music that does not go above oompah-pah. At three hours, nearly 3 hours of opera can get rather long.

The Liceu has commissioned a new production from Emilio Sagi, which doesn’t go beyond simply narrating the weak plot. He updates the action to the early 20th century and drapes it in kitschy sets for acts I and III: Some forested landscape with flowers and later a few trees replaced by tables and chairs to celebrate the return of the Savoyards from Paris. In the second act shows Linda’s apartment on two levels, and blends in with the costumes kept soft colors to match the sets. The lighting work is good, but the stage direction unconvincing.
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I saw the great performance at LA Opera on Saturday afternoon, November 26th, of Romeo and Juliet. Nino Machaizde and Vittorio Grigolo were a wonderful pair of lovers, with an intense showing of their dramatic and vocal powers. Their final scene was riveting; their emotional connection was overwhelming.

However, what took place after the opera certainly left a bad taste in my mouth. Requiring opera fans to purchase Machaizde and Grigolo’s albums in order to get an autograph was crass and insulting, ( nothing in the publicity about the signing mentioned this prerequisite.)

Of course, opera companies and particularly singers need the revenue of album sales but to refuse to meet the fans because they haven’t bought your albums is not only unfair but smacks of greed. I don’t remember in all my years of opera going when I was not allowed a short visit to say congratulations or to get an autograph after a thrilling opera performance. Also, I don’t think opera fans at the Met or in Europe would accept this snub.

Since Placido Domingo is the Artistic Director of the LA Opera Company,I hold him responsible for the insult. After all, Domingo is a great artist and has deservedly received plenty of adulation from his fans over the years, that’s the reason I find it so upsetting that he would allow this.

By the way, we had to wait over half an hour for Machaizde and Grigolo to come out which was certainly understandable considering what they had given of themselves in the performance. I’m sure many people who wanted an autograph would not have hung around for that time but the diehard fans would. I doubt if there would have been more than a handful that would have waited. I am a big Grigolo fan, and have his albums and copies of four of his opera performances but when I listened to one of them last evening, my feelings for his work changed. I seemed to have lost some of the good will and respect for him as a person. I hope these qualities can be restored and also I hope that no opera fan will have to face such a demeaning situation again.

More than half a century has passed since Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Consul* premiered at the Shubert Theater in Philadelpia in 1950. The opera, called his finest lyrical composition, ran in New York for eight months on Broadway picking up both the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics Award along the way.

The opera’s theme, the personal suffering and loss of life living under a totalitarian government struck very close to home in 1950. The Second World War had ended in 1945, and many people throughout the world were still coping with the dreadful, emotional turmoil caused by the war. But is the opera’s libretto, which was written by Menotti, relevant to the world’s situation today? Well, Charles Roe, the opera theater’s artistic director, seemed to think so. And the proof came with what transpired on stage at Crowder Hall for four performances in November from the 17th to the 20th.

Before Roe could get the production to its successful conclusion, there were many challenges to consider. It wasn’t because the opera’s musical structure which Menotti allied to a pungent text became problematic in performance; it was because the work is so musically and dramatically rewarding to perform, the artistic choices had to be of a very high standard. Since 2006, Roe has been mounting opera in English and most times he has been able to capture the essence of the works by meeting the vocal and dramatic demands of each opera.

And again this time, Roe was confident that he had the students, both undergraduate and graduate, capable of handling Menotti’s opera — which from the opera’s opening chords to the last, requires a total artistic commitment on the part of the performers, if they are to win over an audience.

Ever since The Consul first premiered, musicologists and opera critics have commented over the years about Menotti’s musical touches reminiscent of the composer Giacomo Puccini, never failing to mention the composers’ supposedly similar musical approaches as exemplified in the Act One trio, “Now lips, say goodbye,” sung by John Sorel, Madga, the opera’s heroine and John’s Mother. Sung at the point in the act when the Mother and Madga say farewell to John who must flee from the secret police, the music shares Puccini’s penchant for lyrical statements of heartbreak, but the musical expression is entirely Menotti’s.
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For Rossini lovers, ROF’s commitment to stage Rossini’s operas using the most recent critical editions has been the unmistakable selling point for their yearly pilgrimage to Pesaro, Italy, regardless of August’s oppressive heat. Since 1999, the first year I attended the festival, I have watched audiences react with enthusiastic joy to the splendid musical renderings of Tancredi, Ermione, La Gazza Ladra and Matilde di Shabran, to name just a few of the festival’s outstanding artistic achievements. Performances of these works were defined by thrilling vocal virtuosity of exemplary singers buoyed by dedicated conductors. And stage directors, understanding Rossini’s dramatic intentions, presented the works worthy of their critical praise.

Not so in 2011.

For this season’s productions of Adelaide di Borgogna and Mosè in Egitto, stage directors Pier’Alli and Graham Vick, who are well-known in the opera world for their staging of operatic classics, were making their directorial debuts at the festival. Pier’Alli’s Adelaide and Vick’s Mosè productions showed how their artistic visions went beyond what appeared on the stage; their influence resulted in arias cut from the critical editions of both operas, no doubt with the approval of Artistic Director Alberto Zedda.

The Italian press had mentioned that in 2011, ROF was using the new critical edition of Adelaide prepared by Gabriele Gravagna and Alberto Zedda for the opera’s first staged presentation at the festival. But the edition had already been used successfully in ROF’s 2006 concert version which was a big hit with audiences. This time, however, Berenegario’s great aria “Alle voci della gloria,” which premiered in 2006, was replaced with, “Se protegge amica sorte,” an aria which Gravagna and Zedda described as “modest” in their opera program notes in 2006. Also, Gravagna and Zedda ignored their previous tribute to Patric Schmid, the original artistic director of Opera Rara for using the “Alle voci” aria when he presented Adelaide in London over thirty years ago. And, as they noted in their ’06 program, manuscript sources revealed “Se protegge” was not the work of Rossini, and, soon after the premiere, the composer replaced it with, “‘Alle voci della gloria,’ which the Maestro had written in the golden years of Tancredi and L’Italiana in Algeri…”
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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

From Seen and Heard International
By: Bernard Jacobson

Bizet, Carmen: Seattle Opera, Soloists, Orchestra, Pier Giorgio Morandi (conductor), McCaw Hall, Seattle, 15/28.10.2011 (BJ)

Bernard Uzan, whose new Carmen for Seattle Opera ran through the second half of October, can certainly not be accused of one-size-fits-all directorial methods. As the disparity between the thrilling naturalism of Pagliacci in 2008 and the somewhat inchoate abstraction of Macbeth two years earlier illustrated, the gifted Frenchman’s response to the operas he stages tends to be admirably specific and sharply individual.

No exception, this Carmen in its turn offers a brilliantly imaginative and utterly compelling blend of naturalistic elements with touches of often quite magical stylization. The only major false note – the idea of having the officer Zuniga, on his capture by the gypsies, not led off under guard but summarily executed – added a gratuitous level of nastiness to an already morally challenging plot (and it was hardly consistent with “trusting the text,” which Uzan cites as a basis of his directing work.)

But everything else, from dance sequences like the graceful interplay of soldiers and cigarette girls at the start to the desperate Don José’s act of murder at the end, told the story of the ill-fated title character with exemplary clarity and suitably excruciating vividness.

More than most operas, Carmen depends for its success on the quality of its leading lady, and this production was graced by performers of major talent in both casts. On opening night, Georgian mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili, in her Seattle debut, fashioned a portrayal of stunning power. There is something about her facial expressions, her style of singing (and speaking), and her way of holding herself from which we learn that this Carmen is who she is and not just someone else’s idea of who she is. Her first aria, the sultry Habanera, was curiously disjointed of line and failed to make its usual effect, but if this was due to first night nerves, they were swiftly banished, and from then on we were treated to a glorious outpouring of impassioned and cleanly focused tone. A shade less individual in characterization, Malgorzata Walewski’s Carmen perhaps resembled more the traditional idea of the vamp, but within the framework of that conception her portrayal was consistent and convincing; she moved (and danced) well; and she made more of the insistent chromatic line of that first aria.
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From Seen and Heard International
By: José M. Irurzun
G. Verdi. Un Ballo in Maschera: Soloists, Orchestra and Chorus Teatro Regio di Parma, Gianluigi Gelmetti (conductor), Teatro Regio di Parma. 9.10.2011 (JMI)

Photo courtesy Teatro Regio di Parma, © Roberto Ricci

Among much mediocrity, the Parma Verdi Festival’s Un Ballo in Maschera was a triumph. Pierluigi Samaritani’s production premiered at this theater in 1989 and includes, as is typical for him, sets and costumes; traditional both. The production harks back to its 1859 premiere in Rome when it first became known under its now customary name: before then Un Ballo had been Gustavo III, then Una vendetta in dominò. The King of Sweden in turn became Riccardo, Earl of Warwick (via Duke of Pomerania); Ackerstrom became Count Renato, and the setting was moved first to Stettin (Una vendetta) then to the British colonial town of Boston.
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Samaritani’s appealing set, in the form of painted curtains, work outstandingly in the two scenes of Act I, and the masked ball. His typically attractive costumes please the eye, especially for Kristin Lewis’ Amelia. One problem with this production is that it requires two intervals, plus additional stops for scene changes, which makes the performance too long. In short, it’s a very attractive, old fashioned (and plain old) production which continues to please the audience.

Conductor Gianluigi Gelmetti is steeped in the Italian great opera tradition. On this occasion he convinced with energy, passion, and dramatic force, making orchestra and chorus play excellently, for their standards.

In a theater as small as the Teatro Regio, Francesco Meli could easily cope with he can cope with Riccardo, Earl of Warwick, something that he might find difficult to pull off in a large house; the house’s remarkable acoustics were very helpful in this regard. But even if Meli is a bit light for the character, he is a remarkable singer with an attractive voice and only the high notes tend to be thin. Provided that the repertoire and the theater are appropriate, he’s a very fine tenor, indeed.
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From Seen and Heard International
By: José M. Irurzun
G. Verdi, Requiem:: Soloists, Orchestra and Choir Teatro Regio di Parma, Yuri Temirkanov (conductor), Parma’s Teatro Farnese. 08.10.2011 (JMI)

Parma’s Verdi Festival is no exception among opera theatres and festivals these days; the economic pressure is felt all around. This year the final program of the Festival wasn’t known until the beginning of September and one of operas (Il Trovatore) will be given in concert form.

The Verdi Festival takes place between October 1st and 28th and stages Un Ballo in Maschera and Falstaff this year – with two performances of the Requiem at the beautiful Teatro Farnese thrown in. The Farnese is a theater in the Palazzo della Pilotta and was built in 1618. The theatre is a semicircle with bleachers, with chairs added to the ground floor. It is a place of great beauty, built with wood and stucco (and so reconstructed after destruction in World War II), with a capacity of around 1,200 but rather deficient acoustics. From the stalls, all at the same level, it is difficult the view of the stage, especially if you are seated at the back. In short, it’s a more interesting theater to visit than to attend an opera performance in.

Yuri Temirkanov, music director of the Orchestra of the Teatro Regio di Parma, conducted. At almost 83 he is still—or rather again—in great shape and he was able to transmit energy to his musicians that defied his age. His reading was remarkable, particularly the beginning of the Requiem, which he attacked in breath-taking pianissimo, full of mystery and emotion. That level wasn’t quite upheld, orchestra and espeically the splendid chorus never contributed anything less than notable.
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From Seen and Heard International
By: José M. Irurzun
G. Verdi. Falstaff: Soloists, Orchestra and Chorus Teatro Regio di Parma, Andrea Battistoni (conductor), Teatro Farnese di Parma. 10.10.2011 (JMI)

Photo courtesy Teatro Regio di Parma, © Roberto Ricci

This premiere of Falstaff marks the end of my stay in Parma this year. It wasn’t a case of saving-the-best-for-last, largely due to the problems of successfully performing opera in the acoustics of the magnificent yet fatally flawed Teatro Farnese. As I wrote on the occasion of Verdi’s Requiem (read S&H review), this is a very beautiful theater that is worth visiting, but not appropriate for a staged performances. The acoustics leave much to be desired and the view from the back stalls is so restricted that many spectators of these chairs moved to the stands at the first interval, taking advantage of the many empty seats available.

Parma’s Verdi Festival staged a new production by Stephen Medcalf whose work I have not found particularly exciting, an opinion that this direction did not change. A new production of Falstaff that only repeats on stage what we have seen so many times before is hardly justified. The sets are simple with a wood panel enclosing the stage with some painted motives on Windsor. The stage is filled with a large bed at in the Garter Inn, a large laundry basket and some folding screens plus a module with stairs in Ford’s house, and finally, a large oak in the last act. Been there, seen that, nothing new. The Shakespeare period costumes are attractive; mainly those of the ladies. The same goes for the stage direction which differs only from the many other traditional productions in that Sir John’s page is suited with full armor.
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Gioachino ROSSINI (1792-1868) Mosè in Egitto – azione tragico-sacra in three acts (1819 version) Mose – Lorenzo Regazzo (bass) Elcia – Akie Amou (soprano) Faraone – Wojtek Gierlach (bass) Osiride – Filippo Adami (tenor) Amaltea – Rossella Bevacqua (soprano) Aronne – Giorgio Trucco (tenor) Amenofi Karen Bandelow (mezzo-soprano) Mambre – Giuseppe Fedeli (tenor)

Württemberg Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor: Antonio Fogliani San Pietro a Majella Chorus, Naples ( Elsa Evangelista, Chorus-master) Wildbad Wind Band (Martin Koch, Band-leader)

Recorded live on 1st,7th and 12th July, 2006, in the Kursaal, Bad Wildbad, Germany during the ROSSINI IN WILDBAD festival (Artistic director: Jochen Schönleber) A co-production with SWR Producer: Siegbert Ernst Editor: Dr Anette Sidhu – Ingenhoff Engineers:Wolfgang Rein and Siggi Mehne Booklet Notes Reto Müller and Keith Anderson

Cover: Stage design by Auguste Caron for the second act of the French version of Moïse et Pharaon (4 acts) by Rossini, Paris ,1827

CD 1 75:44 Act 1 57:21 Act 2 18:23 CD 2 60:54 Act ll (contd.) 47:01 Act lll 13:53

When Gioachino Rossini sat down to compose Mosè in Egitto in 1818, he was in the midst of his most prolific musical period as an opera composer. On the one side of his musical journey, Rossini had already mounted the dramme giocosi, L’Italiana in Algeri and La Cenerentola, the dramma, Elizabetta, regina d’Inghilterra, his first Neapolitan work and his most popular comedy, Il Barbiere di Siviglia. And as for the years after 1818, the opera world would soon get to hear such rich musical works as the azione tragica, Ermione, the melodramma, La Donna del lago and what Phillip Gossett calls in his book, Divas and Scholars, Rossini’s most innovative Italian serious opera, Maometto ll, the last three composed for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples under the watchful eye of the impresario, Domenico Barbaja.

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