patrikpen: Third Time Lucky in Music and Vision 12 agosto

giovedì 9 novembre 2017

Third Time Lucky in Music and Vision 12 agosto

Third Time Lucky

GIUSEPPE PENNISI reports on the
first performance of the original version of
Rossini's 'Siege of Corinth'

A world premiere (of sorts) was chosen for the inauguration of the Rossini Opera Festival (ROF) in Pesaro on 10 August 2017. The opera was not entirely new: Le Siège de Corinthe had been staged on 9 October 1826 at the Académie Royale de Musique. Even then, it was not entirely new. The libretto and most of the music were based on Maometto Secondo, which had been presented in Naples in 1820, albeit for only one performance because it was so innovative, both musically and dramatically, that it became a major fiasco. A few years later, Maometto Secondo appeared at Teatro La Fenice in Venice with a few adaptations and a new finale; it lasted for only a few performances.

The third version (Le Siège de Corinthe) was a major success, also for political reasons: the Greek War of Independence. It received 110 performances between 1826 and 1870, but then came a long silence until new attempts to rediscover the opera in the nineteen seventies. Even though Le Siège had sponsors such as Beverly Sills and Thomas Schippers, the work (presented in an Italian translation and with major cuts) never entered the repertory of a major opera house. Some seventeen years ago, the ROF tried a revival in a joint venture with the Lyon Opera. The production was appreciated in Pesaro but was not even staged in Lyon. Meanwhile, new parts of the opera were discovered in the Paris archives: apparently, these parts had not been included in the 1820 premiere or the successive 110 performances in the nineteenth centurybecause of the length of the opera. Thus, an audience heard the opera as conceived by Gioachino Rossini and his librettists, Luigi Balocchi and Alexandre Soumet, for the first time on 10 August 2017. I was there.

The plot revolves around the conquest of the Mediterranean Basin by the Muslims and the love between the daughter of the Christian commander for the defence of Corinth and Mohamed the Second, in charge of the Muslim Army. The finale is quite tragic: both Corinthians and Muslims fall under a fire of the city, lit to prevent the downfall and invasion of Corinth.

A Muslim-Christian war is a sensitive subject. Stage director Carlus Padrissa and his team — Lita Cabellut for video and costumes, and Fabio Rossi for lighting — set the action in an undefined historical period where the war was not about religion, but water. It works quite well, also due to very good acting and effective movements of the masses.

From left to right: Nino Machaidze as Pamyra, Luca Pisaroni as Mohammed II, John Irvin as Cléomène and Iurii Samoilov as Omar in Rossini's 'Le Siège de Corinthe' in Pesaro. Photo © 2017 Studio Amati Bacciardi. Click on the image for higher resolution

In the pit, Roberto Abbado conducted the RAI National Symphony Orchestra quite well; the listener could feel how the score is full of the seeds of musical flowers that will fully bloom later in the nineteenth century. The chorus of the Ventidio Basso Theatre (in nearby Ascoli Piceno) performed effectively.

The cast was of a very high level: Nino Machaidze, an excellent coloraturadramatic soprano, was Pamyra, the woman torn between the love for her country, Mohamed the Second and her Greek fiancé. World-known baritone Luca Pisaroni was Mohamed, John Irving, a dramatic tenor, was head of the Corinthian Army, lyric coloratura tenor Sergey Romanovsky, the Corinthian fiancé of Pamyra, and bass-baritone Carlo Cigni was the high priest who foretells the brilliant future of Greece, but only after a few centuries of Muslim dominance.

The audience was enthusiastic.