Unmistakably Italian in Music and Vision 24 gennaio

Unmistakably Italian
A fresh start for Gnecchi's 'Cassandra',
by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

The late Dame Joan Sutherland and her husband, the conductor Richard Bonynge, loved Catania's 'Massimo Bellini' Theatre in eastern Sicily, not only for its elegant façade and its smart auditorium, but also for its perfect acoustics. In the late 1880s, its architect, Carlo Sada (later in charge of designing Buenos Aires' Colón) developed an acoustic miracle where in all series of seats the audience feels to be literally embraced by the music. This jewel has had ups and downs during the last twenty five years. It is not one of the thirteen centrally subsidized Italian 'national' theatres but a Regional Foundation financed mostly by the cash-strapped Sicilian Regional Government as well as by limited support from the central Ministry of Culture and by a few private sponsors. Also, Catania's audience has changed: it used to be highly intellectual but, although the city has one of the best universities of Southern Italy, the main focus of the ruling elite is on reviving industry in order to absorb the very high unemployment. Some twenty years ago, under the guidance of the late Spiros Argiris, the Massimo Bellini had splendidly innovative seasons. More recently, financial and other problems had the consequence that the program was mostly based on standard low cost repertory.

Teatro Massimo Bellini, Catania. Click on the image for higher resolution
A new phase in the Massimo Bellini's life may be starting. Last year, the inaugural opera was a much praised production of Richard Strauss' Elektra -- valiantly performed by the theatre's orchestra and chorus and a good number of well experienced guest artists. This year, the inaugural production was a nearly forgotten opera by Vittorio Gnecchi, Cassandra. The opening night was 11 January. This report is based on the 16 January 2011 matinée performance.

Teatro Massimo Bellini, Catania. Click on the image for higher resolution
Many opera guidebooks and even encyclopedias just ignore Gnecchi's Cassandra, even though in 1905 the work seemed to be heading for certain success. Gnecchi was the scion of a very wealthy Milan family and quite well-educated in all the forms of music being developed in the early years of the twentieth century. Arturo Toscanini conducted the 1905 Bologna première of Cassandra. The opera was successful in Vienna and in New York but was seldom revived in Italy -- its last performance was in 1942 as a part of a special season of Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. In the very same season, Alban Berg's Wozzeck was premièred in Italy, even though the composer and its work were highly forbidden in Germany and in the 'occupied territories', and this was the key moment of World War II.
Why did Cassandra disappear? The machinations of Italian (and European) musical politics foreshortened the piece's history, and forced Toscanini to break off relations with the composer. The occasion of Salome's 1906 Italian début inadvertently set the stage for a scandal, when Gnecchi offered Richard Strauss the piano-vocal score of Cassandra. When both Cassandra and Strauss' new Elektra were performed -- nearly back-to-back -- in Dresden during the 1908-9 season, 'surprising similarities' were noted between the two operas. Gnecchi accused Strauss of plagiarizing his work. A very heated dispute followed. Shortly after that, Gnecchi and his opera faded into obscurity.

A scene from Gnecchi's 'Cassandra' at Teatro Massimo Bellini. Photo © 2011 Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
More recently, in 2000, Radio France opened the tomb where Cassandra had been set to rest, most likely forever. After this Montpellier concert performance, a hard-to-buy record was produced. In 2009, the Deutsche Oper Berlin staged a double bill with an abridged version of Cassandra coupled with Elektra. The Massimo Bellini production is the first opportunity to listen to and to see the full one-hundred-minute score fully staged in a Prologue and two Acts. In short, the early twentieth century fuss was not only unfair but unjustified. The overlapping subject matter -- within Aeschylus's Oresteia, Strauss's opera represents the 'sequel' to Gnecchi's -- could predispose listeners to exaggerate the musical resemblances. Gnecchi's opening musical gesture -- an ominous three-note fanfare, followed by orchestral turbulence -- may seem shockingly familiar to those who know and love Strauss' Elektra. Some of the orchestral interludes sound very Straussian, particularly (as at the end of Act I) when the horns come prominently into play; so do the chromatic harmonies at the entry of Electra and Oreste, here young children. However, one hundred years ago, this was part of rather widespread 'new trends' in musical theatre.

A scene from Gnecchi's 'Cassandra' at Teatro Massimo Bellini. Photo © 2011 Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
As a whole, Gnecchi's opera is unmistakably Italian in idiom and spirit. The fullness created by the clear, warm choral sonorities in the Prologue and the opening of Act I inhabit a different world to Strauss' darting solo strands. Clitennestra and Egisto, transmuted here into a soprano and baritone, are young adulterers, expressing their illicit ardor in a lyrical duet full of passion (but with little eros). The quietly proud brass chorale marking Agamennone's entry contrasts with Strauss' more contrapuntal deployments, while the layering of voices in the ensuing ensemble is a familiar Italian technique. The splashy beginning of Act II sounds like a more opulent version of Mascagni's Parisina or Isabeau.
Thus, the Massimo Bellini production does justice to Gnecchi's Cassandra. It could also open the path to a broader revival if, as I hope, other theatres may be interested in this quite intriguing score. The conductor, Donato Renzetti, rightly emphasizes the 'Italian' rather than the 'German' aspects of the vocal and orchestral score.

Mariana Pentcheva in the title role of Gnecchi's 'Cassandra' at Teatro Massimo Bellini. Photo © 2011 Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
The cast was quite strong. The protagonist, the prophetess Cassandra, doesn't appear until the second act, but comes to dominate it: the final curtain falls at her cries of 'Oreste! Oreste!' (another resemblance to Strauss!), predicting doom for Clitennestra and Egisto. Mariana Pentcheva is a dramatic mezzo, Eastern European rather than Italian in her bright, shrill timbre and quick vibrato. Clitennestra and Egisto here fulfill the 'young lovers' function. Giovanna Casolla is an experienced, albeit no longer young, dramatic coloratura soprano; she makes the most of her resources, filling out and inflecting her lines with style, playing with dark, rich colors in the low range, and really feeling such musical points as the change to the major in the love music. Her Egisto is Carmelo Corrado Caruso, an expressive baritone. John Treleaven is a good Agamennone, an impervious and very taxing role.

Giovanna Casolla as Clitennestra and Carmelo Corrado Caruso as Egisto in Gnecchi's 'Cassandra' at Teatro Massimo Bellini. Photo © 2011 Giacomo Orlando. Click on the image for higher resolution
Gabriele Rech's stage direction is quite imaginative: with complex two layer scene machinery by Giuseppe Di Iorio, the tragedy becomes a modern family drama with blood, sex and violence.
The audience responded well with several minutes of applause.
Copyright © 24 January 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

ITALY
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