Brilliant Ideas in Music and Vision 24 novembre

Brilliant Ideas

Verdi's Shakespeare trilogy in Ravenna,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

In a recent essay, Philip Gosset of the University of Chicago advises us all that William Shakespeare's 450th birthday will be celebrated next year. Since Giuseppe Verdi's two hundredth birthday is being celebrated in 2013 with a real plethora of Verdi's operas based on the Bard's plays, the new round will most likely entail rarely produced musical works based on Shakespeare, such as Weber's Oberon, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, Elgar's Falstaff and Castelnuovo Tedesco's Sonnets. Few composers are as intertwined with Shakespeare as Verdi. In 1970, one of the best known scholars of English language and literature (as well a translator of Shakespeare opera omnia), the late Gabriele Baldini (University of Rome), wrote that 'it is a pseudo-critical problem to speak about the "adaptation" of Verdi to Shakespeare or vice versa because Shakespeare clearly anticipated Verdi in every detail. So much that later the "adaptation" simply occurred.' Verdi 'adapted' only three of Shakespeare's plays to operas (Macbeth, Othello and Falstaff, the libretto of which is based on at least two plays by the Bard) and longed to find a good libretto for an opera based on King Lear throughout his life.

At the end of the Verdi bicentenary celebration, Ravenna's Alighieri Theatre has had the splendid idea to produce the Shakespeare Verdi trilogy (Macbeth, Othello and Falstaff) in a rather special manner. The three operas can be seen and heard one evening after another (and from Ravenna the trilogy will travel to other cities in Central and Northern Italy as well as perhaps abroad) as a project entrusted to a single team and many young artists: conductor Nicola Paszkowski has the baton, the Cherubini (a symphonic ensemble of young instrumentalists) is in the pit, Cristina Mazzavillani Muti is the stage director and set conceptual designer, Vincent Longuemare is in charge of lighting, Ezio Antonelli of stage sets, Alessandro Lai (costumes), Davide Broccoli and Sara Caliumi of visual design, and Catherine Pantigny of choreography. There are thirty young singers from all over the world with a median age just under thirty. The chorus is provided by the Piacenza Teatro Municipale and directed by Corrado Casati.

The three operas share the same basic set: platforms, stairs, props. Due to very skillful projection work, the sets change from Macbeth's obsessive atmosphere, to Otello (sharp contrast between Mediterranean sunny light and darkness), to Falstaff's evocation of the places where Verdi lived and composed (his Sant'Agata Villa, his birth home in Busseto, the forest near his Villa). It is a low cost but good quality operation: Ravenna has a budget of less than 2 million euro as compared to nearly 100 million at La Scala and 70 million at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera.

I attended the first cycle (8-10 November 2013). Nicola Paszkowski keeps the balance between pit and stage reasonably (but sometimes the pit was too loud, eg in the second act of Otello) and the youngsters of the Cherubini orchestra handled three very difficult scores quite well.

The Piacenza chorus is well accustomed to Verdi and is one of the protagonists of Macbeth and Otello as well as of the final scene of Falstaff. A general comment on the voices: The singers' young age helps their acting, but their multinational extraction does not help their diction (although surtitles in Italian and English -- the audience is international -- make it possible to follow every minute of the three plots). Only in Falstaff was the diction spotless.

The stage design for Macbeth is based on Alberto Martini's surrealist graphics. Among the main singers there is a remarkable Korean soprano Vittoria Ji Won Yeo, taking Lady Macbeth's impervious part.

Vittoria Ji Won Yeo as Lady Macbeth in a scene from Act I of Verdi's 'Macbeth' in Ravenna. Click on the image for higher resolution

In the title role, Azeri Evez Abdulla grew during the performance, most likely because he was somewhat nervous in the first act. The Russian Andrej Zemskov was a good Banquo. As Macduff, Roman Giordano Lucà (born in 1988) deserved an open stage applause in his third act aria.

In Otello the real star is Argentine Matias Tosi as Jago, with excellent acting, a very careful mezza voce and perfect phrasing: unfortunately Nicola Paszkowski's excessive sound covered his second act Credo. Diana Mian is a good, young and sweet Desdemona. Azeri Yusif Eyvazov is in the title role; he has the look of Othello and a huge voice, but a rather unpleasant timbre and lacks the tint of one of Verdi's most difficult vocal parts.

Diana Mian as Desdemona and Azeri Yusif Eyvazov as Otello in a scene from Act I of Verdi's 'Otello' in Ravenna. Click on the image for higher resolution

Falstaff is the young but already very experienced Russian Kiril Manolov: he sang the role at the Bolshoi. The group of women (Eleonora Buratto, Damiana Mizzi, Isabel De Paoli and Anna Malavasi) was very good. A remarkable and very young Swiss lyric tenor, Matthias Stier, is Fenton. The group of men (Francesco Landolfi, Giorgio Trucco, Matteo Falcier and Fabrizio Petrachi) is of good quality.

Kiril Manolov as Sir John Falstaff and Eleonora Buratto as Alice Ford in a scene from Act II of Verdi's 'Falstaff' in Ravenna. Click on the image for higher resolution

Nicola Paszkowski kept the sound of the orchestra under good control. Cristina Mazzavillani Muti's stage direction sparked with a non-stop series of brilliant ideas. Fifteen minutes of accolades were well deserved.

Copyright © 24 November 2013 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy