For King, Country and Sex 5 Febbraio

For King, Country and Sex
Marco Tutino's 'Senso',
experienced by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

Is there an Italian 'new opera' genre similar to the American 'new opera' I discussed here a couple of weeks ago commenting on the European première of William Bolcom's A View from the Bridge? It is quite a pertinent question, because Italy was the cradle of opera as well as one of the few countries where opera was a fully commercial venture (in Venice in the sixteenth century and all over the country from about the 1820s until around the 1910s). Now, the thirteen major Italian opera houses and some thirty minor 'traditional' opera theatres are heavily supported by central and local government. Due the financial stringency, government funds for opera are drastically decreasing, so opera workers are protesting with serious industrial action. More worrisome than these protests is the decrease in audience; with a few exceptions (Milan's La Scala, Palermo's Teatro Massimo, Parma's Teatro Regio), in many theatres the paying audience is dwindling year after year and there are rows of unfilled seats any time some program departure is made from the standard repertory.

Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
Also, the audience is, by and large, made up of 'grey panthers', older high income people who are unlikely to leave their orchestra seats and boxes to a younger generation. High ticket prices and changes in costumes and habits are the main determinants of the situation. However, very few opera houses have a deliberate policy to prepare the new generations for the genre and very few composers attempt to attract audience. Many of them write experimental scores for the joy (or rage) of their fellow composers and for the élite. The general audience is often scared away by just the titles.

Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Photo © 2009 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
As mentioned, the Teatro Massimo of Palermo is an exception in several ways. Firstly, some ten years ago, it seemed a bottomless pit of public funds; now the debt has been restructured, every fiscal year the foundation running the house closes with a small surplus, and a major international bank is one of the stakeholders of the foundation. Secondly, the theatre has a clear policy to attract young audiences to operas especially geared to them, discounted tickets for the youths and, more significantly, opera presentations for students from elementary to senior high schools. Thirdly, the Teatro Massimo encourages those 'neo romantic' composers who still like harmony, write diatonic music, rich orchestral interludes and melodic tunes.

Nicola Beller Carbone as Livia and Brandon Jovanovich as Hans in 'Senso' by Marco Tutino at Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
Marco Tutino is, with Lorenzo Ferrero and Marco Betta, one of these composers. Like their American counterparts, they have the wit to draw their inspiration from very well-known books and even films, an additional reason to attract people interested in seeing how a familiar plot wound render as a piece of music theatre. After all, in their own times, Verdi, Puccini, Leoncavallo and many others did just the same.

Nicola Beller Carbone as Livia and Brandon Jovanovich as Hans in 'Senso' by Marco Tutino at Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
The Teatro Massimo in Palermo made a bet on inaugurating the 2011 season with the world premiere of Marco Tutino's Senso -- co-produced with Warsaw National Opera Theatre and already scheduled to be performed in Bologna and Trieste (and, may be, in Los Angeles and/or San Francisco). A daring bet because very few Italian opera houses inaugurate their seasons with an untested brand-new work, especially commissioned for the purpose.

Nicola Beller Carbone as Livia in 'Senso' by Marco Tutino at Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
On 20 January, a grand evening was planned with music critics coming from all over the world. Regretfully, the unions called for a last minute strike against the composer as well as against the Teatro Massimo management; this would have been incredible in any other country because in fact the unions' action ended up damaging their own registered members as well as the other workers in that line of employment. This report is based on the performance on 30 January 2011.

Nicola Beller Carbone as Livia and Brandon Jovanovich as Hans in 'Senso' by Marco Tutino at Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
Senso means 'sensuality'. It is the title of a short novel of Camillo Boito -- a relative of Arrigo Boito, author of Verdi's important libretti and a serious composer on his own account. (His Mefistofele is still often performed, especially in Germany and the USA.) In 1954, the novel had been chosen by Luchino Visconti for one of his best and most known films. Its plot evolves in Venice and the nearby countryside during the 1866 Prussian-Austrian War when the recently created Kingdom of Italy was allied with Berlin against Vienna and aimed at expanding its territory to Venice and the surrounding region. The opera, thus, has a special flavor because in 2011, Italy celebrates the 150th anniversary of its unification.

Nicola Beller Carbone as Livia in 'Senso' by Marco Tutino at Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
The two-act libretto by Giuseppe di Leva follows the novel and the film quite closely. In Venice the Marquis Donà and his friends are clearly working (in disguise) for the unification of Italy, and have also collected a large sum of money to help organize an uprising by the general populace against the Austrians.

Nicola Beller Carbone as Livia and Brandon Jovanovich as Hans in 'Senso' by Marco Tutino at Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
During an evening at La Fenice Opera House, young Countess Livia Serpieri, cousin of Marquis Donà and wife of an old Count, falls in love with an attractive Austrian officer, Hans -- her cousin and her husband are much too busy, either openly or secretly, working for the King (of Italy) and the country (again Italy) to grasp what is going on. Livia is convinced that her affair with the young Austrian is her lifetime love story, but Hans only wants sex -- he is quite skilled at that -- and money. A major battle is in the offing. Hans is afraid to go to the front-line and persuades Livia to give him money to pay a complacent doctor and to call sick.

Emanuele D'Aguanno as the narrator, Nicola Beller Carbone as Livia and Brandon Jovanovich as Hans in 'Senso' by Marco Tutino at Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
Livia steals the money designed to help the 'Italian patriots', only to discover that Hans is a real scoundrel. He obtains sick leave by corrupting four medical doctors; he does not go to the battlefields but squanders the remaining money on prostitutes, including her own chamber maid, in group sex orgies, with his comrades-in-arms, in Verona. Livia files a report on him to the Austrian military authorities. After a short martial trial, Hans is in front of a firing squad, and Livia is morally destroyed. Thus, a true melodrama with all the ingredients: King, country, and love (or rather sex, as we are in 2011 and not in 1850 or thereabouts)!

Nicola Beller Carbone as Livia in 'Senso' by Marco Tutino at Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
The musical score is lush. It requires a comparatively large orchestra -- in Palermo, Pinchas Steinberg had the baton -- for eclectic writing where familiar tunes (eg a waltz) are ingeniously married with complex chromatic innovations and with careful harmony. Emphasis is on the dual atmosphere: on the one hand, Marquis Donà, Count Serpieri and Friends' patriotic world; on the other, Livia's bedding with Hans where the audience can smell sex (rather than love and/or passion). Throughout, the music is quite tense: both patriotism and sex have a lot of tensions. The vocal writing is mostly declamation (like in Bolcom's A View from the Bridge) with ariosos and concert pieces.

A scene from 'Senso' by Marco Tutino at Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
The opera was presented with an international vocal cast: Nicola Beller Carbone, Brandon Janovich, Giorgio Surian, Dalibor Janis and Giovanni Furlanetto took the main roles. Stage direction, scenery and costumes were entrusted to Hugo de Ana who, with the help of Vinicio Cheti's lighting, outdoes Luchino Visconti in providing a luxurious vision of mid-nineteenth century decadence in an Empire about to fold. The same production will travel to Warsaw, Bologna, Trieste and -- maybe -- to the USA. There is a single stage set but with the help of mirrors and projections, the audience has the impression of moving from palatial salons to St Mark's Square, private chambers, battlefields, brothels and barracks in a cinematic sequence.

A scene from 'Senso' by Marco Tutino at Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
But the quintessential element of opera is music and singing. The orchestral score is quite elaborate and very personal but the careful listener can feel musical telepathy with Puccini's La Rondine in the Palatial salon scene in the first acts, and echoes of Korngold and Zemlinsky in the sex scenes. Also there is a flavor of Richard Strauss throughout the opera because of the care that the orchestra, although powerful, should never overwhelm the voices so that every single word can be fully understood. There are no single musical numbers, unless the string prelude to the second Act and the concert pieces can be considered as such. (That in the battlefield was especially moving.) Also the engrossing solo ending by Livia, as emotional as that of Janácek's Jenufa, can be taken as a musical number. With the exception of the choral parts, normally the declamation slides into ariosos.

A scene from 'Senso' by Marco Tutino at Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
The German-born, Spanish-trained but now Florentine-resident Nicola Beller Carbone was Livia, and the American Brando Jovanovich was Hans. They are both attractive and endowed with powerful vocal means. Both of them have taxing roles, with emphasis on acute -- Hans has several High Cs -- and in the central register, but also descending to very hard 'mezza voce'. They both excel in phrasing, an essential element in a vocal score with emphasis on declamation. They handle the difficulties very well. Dalibor Janis is almost a Verdi baritone; he has a good arioso in the battlefield scene. Giorgio Surian is Count Serpieri and Giovanni Furlanetto the Austrian commander, two smaller roles handled effectively. Zuzana Marcová is the whorish chamber maid.

A scene from 'Senso' by Marco Tutino at Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
The Palermo audience appreciated the performance with accolades at the end of the battlefield scene and a long applause at the end. The Teatro Massimo management won the bet. I trust the international audience will like Senso -- certainly in the USA, but also in Germany and in the UK.
Copyright © 5 February 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

ITALY
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