Commentary on Joyce Di Donato’s ‘Malibran’ Concert at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro on August 19th, 2008

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Di Donato being greeted by the audience at the Rossini Theater in Pesaro on August 19th, 2008.

Interview With Joyce Di Donato

Q. Why did you decide to do a concert in Pesaro this summer?

I was asked by Maestro Zedda if I would come to give a tribute concert to Maria Malibran in honor of her bicentenial, and the timing worked out perfectly for my schedule, so I jumped at the chance to return to this very special festival where I debuted 5 years earlier.

Q. Why did you select the pieces you performed?

They were all chosen from repertoire that Maria had sung over the course of her career, and I knew that I wanted to feature the Romeo from Capuleti in the second half, as well as Desdemona’s grand willow song. The Mozart were just a delight to program, and the Una Voce was sort of a “must sing”!

Q. Is Rossini’s Desdemona one of the new roles you are preparing? What roles were you working on in Pesaro?

I don’t have plans as of yet to perform Desdemona (not enough months in the year!), but it is an aria that I have long aspired to sing, and this was the perfect opportunity. I was heavy into preparation for my first Elvira for the Royal Opera House (which just opened last night!). I was arriving to a very short rehearsal period, and since this was a new role, I knew I needed to be overly well prepared, so my days were spent with Mozart instead of at the beach, sadly!

Q. What key did you sing in for the mezzo Desdemona? What key is it in for a soprano?

I sang in the original key, as I don’t believe there is a difference.

Q. Did I hear you say that Malibran did not sing Susanna’s aria? If so, why did you include it?

No, she did perform Susanna – my comment was that I doubt she performed both her and Cherubino in the same evening!

Q. How did it come about that you sang with Amanda Forsythe? Did you work with her previously?

Maestro Zedda suggested her, and I was happy to accept his recommendation, but then we ended up working together in “Ariodante” in Geneva last fall, and as soon as I heard her Dalinda, I knew she would be a lovely Giulietta.

Q. How did you find the rehearsals for the concert? Was it a pleasant experience? How much time did you and Forsythe devote to rehearsal? I just read in an article that you are married to Leonardo Vordoni? How is it working with someone so close?

We had a 2 hour piano rehearsal where things came together very easily, as she was extremely well prepared. And yes, “The Maestro” and I are married, and it was a delight to be able to make music together.

Q. How was the working situation in Pesaro? How different is it from working for other theaters?

It’s actually quite lovely – I think the main difference is that the beach is so close! But the atmosphere is a lovely combination of very serious work and a near “vacation” feeling, so everyone is mostly relaxed and enjoying great food and sun!

Q. During your talk, you refered to a gentleman in the upper box, who is he and what is his position?

This was Maestro Alberto Zedda – the great Rossini conductor and founder of the Rossini Festival. He has been a big champion of mine, we have recorded “Cenerentola” together, and I’m very grateful for his contribution to the world of opera.

Q. What is your overall impression of Pesaro and do you plan to return?

I love being in Pesaro and it has many special memories for me – I would love to return, but these days, the problem is always one of the calendar, so we will have to see how the next few years shape up. Sadly, there is not enough time to do it all!

Q. Considering the length and depth of your program, I think the audience did not expect an encore. Where did you find the strength to sing the Rondo from La Cenerentola? The response was lovely to hear!

I’m not entirely sure where I found the strength, as I was quite exhausted at the end of the program. But I had a feeling that the audience would appreciate it quite a lot, and because it’s a role that is very engrained in my body/voice, it carried me through. I got a bit lucky, I think!

Di Donato as Romeo in V. Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi with conductor Leonardo Vordoni and Orchestra Haydn Di Bolzano E Trento.

Commentary on Joyce Di Donato’s ‘Malibran’ Concert at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro on August 19th, 2008

When mezzo-soprano Joyce Di Donato travelled to Pesaro to celebrate the bicentennial of Maria Malibran’s birth at the Rossini Opera Festival, she brought with her a suitcase stuffed with artistic goodies. Invited personally by ROF’s Artistic Director Alberto Zedda, Di Donato had prepared a program of arias and scenes that Malibran performed for her public before her tragic death at the age of 28. Di Donato, blessed with an inviting and creamy lyrical voice and a prodigious technique, seemed to conjure up Malibran’s ghost with a natural stage presence which totally captivated her audience. Hers was a performance to which opera lovers gladly succumbed.

Di Donato offered a generous program. She started with Cherubino’s two arias and Susanna’s recitative and aria from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. For the Rossini section, Di Donato gave a poignant account of Desdemona’s Canzone del Salice and Preghiera from his Otello and a lively Una voce poco fa from his Barbiere. Then for her final section, she turned to V. Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi singing Romeo’s Cavatina, Se Romeo t’uccise un figlio, followed by the love duet, Si, fuggire, and the Second Act finale with soprano Amanda Forsythe. Taken with the moment, Di Donato gave a delightful rendition of Angelina’s Rondo from Rossini’s La Cenerentola as an encore.

Di Donato, an artist who is at the top of her game, dismissed any concerns about the program’s length, and dove in with skillful exuberance. This combination of passion and craft reached a most gratifying level in the Rossini and Bellini sections.

Di Donato imbued Desdemona’s Willow Song and Prayer with such vocal pathos, it seemed to carry the young girl’s transition from youthful naivete to tragic reality in one remorseful breath showing Rossini’s music at its most sorrowful.

But it was Di Donato’s three scenes from I Capuleti that brought the audience into that Bel Canto world where Bellini and his librettist Felice Romani lived their lives to the fullest. With great assist from conductor Leonardo Vordoni, Forsythe’s Julliet, Coro Da Camera Di Praga and Orchestra Haydn Di Bolzano e Trento, Di Donato created operatic scenes filled with great beauty and artistic honesty. Of course, Di Donato and her forces had plenty of help in conveying these moments. Leslie Orrey in his book Bellini, says that, “Romani’s book is logical and compact and…it is lyrically expansive enough to provide the composer with the opportunities he needs for his music to soar.” In Romeo’s Cavatina, mentioned above, the mezzo immediately established her character’s persona, looking every bit the boyish lover in her black trousers and a vest over a white shirt and gray tie.

As Di Donato began the love duet with Forsythe, she easily connected Romeo’s love with Giulietta’s awakening pangs of desire. Forsythe proved an admirable partner, her clear and textured vocal expression matching Di Donato’s supple and plangent sound.

For Romeo and Giulietta’s death scene, Vordoni and his orchestra created an exquisite symmetry that heightened Bellini’s elongated musical sadness and Romani’s auguished text while Di Donato and Forsythe were scaling down their performances to fit the recital setting. A heart stopping moment broken only by the audience’s timely affectionate outburst.

Photos courtesy of Studio Amati Bacciardi.

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Teatro Comunale di Bologna’s Committed but Incomplete Simon Boccanegra

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Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901) Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave

Simon Boccanegra – Melodrama in a Prologue and Three Acts Simon Boccanegra – Roberto Frontali Amelia Grimaldi – Carmen Giannattasio Jacopo Fiesco – Giacomo Prestia Gabriele Adorno – Giuseppe Gipali Paolo Albiani – Marco Vratogna Pietro – Alberto Rota Capitano dei balestrieri – Enea Scala Ancella di Amelia – Lucia Michelazzo

Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna Conductor – Michele Mariotti Chorus Master: Paolo Vero Director – Giorgio Gallione Costume and Set Design – Guido Fiorato Lighting Design – Daniele Naldi

Directed for TV and Video – Francesca Nesler

Live from the Teatro Comunale di Bologna 2007 Synopsis, essays and Subtitles in Italian, English, French, German, and Spanish. ARTHAUS MUSIK Cat. No. NTSC 101 307 1DVD Running Time; 140 Min.

At first it came as a delightful surprise to see this Simon Boccanegra from the Teatro Comunale di Bologna available on DVD. In November, 2007, thirteen opera lovers from Michael Tisma’s Ovations International opera tour travelled to Teatro Municipale Valli in Emiglia Romana to see Bologna’s production of Boccanegra. Without exception, everyone considered it an emotionally gripping performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s pessimistic tale of spiritual disturbance and foreboding. What is evident while watching the DVD is the difference between the confident execution and polish of the Teatro Valli performance and the unfinished, yet promising rendition caught at the opera’s prima in Bologna. There is much to be said for taping a production later in the run, after it has had a few performances under its belt. Valli’s was the seventh outing for Bologna’s dedicated team where it revealed all its artistic merit.

The mandate, however, is to review the performance as it is seen and heard on ARTHAUS MUSIC at its initial showing on November 13th.

A behind-the-scenes look at the production reveals a confident, independent spirit in the Teatro Comunale’s approach to mounting new productions. Devoid of any outside influences, the company has produced a team of cohesive artists with a inspired point of view.

Giorgio Gallione, in his first outing in opera, has been directing Italian theater since the early 80s. He worked well with Guido Fiorato whose set design consisted mainly of a series of marble-like walls that moved across the stage that simulated the 14th Century look of Verdi’s opera. Gallione’s gave his singers a natural acting style which easily fit the composer’s musical rhythms, letting their characterizations tell the story. Fiorito also designed the costumes that featured long, elegant tunics in rich greens and reds with adornments that recalled both the wealth and the gloom of Boccanegra’s court life. Daniele Naldi’s lighting complimented Michele Mariotti’s intimate conducting style which emphasized the torturous struggle between love of family and duty to one’s country that permeates so much of Verdi’s output. What is remarkable about this young conductor is how well he intergrated his musical expertise with Verdi’s musical narrative.

Boccanegra has always suffered complaints about its libretto from critics and opera goers alike. The opera debuted in Venice in 1857 and was revised by Verdi for Milan in 1881 with help from the composer Arrigo Boito who became Verdi’s librettest. Verdi and Boito worked diligently to give the opera a new life which translated into new music and a substantially revised libretto. Still many opera critics don’t find the story’s content an easy one to follow.

In the prologue we meet Simone, a young corsair in love with Maria Fiesco. Her father, Jacopo, has kept her hidden for she has had an illegitimate child by Simone. Paolo, the Plebian leader wants Simone to become Doge. Simone accepts, thinking his new position would make it easier for him to marry Maria. Jacopo’s hatred for the future leader increases when he learns that Simone’s daughter has vanished and he is deprived of the joy of having a granddaughter. After Jacopo departs, Simone enters the palace only to discover that Maria is dead. With a heavy heart, he accepts the cheers of the people as their Doge.

Act One takes place twenty-five years later when we are introduced to Simone’s daughter, who is now known as Amelia. Simone meets her and discovers the truth of their relationship in one of Verdi’s most beautiful father-daughter duets. Also, Jacopo has returned to Genoa in disguise under the name ‘Andrea’ and spends the rest of the opera detesting Simone until the end of Act Three when, as Simone is dying from poison, they reconcile their differences in one of Verdi’s best friendship duets. At opera’s end, Simone makes Gabriele, Amelia’s intended, the new Doge. The strong point of the opera is not its plot, but the magnificent music the mature composer invented for his revised version. Nowhere is that more evident than in the Council Chamber Scene that ends Act One.

It was Boito who convinced Verdi that this scene was necessary to show Simone as a leader for the patricians and the common people and to interject some of Verdi’s own thoughts about bringing peace to a troubled land. The composer created a complex ensemble, vivid characters and high drama in this scene. Roberto Frontali’s baritone climbs the scale, giving Simone’s lines,”Vo gridando pace, vo gridano amor” a rich, soaring thrust in a voice deep with emotion. In the scene before this one, at the end of his duet with Carmen Giannattasio as Amelia, he expresses his love for her with one word,”Figlia.” Many baritones try to project this moment with a mezza voce, but few can duplicate Tito Gobbi’s vocal heartbreak. Frontali goes his own way by expressing the word with a beautiful full sound that gives Verdi’s note – an F above middle C – its full value. Also, Frontali easily transitions from the brash sailor in the prologue to the seasoned and reflective Doge required in the rest of the opera. The baritone’s Simone is a very good reason to purchase this DVD.

There are other valuable contributions to this production. Carmen Giannattasio’s makes a lovely Amelia and a good partner in father/daughter duet in Act One, Scene 1. No other opera composer paints the longing for familial love in music as Verdi. At the duet’s end there are four measures that seem to carry the ecstacy of Simone and Amelia’s discovery into eternity. Giannattasio’s soprano starts out with cloudy overtones; by the time the duet comes, she’s warmed up.

Giacomo Prestia bass fills the dramatic parts of his Fiesco, especially in his two duets -one in the prologue and the other at the finale – with Frontali’s Boccanegra. The lower part of the voice, however, gets throaty, revealing his lack of sonority so necessary to the role.

Tenor Giuseppe Gipali is quite capable in handling the vocal requirements of Gabariele Adorno, even if his voice in person comes across smaller in volume than on the DVD.

The last major role is Paolo Albiani, who at first is Simone’s friend and later his betrayer. Marco Vratogna makes a strong physical and vocal presence, his lighter bass tone has no problem in projecting Paolo’s menacing moments.

Video director, Francesca Nesler easily follows Gallione’s stage demands, but the deep blue lighting that permeates the production does cover some of the distinctive greens and reds Fiorato used to represent the Plebians and the Patricians in the Council Chamber Scene. This did not happen in the house.

Does the fact that an Italian opera company the size of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna is willing to make a DVD of one of their new productions indicate a resurgence of operatic interest in Italy? Only time will tell, but we can hope that this production bodes well for the future.

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Howard Shore, The Fly

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By Harvey Steiman

Reprinted with permission from Seen and Heard – Music Web’s Live Opera, Concert and Recital Reviews.

Soloists, chorus and orchestra of Los Angeles Opera, Placido Domingo, conductor; Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. 7.9.2008 (HS)

Cast:

SETH BRUNDLE, Daniel Okulitch
VERONICA QUAIFE, Ruxandra Donose
STATHIS BORANS, Gary Lehman
OFFICER/MEDICAL ANALYST/CHEEVERS, Beth Clayton
MARKY, Jay Hunter Morris
TAWNY PERKINS, Ashlyn Rust

Production:

LIBRETTIST, David Henry Hwang
DIRECTOR, David Cronenberg
SET DESIGNER, Dante Ferretti
COSTUME DESIGNER, Denise Cronenberg
LIGHTING DESIGNER, AJ Weissbard
ASSOCIATE CONDUCTOR/CHORUS MASTER, Grant Gershon
MAKEUP AND CREATURE DESIGN, Stephan L. Dupuis
MAKEUP, CREATURE AND PUPPET FABRICATION, Mark Rappaport’s Creature Effects, Inc.

Those who know David Cronenberg’s 1986 film “The Fly” probably remember mostly its gore. The title character, a mad scientist played by Jeff Goldblum, gradually transforms into a gigantic insect, losing fingernails and various appendages in several memorable “yuck” moments. But there’s a story of human emotions in the film as well, as the scientist and a pretty science reporter, played in the film by Geena Davis, struggle to come to grips with their own love story and its consequences.

Sounds like great stuff for an opera, doesn’t it? Los Angeles Opera thought so, too, and co-commissioned one. It made its U.S. debut Sunday with Placido Domingo conducting and Cronenberg directing (the first performances were in July at Theatre de Châtelet in Paris). The results seem surprisingly tepid.

As in many horror films, the music provides much of the visceral emotional impact. Howard Shore wrote it, and has since gone on to write the scores for other films, including 12 of Cronenberg’s (”M. Butterfly” and “Eastern Promises” among them). He got several Oscars for “Lord of the Rings.” With those credentials, a new opera on “The Fly” by Shore, using some of the material from the film and a libretto by David Henry Hwang, should have been a wow.

Unfortunately, what makes Shore such a superb film composer doesn’t translate to opera, or at least not this one. His music can create a mood, underline a moment or suggest a fleeting emotion without getting in the way of a film’s prime reason for being: the visual narrative. In opera, the music must carry the narrative, or it’s just a play with good background music. And that’s pretty much what we have in “The Fly.” Shore’s music just isn’t strong enough to carry the narrative. Hwang’s libretto, alternately too prosaic or grandiose, doesn’t do it either.

The story is set in the 1950s. The curtain rises on a laboratory littered with piles of trash. A police detective interviews Veronica, who begins to tell the tale. The laboratory remains through scene changes accomplished by wheeling in desks, chairs, hospital beds, and at one point a billiard table and some table settings to represent a bar. Veronica meets Seth Brundle, an introverted scientist, at a party for her magazine’s awards. He shows her what he’s working on—teleportation—and successfully teleports one of her stockings from one “pod” to another in the laboratory, but a later attempt to make it work with a monkey fails.

As they fall in love, culminating in an onstage sex scene, Brundle figures out how to make the teleportation process work with flesh. He transports the monkey, but then with Veronica away to break off an old affair with her boss, Stathis, Seth impulsively transports himself. An unseen but loudly heard fly gets into the pod with him and scrambles their DNA. End of Act I. Seth comes out of the process virile and confident, spouting phrases such as “All hail the new flesh,” and in a marathon night of sex gets Veronica pregnant. But soon the fly DNA starts to make itself more prominent in Seth. In the end, having morphed into a giant fly, he attempts to force Veronica to blend her DNA with his by teleporting at the same time. Stathis rescues her in time, but Seth suffers the fate of the first baboon. Veronica takes Stathis’ gun and kills Seth.

Although Seth is the title role, Veronica is the pivotal part. Romanian mezzo-soprano Roxandra Donose, looking slim and sexy her tight-fitting 1950s outfits, has the stage presence and musical heft to flesh out the character. She has two big scenes, and delivers them with power. But they got a tepid response from the audience because they come after too many scenes of nothing but parlando and recitative. The first 40 minutes of the opera is nothing but scene setting. The music just never opens up vocally.

Daniel Okulitch wielded a sweet lyric baritone as Seth, but lacked power in the lower register, which weakened the character. In the first act he played the role with such a lack of personality that it took away from the narrative. He got stronger in the second act.

Gary Lehman, who recently sang Tristan at the Met, sang powerfully as Sathis, the editor and third member of the love triangle. But Shore’s music never gave him a signature moment or something recognizably different to define his character. Mezzo Beth Clayton made her usual fine impression but in multiple thankless roles. In a brief episode, Seth breaks the arm of Marky, a strongman (Jay Hunter Morris, another Wagnerian tenor), and captures a young hotty (soprano Ashlyn Rust) to satisfy his lust when Veronica tires.

In general, the staging managed to stop short of becoming too hokey. High marks too for the puppeteers who designed and manipulated the monkey, a winsome little capuchin) and in the final scene the distorted body of Seth as the fly. There was also some nice stagecraft to show the suddenly virile Seth tumbling and flipping around, and eventually climbing the walls and ceiling.

The chorus did its part, too, portraying partygoers and bar denizens, but mostly voicing the computer in Seth’s lab. But all those grandiose “new flesh” lines needed more musical underpinning than Shore provided. As purely instrumental music, the scene setting and interludes are highly listenable and effective. Domingo and the orchestra gave them plenty of thrust, but things work less well when combined with voices. Not a good thing for an opera.

In a story that could play well in a comic book, Cronenberg’s movie making and Shore’s music gave the film some unexpected depth. As an opera, not so much.

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