patrikpen: Different Styles in Music and Vision 11 June

giovedì 25 luglio 2013

Different Styles in Music and Vision 11 June

Different Styles

Antonio Pappano's 'Un Ballo in Maschera'
impresses GIUSEPPE PENNISI

Antonio Pappano loves Verdi and quite often conducts the composer's works at London's Royal Opera House (ROH). He seldom programmes Verdi operas at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, where he is also the music director and principal conductor, but decided to lead a concert version of Un Ballo in Maschera at the very end of the Santa Cecilia 2012-2013 season -- a season colored by the double bicentenary of Verdi's and Wagner's births. A main theme of the 2013-2014 season will be the centenary of Britten's birth -- nearly obscured by Verdi and Wagner this year. It is not, strictly speaking, a 'concert version' because, on the stage of the three thousand seat auditorium, the singers were acting; in French, this would be called a mise en space version.

The Santa Cecilia Orchestra and Chorus performing Verdi's 'Un Ballo in Maschero'. © 2013 Musacchio & Ianniello

The production was much awaited because three performances in Rome are likely to be followed by three performances in London and then by a recording. On the 8 June 2013 opening night, all three thousand seats were filled. This review is based on that performance. Pappano has a special flair for Un Ballo in Maschera, one of his frequent fares at the ROH where he recorded a CD in 2005.

Antonio Pappano conducting Verdi's 'Un Ballo in Maschero' in Rome. © 2013 Musacchio & Ianniello

The concert version allows us to focus on the music rather than on the libretto. It is known that the opera is based on a Scribe's play about the actual killing of a King of Sweden during a masked ball in the seventeenth century. After quite a few troubles with the board of censors, the action was set in a rather unlikely Boston under the British colonial power. Now, stage directors have their day in selecting not only whether to set the plot in Stockholm or Boston but also in bringing it up to present times and in emphasizing the politics of the drama. In Barcelona, for example, Un Ballo was set in Madrid during a coup d'état to restore Franco's dictatorship, in Piacenza and Macerata, it was set in Dallas, Texas, around John F Kennedy's murder, and in a new La Scala production during very heated American primary elections in this twenty first century. I discussed these aspects recently here ('Complex Orchestration', 17 October 2011 and 'A Real Triumph', 16 August 2011).

Laura Giordano as Oscar, with Francesco Meli as Riccardo in Verdi's 'Un Ballo in Maschero'. © 2013 Musacchio & Ianniello

Pappano says that Un Ballo is 'an opera I have in my heart' because his father interpreted the main tenor role, Riccardo, and that he considers it as just a marvelous love story where Verdi blends Italian melodrama with a lighter French comedy style with echoes of Auber and Offenbach (and even a French Can-can in the concertato at the end of the first act).

The main distinguishing feature of this production is the well-balanced stylistic juxtaposition. Oscar, the page, is a coloratura soprano with a high texture (a magnificent Laura Giordano) and the protagonist, Riccardo, partakes of both the French and the Italian musical worlds. This is a very difficult role where the tenor (Francesco Meli, in great shape) must go from mezza voce to a very intense dramatic register, from a light almost joking texture to generous high Cs; Meli started his career as a bel canto tenor, and now his voice equals Carrera's in his best years -- a velvet timbre with the required shading to provide for different vocal tints.

Liudmyla Monastryrska as Amelia and Francesco Meli as Riccardo in Verdi's 'Un Ballo in Maschero' in Rome. © 2013 Musacchio & Ianniello

The other main singers belong to the Italian tradition: Amelia is a deep dramatic soprano (Liudmyla Monastryrska), Renato a tense Verdian baritone (Dmitri Hvorostovsky), Ulrica a dark and austere contralto set to reach a very grave register (Dolora Zajick).

Pappano, the orchestra and chorus of Santa Cecilia (with chorus master Ciro Visco) rightly showed how bold and daring Verdi was in the first act scene where Riccardo confronts Ulrica, and in the finale of the second act -- in both sections the two very different styles meet head on and there is almost no mediation. In the third scene of the third act (the masked ball), again the 'happy-go-lucky' courtiers and Oscar belong to the French style whilst Riccardo, Renato and Amelia are full melodramatic characters (albeit with comparatively short arias and no cabaletta); Pappano reinforces the orchestra with the Italian National Police Band playing in the upper tier and the two universes converge in the final very concise concertato. Liudmyla Monastryrska has a bright career in front of her. Dmitri Hvorostovsky is as effective as usual. Dolora Zajick copes well, thanks to her technique, with her ageing.