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Fighting for Freedom
A new start for 'Il Trionfo di Clelia'?
GIUSEPPE PENNISI has his doubts
On 14 May 2013, the Teatro Comunale di Bologna celebrated two hundred and fifty years since
its inauguration. It is not an ordinary opera theatre. The architects, the Bibbiena brothers, gave
it a new style in opera houses design. Although the auditorium has been modified during the two and a half
centuries since -- eg an orchestra pit was built, a royal box was set at the
center of the second row of boxes, and the baignoire at stage level were transformed into boxes -- the basic
design has not changed. In Italy there are three additional functioning theatres (in Macerata, Mantua and Pavia) built by the Bibbiena brothers.
There are many more in Germany and Austria because the design seemed a perfect fit for the acoustics and vision of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Also, the Bologna Teatro Comunale was Italy's Wagnerian stronghold from around 1870 until circa 1920.
More recently, it has premiered works by Ligeti, Maderna and Italian living composers.
Sala Bibiena at Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Photo © Maurizio Tarantino. Click on the
image for higher resolution
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Daichi Fujiki (left) as Mannio and Maria Grazia Schiavo in the title
role of Gluck's 'Il trionfo di Clelia' at Teatro Comunale di Bologna.
Photo © 2013 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the
image for higher resolution
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When Gluck was approached to compose the inaugural opera
for a new large theatre in Bologna -- then the town had 70,000 residents but it was the main city in the Pope's State in Central Italy -- he
had in mind his later reforms to music theater and proposed Metastasio's well known L'Olimpiade (already set
to music by some thirty composers). The work's love-and-friendship plot did not seem either grand or heroic enough
for a theatre planned for an audience of some 1,500 and equipped with very modern
stage machinery (for that time), however. Thus, Metastasio's Il Trionfo
di Clelia (even though already set to music by Johan Adolf Hasse) was chosen, because it enabled a lavish
stage production with battles, swimming through the Tiber and even a fire.
Burçu Uyar (left) as Larissa and Maria Grazia Schiavo in the title
role of Gluck's 'Il trionfo di Clelia' at Teatro Comunale di Bologna.
Photo © 2013 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the
image for higher resolution
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The plot revolves around a young girl and her boyfriend fighting for freedom during the Etruscan conquest of Rome and entails all the usual baroque and eighteenth
century intrigues. In 1763,
the opera had twenty-eight performances in Bologna. Then the score was lost, but Gluck used part of it in later operas. A manuscript was discovered in 1904 in an Austrian monastery. It was incomplete, but other parts
surfaced in libraries and archives.
Mary-Ellen Nesi (right) as Orazio and Maria Grazia Schiavo in the
title role of Gluck's 'Il trionfo di Clelia' at Teatro Comunale di
Bologna. Photo © 2013 Rocco
Casaluci. Click on the image for higher resolution
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A critical edition was published a few years ago. Il Trionfo di Clelia
was performed in 2001 in the Lugo di Romagna Festival in an edition where the parts for castrati
were lowered by a couple of octaves and entrusted to tenors and even baritones. The Bologna staging -- as
well recent performances in Athens and in London and the 2012 world premiere recording by MDG (MDG609 1733-2, three CDs) --
uses sopranos, mezzos and countertenors to follow the original vocal lines as best as possible. This does not imply that
the 2013 performance is identical to that of 1763. Two centuries and a
half ago, the opera included two ballets and lasted some six hours with
intermissions instead of three and a half as on 14 May 2013.
Irini Karaianni as Tarquinio in Gluck's 'Il trionfo di Clelia' at
Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Photo
© 2013 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the image for higher resolution
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Stage direction and sets were the responsibility of the innovative British author Nigel Lowery, costumes were by Monica Bellini and lighting by George Tellos. The three of them conjured
an action which seemed a parody of an opera seria more than an opera seria itself. No
doubt this is a new approach to music theatre in the rather delicate
transition from baroque to 'Gluck's revolution' which greatly
simplified operatic conventions and opened the road to Mozart. Not everyone in the audience appreciated it:
a few voted with their feet during the intermission and especially
during the change of sets between the second and the third acts.
Vassilis Kavayas as Porsenna in Gluck's 'Il trionfo di Clelia' at
Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Photo
© 2013 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the image for higher resolution
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The musical direction (by Giuseppe Sigismondi De Risio) and the singers matched those on the MDG recording very
closely, with the exception of the protagonist (Maria Grazia Schiavo on top form) and the countertenor Daichi Fujiki (as Mannio). The others were
the same: Mary-Ellen Nesi (Orazio), Burçu Uyar (Larissa), Irini
Karaianni (Tarquinio) and Vassilis Kavayas (Porsenna). The arias are quite enthralling, especially Clelia's coloratura number Mille dubbi mi restan nel petto.
The real marvel is the sixty piece orchestra, almost unrivaled in
Gluck's production with a symphony with belligerent warfare, an unusually rhythmic march and tone painting to represent natural phenomena.
Vassilis Kavayas as Porsenna and Irini Karaianni as Tarquinio in
Gluck's 'Il trionfo di Clelia' at Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Photo © 2013 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the
image for higher resolution
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Will Il Trionfo di Clelia have a new
start after Bologna, Athens and London? Difficult to say. In my view, its future, if any, is within the boundaries of baroque
and eighteenth century music festivals rather than in regular opera houses.
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