ROF’s Maometto 11 Embraces the Music but Doesn’t Caress the Notes
Rossini Opera Festival 2008
If the weather can stand as a metaphor for how well an opera production at the Rossini Opera Festival will play out during its run, then the tremendous downpour that reverberated throughout the Arena Adriatica was a bad omen. At the second performance of Michael Hampe’s production of Maometto 11 on August 15th, the rain hit the Arena’s dome like a pack of galloping horses that lasted nearly twenty minutes, trying the nerves of the performers and audience alike. This sudden event proved to be more exciting than what was happening on stage.
The singing is always uppermost in the minds of audiences that come to Pesaro, but the vocal efforts in this production only lived up to their expectations in part.
Bass Michele Pertusi is a favorite singer at ROF and judging by his two previous performances his popularity is warranted. As the Duke D’Orlow in Mario Martone’s 2006 production of Torvaldo e Dorliska, Pertusi was able to match his character’s strong emotions with great vocal insight. And in 2007′s La Gazza Ladra, Pertusi projected Gottardo’s character beyond the lighter touches many singers give this licentious mayor to a darker place where Gottardo’s wanton pursuit of Ninetta overwhelms his soul. Again the bass achieved this effect by using his talented vocal acumen.
Unfortunately, lightning did not strike a third time for Pertusi — at least not the kind that comes with a great performance. Both Michael Hampe’s exaggerated stage direction and Gustav Kuhn’s by-the-book conducting did not seem to provide Pertusi the comfort level he needed to give his Maometto the vocal dynamics and commitment to the text the bass always brings to his performances in Pesaro. Hampe kept Pertusi so busy carrying banners, changing costumes that required a lot of attention and overextended stage moves, he had a hard time concentrating on his singing. It was difficult to tell whether Pertusi’s voice has lost some of its vocal polish since last year or the overloaded stage business held him back. At the curtain calls on August 15th and 18th, the forced bravos on the one hand and the polite clapping on the other reflected the ambivalence in Petusi’s performance.
There were other vocal disappointments. Although mezzo soprano Daniela Barcellona received a big hand for her Act Two aria, “Non temer:d’un basso affetto,” the top part of her voice did not sound as secure as it has in the past. Also, Barcellona looked clumsy at times carrying out Hampe’s jagged stage directions. Marina Rebeka, who was featured in ROF’s 2007 presentation of Il viaggio a Reims, presented by Accademia Rossiniana, a training program for new singers, sang Anna, a major coloratura role loaded with dramatic and lyrical challenges. The soprano exhibited an easy agility and an expressive ‘fioriture,’ but she was hampered at times by Kuhn’s tendency to rush her music limiting her vocal appeal. The only one who escaped the rigidity of Hampe’s direction and rose above Kuhn’s heavy-hand was tenor Francesco Meli, who brought a sensitive and musical portrayal to Paolo Erisso, Anna’s harassed father who had to cope with his daughter’s undying love for Maometto while gathering his Venetian forces to keep the Turks from capturing the city. The tenor was not only able to satisfy Rossini’s vocal demands, but he was the only performer to really show what his character was feeling to the audience.
The opera’s plot, which is ably handled by librettist Cesare Della Valle, concern’s Anna’s deep love for a young man, Uberto, whom she had met previously in Corinth and now finds out is really Maometto. The opera hinges on their meeting up again in the Venetian colony, Negroponte, where her father, Erisso, the army’s commander, is trying to keep the Turks, led by Maometto, from capturing the city. Anna and her former lover, naturally are not able to reconcile their differences and Anna, at the opera’s end, kills herself rather than give in to Maometto and betray her father. If the story strikes a conventional ring, Rossini’s musical innovations take the work to new heights. The New Grove Dictionary of Opera edited by Stanley Sadie, states “…in Maometto 11, we find a work that brings together Rossini’s pre-eminent gift for music of immediate appeal and vocal splendor with a considered and profound understanding of musical and dramatic structure.” And ROF’s Artistic Director Alberto Zedda, in his superb essay in ROF’s 2008 program says, “Despite the grandeur of the historical pageant, Maometto 11 moves us through the intimate nature of its passions. Anna is the real protagonist: the feelings, the uncertainties, the transports and the terrors that rack her reveal a sensitivity differing from the great Romantic heroines only in her inability to sin for love’s sake.”
The musical and dramatic values revealed in these two quotes, unfortunately, were not fulfilled in this production, only to increase the heartache for what could have been. Not everyone agrees with these sentiments. For that reason, visit Opera News, November, 2008, for a contrasting viewpoint.
