patrikpen: Avant-garde and Fun in Music & Vision 7 settembre

martedì 4 novembre 2014

Avant-garde and Fun in Music & Vision 7 settembre

Avant-garde and Fun

'The Barber of Seville'
at the Rossini Opera Festival,
enjoyed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

Often when the avant-garde takes on an early nineteenth century opera, the outcome is quite dreary, if not altogether boring. Especially if the opera is one of the four best and most amusing music comedies of the century: Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Verdi's Falstaff. Yet, when for dearth of money, the Rossini Opera Festival (ROF) turned to an avant-garde group — the professors and students of the Art Academy of Urbino — the outcome was a philologically perfect comic masterpiece which deserves to travel to opera houses in Italy and abroad, and to festivals such as Wiener Festwochen, normally held in May and June each year.

The opera has been often reviewed here (eg Simply Exquisite, 26 April 2012). Thus, it needs no presentation. Nonetheless, it is useful to provide some background information on the production. The ROF has been sponsored for several years by industry and banks, now in a difficult financial situation. Thus, the festival had to replace one of the three operas originally planned for the 2014 program (10-22 August) with something low cost. Thus, the Urbino Academy was approached for a semi-staged Il Barbiere. As work by some fifty professors and students continued, the project became a fully staged production with a top notch cast of singers able to operate as very skilled actors: most of them are quite well known internationally and accustomed to working together (eg in the April 2012 Rome production).

There is, however, an additional piece of the story. The ROF is thirty five years old. During this period, two previous attempts to produce Il Barbiere have been less than fully successful, especially in terms of the dramaturgy. Both productions had been entrusted to well-known stage directors: in 1992, Luigi Squarzina set the work in the anatomy lab of Bologna University in an attempt to make it a 'black comedy'; in 2005, Luca Ronconi presented Il Barbiere as a 'social protest' play where the main scenic element was a huge cage or prison where Rosina was kept and tried to escape from. The musical aspects were good on both occasions, but the audience did not laugh. Indeed, it was bored ... quite an achievement when dealing with this comic opera!

Florian Sempey as Figaro and Juan Francisco Gatell as Almaviva in 'The Barber of Seville' at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro. Photo © 2014 Studio Amati Bacciardi. Click on the image for higher resolution

In the current production, the Urbino Academy's only purpose was to entertain and make the audience have fun. There is no director. There was a rumour in Pesaro that Francesco Calcagnini, one of the Urbino Academy professors, was to be the director, but he denied this and stated that he had been only the coordinator of the flow of ideas from the fifty (or so) members of the team. In short, even if the orchestra of the Bologna Teatro Comunale was in the pit and young and upcoming Giacomo Sagripanti conducted it quite skillfully, the entire Teatro Rossini — a nineteenth century jewel for an audience of some seven hundred, including four rows of boxes and an upper tier — became the stage for 'fun and games' where the audience too was part of the action.

Of course, all the singers were in modern clothes, with the exception of the officer entering the orchestra seats, at the end of the first act, dressed in Napoleonic attire and riding a life-sized straw horse. The scenery (including a model of Seville) was made of 'visual art'; there were props on stage but most of the action took place in the orchestra seats and in the various rows of boxes. The performance was often interrupted by laughs, applause and accolades, and there were ovations for all at the end.

Chiara Amarù as Rosina and Juan Francisco Gatell as Almaviva in 'The Barber of Seville' at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro. Photo © 2014 Studio Amati Bacciardi. Click on the image for higher resolution

The singers were quite good. Rosina (Chiara Amarù) was 'plump' and witty, as required by the libretto; in a black dress, she was quite attractive, had no difficulty with coloratura and could reach an alto register (as Rossini intended). The Argentine Juan Francisco Gatell was a slender and quite athletic Count of Almaviva, both physically and vocally; he tackled the traps in his role quite easily, and sang in a very natural manner the final impervious aria Cessa di più resistere which several tenors avoid with the pretext that it slows the action. Figaro was sung by twenty-five-year-old French baritone Florian Sempey, a real devil of physical and vocal athletics. Veterans Paolo Bordogna and Alex Esposito were Don Bartolo and Don Basilio. Felicia Bongiovanni was a well-rounded Berta.