Rossini on a Movie Set

'Il Turco in Italia' and 'Ciro in Babilonia'
at the Rossini Opera Festival,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

The Rossini Opera Festival (ROF) has a standard pattern: three opera productions (between new productions and revivals) in four cycles, a couple of performances of Il Viaggio a Reims in a production for young voices of the Rossini Academy and of Il viaggetto a Reims in a staging for children, belcanto lectures and seminars. This year 2016, in addition to La Donna del Lago reviewed here recently (An Engrossing Idea, 10 August 2016), the ROF presented a new production of Il Turco in Italia and a revival of the 2012 Ciro in Babilonia. The two operas have the same director, Davide Livermore; the staging is based on the same idea: they are shown in a movie studio while a film is being shot. Thus, it is almost natural to present only one review for both of them. In the production of Il Turco in Italia, the movie being shot is Federico Fellini's 8½ with some reminiscences of Fellini's Lo Sceicco Bianco. In that of Ciro in Babilonia, the basic scheme is D W Griffith's 'The fall of Babylonian Empire' episode in Intolerance interpolated with the sacrifice scene of Giovanni Pastrone's Cabiria, two colossal movies produced respectively in 1916 and 1914, thus with the plot explained by captions. I saw and heard the former on 9 August and the latter on 10 August 2016.
In Il Turco in Italia the staging is full of slapstick and gags along with the references to Fellini. The pace is very fast. The audience liked it, laughed quite often, and applauded open stage. I have some reservations because, in my view, Felice Romani's libretto is more suitable for a comedy than a farce. Essentially, it deals with the reconciliation of two couples after a series of misunderstandings. In this opera, Rossini's main attention is to ensemble (like the quintet in the second act). When 'solo' numbers occur, they are mostly 'arias of obligations' to please this or that singer — the aria by Albazar, for example, is not by Rossini but by one of his collaborators. The Gioachino Rossini Philharmonic was directed by Speranza Scappucci, a female conductor who has already gained experience in Italy and abroad; her conducting was in line with the fast pace of the staging. All the voices were of a high level. The men — Erwin Schrott, Nicola Alaimo, Rene Barbera and Pietro Spagnoli — were all very experienced in their respective roles. The protagonist, Olga Peretyatko as Fiorilla, had a splendid coloratura, but I would have preferred a darker timbre.
Ciro in Babilonia had already been staged in 2012 as a joint production with the Caramoor International Music Festival (New York). It is difficult to say whether, after this transatlantic festival blessing and the 2016 ROF revival, Ciro in Babilonia will start sailing on its own to regular opera houses. It was initially conceived as a Lent oratorio. Rossini had to compose the score in a very few weeks when he was twenty years old while he had his mind focused on one act farces (such as Il Signor Bruschino). Moreover, although considered a reactionary bigot as well as a churchgoer, he was having a very complicated sentimental and erotic life — see Sex and Bigotry, 21 August 2012. So neither his attention nor his heart were on a complicated Bible plot on the fall of Babylon, caused by the sins and horrendous plans of King Balthazar, who has as his hostages Cyrus' honest wife and tender child, and intends to rape the former and kill the latter. It was staged in Italy and abroad until around 1830 — often in modified forms. Revivals in the late nineteen eighties in Novara and in 2004 at a small German festival did not do the trick to bring it back to the main road. It has some excellent moments: the key arias of the three main characters, the quartet at the end of the first act and the long scene of Balthazar's blasphemous banquet and of the anathema by prophet Daniel on him. But it is lengthy and uneven.

Ewa Podlès as Ciro, Oleg Tsybulko as Zambri, Antonino Siragusa as Baldassare and Pretty Yende as Amira in Rossini's 'Ciro in Babilonia' at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro. Click on the image for higher resolution

The production, however, has some important points both dramaturgically and musically. The stage director (Davide Livermore), the set and costume designers (Nicolas Bovey and Gianluca Falaschi) and the video designers (the D-Wok team) do not take the plot very seriously. Instead, the facts are presented like in a black-and-white Hollywood movie being shot at the beginning of the twentieth century. Thus, Cyrus is more ironic than dramatic, more sensual than religious.

Ewa Podlès as Ciro and Pretty Yende as Amira in Rossini's 'Ciro in Babilonia' at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro. Click on the image for higher resolution

On the musical side, the Filarmonica del Teatro Comunale di Bologna was quite well conducted by Jader Bignamini. The main characters were Antonino Siragusa (in super shape), Ewa Podlès (a bit tired) and Pretty Yende (a South African soprano — the real discovery of the festival).