Eyes Tight Shut in Music and Vision 21 luglio

Eyes Tight Shut
'La Fanciulla del West' at the Puccini Festival,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

The 2010 Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago was inaugurated on 16 July with a new production of La Fanciulla del West. This year is the centenary of La Fanciulla, which was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera House and premièred on 10 December 1910 with a stellar cast: Arturo Toscanini in the pit, Emma Destin, Enrico Caruso and Pasquale Amato in the three main roles. Then, even if the weather was vile -- a snow storm -- and prices had been increased (and further raised by ticket scalpers), a capacity audience filled The Met at 34th Street and their applause rocked the rafters.
At the end of the performance on 16 July, applause for the conductor (Alberto Veronesi), the orchestra and the singers (Daniela Dessì, Fabio Armiliato, Carlos Almanguer and an additional dozen in less important but not minor roles) was mixed with a battery of booes at the stage designer (Franco Adami) and at the stage director (Kirsten Harms). It's difficult to understand why the Puccini Festival embarked on a new production, especially since Fanciulla is a comparatively rare offering in the Puccini catalogue and the festival had presented a perfectly good staging, for only a few evenings, five years ago. In short, this Torre del Lago Fanciulla should be listened to with the eyes tight shut.

A scene from Act 1 of Giacomo Puccini's 'La Fanciulla del West' at the Puccini Festival. Photo © 2010 Caterina Zalewska
Just a few words on the staging. Franco Adami is a local sculptor, probably dealing with an opera for the first time. The staging is an abstract set of totems and hanging beds, plausible, perhaps, in a futuristic staging of Aida but light years away not only from the Far West but also from the dramatic action. To add comic relief, at the end of the Third Act, Minnie and Dick fly away in a 'Star Wars' sun. Also in the first Act, Minnie is dressed as a 'Girl Friday' just coming back home ('The Polka') from some Main Street office, even with a couple of guns under her belt. Dick arrives with a bunch of freshly cut and delicately cared-for roses (in the Rockies during the gold rush!!) The stage direction is hardly worth mentioning . Kirsten Harms has the reputation of being an effective manager -- now she is the director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, but her staging has been limited to second tier German opera houses, such as Kiel and Bremen. The overall result is a boring first Act, an anti-climatic second Act and a senseless third Act.

Daniela Dessi and Fabio Armiliato in Act 1 of 'La Fanciulla del West' at the Puccini Festival. Photo © 2010 Caterina Zalewska
Luckily, the musical element is far superior to that happening on the stage. While the plot of Fanciulla is generally well-known, only a limited number of opera-goers are aware that this was one of the operas Puccini was particularly fond of, just because, in composing it, he adopted a style so different to that of his previous works. The subject, taken from American life and history, could easily be treated with conventional verismo intertwined with lyrical episodes and minor scenes secondary in importance in terms of plot development albeit essential to the description of milieu. Instead, Puccini composed a very innovative vocal and orchestral score where harsh naturalism is mixed with influences from Debussy and Strauss. In Fanciulla there are no conventional arias but only an arioso starting with andante molto lento and reaching a very high C. It is, in a way, a chit-chat opera -- a conversational opera, which anticipates Leos Janácek's Jenufa by six years because it is a highly dramatic conversational opera full of passion and sexual drive, whilst chit-chat operas are normally based on comparatively light subjects.

Daniela Dessi and Carlos Almanguera in Act 2 of 'La Fanciulla del West' at the Puccini Festival. Photo © 2010 Caterina Zalewska
Alberto Veronesi and the Festival Orchestra delved very competently into this very complex score where some forty leitmotives describe the environment and situations. Daniella Dessì and Fabio Armiliato are the best Italian couple to sing the taxing roles of Minnie and Dick. She started her career with bel canto but has gradually thickened and darkened her voice, and is now a soprano drammatico with plenty of temperament and springing passions from everywhere. He received a well-deserved open stage applause after the third Act arioso. His legato was remarkable. Carlos Almanguer (the sheriff Jack) was very effective too, in spite of having a bad flu and high fever. All the others were good. The singers deserve special praise because they were forced to perform in Adami's peculiar sets and under very strong lighting in a temperature of over thirty degrees centigrade.

A scene from Act 3 of 'La Fanciulla del West' at the Puccini Festival. Photo © 2010 Caterina Zalewska
Let's hope for a CD ... if there were any plans for DVD it might be better to set them aside.
Copyright © 22 July 2010 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

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