A Variety of Events 31 December

A Variety of Events
GIUSEPPE PENNISI reports on music for the
Christmas and New Year period in Italy,
for children and for those who love children

In most countries, the Christmas and New Year holiday season is a feast for music. In any major or even minor European or North American city, there is a rich menu to select from: operas, ballets, concerts. In several countries, the season extends to the Twelfth Night, hence to the celebration of the Epiphany. Thus, it is essential to make a selection, both in listening to and in reporting about the large variety of events.

A scene from Gian Carlo Menotti's 'Help, Help, the Globolinks!' in Palermo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
I chose to report on five of them: Giancarlo Menotti's children opera Help, Help, the Globolinks! (heard in Palermo on 9 December 2011), Pëtr Il'ic Cajkovskij's The Nutcracker (Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, 20 December), Georg Friedrich Händel's Messiah (Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, 17 December), and the Christmas concerts of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (featuring Sergej Rachmaninoff's concertos for piano and orchestra No 2 and No 3) on 22 December, as well as of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma on 23 December 2011 (featuring Johann Strauss waltzes). These are all quite well-known compositions. Thus, this reports focuses on the performances, and has a unifying theme 'music for children and for those who like children', as Menotti labeled his lovely one act opera Help, Help, the Globolinks!. As a matter of fact, Händel's Messiah and Rachmaninoff's piano concertos were not composed having an audience of children in mind, but during the holiday seasons many parents take children to concerts; also, both performances had unusual characteristics, making them worth reporting on for an international readership.

Nicola Ceriani as the headmaster Mr Block and Francesca Micarelli as Emily in Menotti's 'Help, Help, the Globolinks!' in Palermo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
Let's start with the Globolinks coming from outer space to destroy everything they touch and transforming into an extra-terrestrial monster any human being coming into physical contact with them. Only music can win them over: this is the same message as Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, where solely music can help Tamino and Pamina to overcome the trials they have to go through. The plot of Help, Help, the Globolinks! evolves in an American mid-Western high school, but could take place anywhere. The pompous headmaster does not believe in the terrible nature of the Globolinks; thus, he becomes their first victim in the school compound. The music teacher organizes the defense (and gains much sought-after appreciation from the rest of the teaching and the administration staff of the outfit) with the motto 'without music the world will end'. The real winner is Emily, a young violin virtuoso enfant-prodige who kicks the monsters out and sends them back to their far-away planet. During the sixty-minute four-scene opera, the listeners have a run of musical theatre conventions and styles: from coloratura to modern music drama through Verdi melodrama and verismo. Thus, the opera also has clear and clever educational objectives.

Patrizia Orciani as Ms Euterpova the music teacher with the children's chorus in Menotti's 'Help, Help, the Globolinks!' in Palermo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
The work was commissioned by the Hamburg Opera House where it was premiered in 1968. The original German libretto was translated into English and the opera became a standard feature in the US. It is very seldom performed in Italy, but the Teatro Massimo of Palermo has a special program to bring children to the wide, wild world of opera: this year forty thousand students of all ages attended special performances. Thus, an interesting production (in Italian) was organized and had as many as twenty-one performances (two every day) in the smaller auditorium Nuovo Montevergini. Stage direction, sets and costumes by Elisabetta Marini, Guia Buzzi and Daniela Cernigliano are based on science fiction movies of the nineteen-fifties. The astute but rather simple score is conducted by Attilio Tomasello. Two vocal casts alternate in the numerous performances. Among the many singers, especially good were Francesca Micarelli, Patrizia Orciani and Nicolo Ceriani as, respectively, Emily, Euterpova (the music teacher) and Mr Block (the headmaster). A very successful series of performances. Regretably, the next title in the Teatro Massimo 2011 -- a new production of Cajkovskij's The Nutcracker -- had to be cancelled (even though it was sold out), with major financial damage to the theatre, due to a strike of the corps de ballet which claimed permanent appointment for fourteen of the fixed-term contract dancers.
However, a new production of Cajkovskij's The Nutcracker was presented on 20 December 2011 at a Charity Gala at the Teatro dell'Opera of Rome. Indeed, during the holiday seasons, all three major ballets by Cajkovskij were staged in Rome in different theatres by local and foreign companies (ie Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake in addition to The Nutcracker). Two different productions of The Nutcracker are competing until 7 January 2012: a lavish staging by the Teatro dell'Opera and a simpler operation by the Balletto di Roma (a private company). The three Cajkovskij ballets are intriguing: composed for the delight of the Imperial Court as well as especially tailored to take children to the theatre, their scores mirrored the most troubled period of the composer's life (as clearly shown in a Ken Russell's film of the seventies -- The Music Lovers): his difficulties to come to terms with his social class and his sexual orientation -- in a society where homosexuality was strictly forbidden. Shortly after the completion of The Nutcracker, the series of events that caused his suicide under the disguise of death by cholera took place. Consequently, familiar fairytale plots are molded with sensual and even morbid music -- tremendous scores as sophisticated as those of the symphonies Cajkovskij was working on in the same period. The scores look to Western Music (and to erotic affairs with young Italian male prostitutes) rather than the Slav musical tradition. Under this aspect, they have much in common with his engrossing opera Evgenij Onegin.

A scene from Tchaikovsky's 'The Nutcracker' in Rome. Photo © 2008 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
Chronologically, The Nutcracker is the last of the three ballets: it is based on a short story by the German poet E T A Hoffmann, who considered it 'not at all for children'. It deals with a Christmas Night dream of a young girl in love with a nutcracker puppet received as Christmas gift. In short, a Bildungsroman on erotic formation. Of course, only recent choreographies -- eg those by John Cranko and Rudolf Nureyev -- reveal this aspect openly. More drastically, the recent 3D film by by Andrei Konchalovsky makes it a real horror story, and mixes Cajkovskij's score with rock opera.

A scene from Tchaikovsky's 'The Nutcracker' in Rome. Photo © 2008 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
Normally the traditional staging, based on the 1892 Petipa choreography, shows just a Christmas tale 'for children and for those who love children'. This is the venue chosen by the Teatro dell'Opera. The stage sets by Carlo Salvi and the lighting by Mario De Amici, supported by excellent projections of Baltic lakes, are quite elegant. Slawa Muchamedow's choreography follows Petipa's rather strictly. Nick Kabaretti's baton is precise and does not stress the most sensual -- as a matter of fact, morbid -- parts of the score. Three casts alternate in the several performances. An interesting aspect: with the exception of Anton Bogov in three performances, all the étoiles are Italian. Gaia Straccamore is quite remarkable. A sold-out 'family show'.
Why deal with Händel's Messiah as performed in Rome just a few weeks after a colossal production at London's Royal Albert Hall with a chorus of 3,800 men, women and children? The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia made an original choice for the three performances (19, 21 and 22 December 2011) in its main hall hosting an audience of 2,800: firstly, it offered the seldom performed 'Dublin Version' of Messiah; secondly, the direction was entrusted to Fabio Biondi, a specialist of baroque music and leader of the Europa Galante ensemble.

Fabio Biondi conducting Handel's 'Messiah' in Rome. Photo © 2011 Musacchio and Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
The orchestra and chorus were those of the Accademia Nazionale and the soloists an international group (Carolyn Sampson, soprano, Romina Basso, mezzo-soprano, Jeremy Ovenden, tenor and Vito Priante, bass). The Dublin Version was designed to bewilder with its sonority the Irish audience which, of course, was not accustomed to the resources available in London. The score is simpler, less sumptuous, less monumental than the more frequently performed London version, but equally enthralling. The audience exploded in a standing ovation at the tripartite Alleluia. Twenty minutes of applause followed the end of the concert.

Handel's 'Messiah' in Rome. Photo © 2011 Musacchio and Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
Normally, Händel's Messiah is standard fare for a Christmas concert but before adjourning until 6 January (a month normally dedicated to Mozart), the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia proposed a special Christmas concert sponsored by the main Italian power company (Enel) for the awarding of the Rome Prize for Peace and Humanitarian Action to Lina Ben Mhenni, a Tunisian blogger considered as one of the protagonists of the 2011 'Arab Spring'.

Presentation of the Rome Prize for Peace and Humanitarian Action to Tunisian blogger Lina Ben Mhenni. From left to right: Professor Bruno Cagli (Chairman of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia), Lina Ben Mhenni, Gianni Alemanno (Mayor of Rome) and Fulvio Conti (CEO of Enel). Photo © 2011 Musacchio and Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
After the ceremony (with as many as four speeches) the 2,800 guests listened to Sergej Rachmaninoff's Concertos for Piano and Orchestra No 2 in C minor and No 3 in D minor under the baton of Daniele Rustoni and the fingers of Denis Matsuev. The concert was repeated on 23 December for the ticket paying audience. Denis Matusuev is an internationally known thirty-six-year-old Russian pianist; he has already performed the two Rachmaninoff concertos in Rome under the baton of Antonio Pappano. Twenty-eight-year-old Daniele Rustioni is a rising star in the European conductors' firmaments; at his debut with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, he has already directed operas in major Italian theatres (including La Scala), at the Welsh National Opera, at the British Opera North and at the US Glimmerglass Festival (as well as in Finland and elsewhere). They were enthusiastically applauded by the 2,800 guests. I wonder if the highly dramatic program was fit to be a Christmas concert and if young Maestro Rustioni (who had just conducted Verdi's Falstaff in Verona Teatro Filarmonico) was fit for the program. Of Rachmaninoff's two concertos, the best known has been No 2 in C minor; No 3 in D minor is familiar to the audience mostly through Scott Hick's box office hit Shine, a film where the protagonist, a young Australian pianist, goes crazy by attempting to give a good performance of the highly difficult and dramatic 'Rach 3' (the short nickname for the concerto). Indeed, both concertos are much more tense than one would expect in the Holiday Season. In addition, Rustioni has a rather heavy baton and makes the drama almost gothic; in my view, it would have required more experience to master a lighter baton.

Denis Matsuev plays Rachmaninov, accompanied by Daniele Rustoni and the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Click on the image for higher resolution
A Holiday Season standard jewel was the 23 December 2011 Christmas concert by the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma; a Vienna-like New Year concert entirely made of Strauss' fascinating waltzes. Francesco La Vecchia and the orchestra were at their best. The 2,000 people in the audience were enthralled and requested (and obtained) encores. A good way to conclude a year of financial and economic crisis and to wish all M&V's readers a rosy and hopefully bountiful future.
Copyright © 31 December 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

CHRISTMAS
ROME
PALERMO
ITALY
GIAN CARLO MENOTTI
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL
JOHANN STRAUSS
SERGEI RACHMANINOV
TEATRO DELL'OPERA
ACCADEMIA NAZIONALE DI SANTA CECILIA
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