Intense Confrontation
Verdi's 'Ernani' - more revolutionary than patriotic,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
Ernani, Verdi's fifth opera, in the current Teatro Comunale di Bologna production, could be a good device to set aside, once and forever, the myth of Verdi as a front line patriot of the Italian unification movement (Risorgimento). The composer was about thirty years old when, after a long gestation, the opera was completed. He was not a patriot at all (in the sense intended during Risorgimento), but a red hot revolutionary like his peer (in terms of age) Richard Wagner who, a couple of years earlier, had completed and staged Rienzi, der Letzt der Tribunen ('Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes'). The three act Wagner opera lasts almost five hours, whilst Verdi's four act Ernani develops an involved plot in little over two hours, but with three intermissions in Bologna, the performance ran from 8pm until 11.30pm.
Nonetheless, both operas have a young revolutionary fever ... actually, a high fever. As we know, at that time Wagner had become an associate of Bakunin; thus, his revolutionary thoughts aimed at nothing less than turning the whole world upside down. Verdi's intention were more limited; his rebellion was against the religion of his fathers and forefathers because God Almighty had let his wife and his children die in a very short time span. His revolt was also against an establishment which did not appreciate at all his out-of-wedlock relationship with the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi (who later became his wife). Verdi was not against the Austro-Hungarian domination of a good part of Northern Italy. Indeed, the opera had been commissioned for a fabulous fee (12,000 Austrian lire) by the Venetian Theatre La Fenice, one of the most important opera houses of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Ferruccio Furlanetto as Don Ruy and Rudy Park in the title role of Verdi's 'Ernani' at Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Photo © 2011 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the image for higher resolution
The subject was meant to be revolutionary right from the beginning. Verdi and Francesco Maria Piave (author of the libretto) had toyed extensively with the idea of an opera on Cromwell, after a Walter Scott novel. They finally turned to Victor Hugo's Hernani which, ten years earlier, was French Romanticism's flag against traditional Neo-Classical theatre. The protagonist, Ernani is a nobleman who has become a bandit not because he aimed at some national unity of Spain in the sixteenth century but because he wanted his territories to secede from Spain and from the rest of the Holy Roman Empire. As a matter of fact, his adversaries are Don Carlo, King of Spain, about to became Emperor of the entire Holy Roman Empire (as he does in the third act, set in Aachen) and the Spanish Grandee Don Ruy Gomez de Silva. To make things more complicated -- should there have been any need -- both Don Carlo and Don Ruy are attracted by Ernani's woman, Elvira. This mix of politics, power, passion and rebellion is the most appropriate to ignite the opera's tragic end.
Dimitra Theodossiou as Elvira in Verdi's 'Ernani' at Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Photo © 2011 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the image for higher resolution
Verdi took great care in the preparation of the libretto. He intervened in several important points by insisting, for instance, that each and every word should be fully understood by the audience; in this way, his work on music theatre had many points in common with that being conducted, at the same time, by Richard Wagner, even though they were not aware of each other's activities. Also, as clearly shown by Verdi's published correspondence and analyzed in a brilliant essay by musicologist Daniele Spini, Verdi fought hard (and won) to have the role of Ernani set for a tenor not for an alto (according to the custom of the time). Ernani is the first 'Verdian tenor' with a very clear timbre, a special phrasing and melodious arias to mold the nineteenth century melodrama. Thus, also the score was, in 1844, revolutionary, even though it is largely made of 'forme chiuse', set pieces which could even be published separately and used for chamber music concerts (often in aristocratic palaces). There is, however, a major departure from the operatic conventions of the time: the customary brilliant rondo for the prima donna is replaced by an extended trio lasting almost half an hour (like the terzettone of Rossini's Maometto Secondo which Verdi could not have heard because Rossini's opera had been performed only once at the San Carlo in Naples in 1820 and had been modified for a few performances in Venice in 1822).
Rudy Park in the title role of Verdi's 'Ernani' with Ferruccio Furlanetto as Don Ruy at Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Photo © 2011 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the image for higher resolution
Ernani quickly became immensely popular and was revived very often during its early years. Verdi also revised it, by adding an aria with chorus at the request of nobody less than Gioacchino Rossini, and also a cabaletta. Its fortune declined as the years went by. Now, it is seldom performed, even though among Verdi's early operas it is the best to fully appreciate the path leading to Il Trovatore.
Rudy Park in the title role of Verdi's 'Ernani' with Dimitra Theodossiou as Elvira at Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Photo © 2011 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the image for higher resolution
The Bologna production is, by and large, a revival of a 1999 Palermo staging. The set is traditional; the stage is sliding to provide for a deeper perspective; one single frame is utilized to change, by means of painted curtains, the various places of the action which extends all over Spain and even (in the third act) as far as Aachen in the heart of Central Europe; there are as many as four changes of scene in the first act. The scenes and the costumes are entrusted to well known architect painter Francesco Zito, who does not attempt to move the time and the place of the plot from 1520 (or thereabout) to the Italian Risorgimento (as it often happens); rather his sets are inspired by well known paintings. Within this setting, Beppe De Tomasi's staging concentrates on personal conflicts, carefully controlling the complex sequence of actions necessary to bring characters into intense confrontation. This allows -- another of Verdi's innovations in Ernani -- for the solo arias and duets to be easily expanded, and for gathering a sense of real musical drama.
A scene from Verdi's 'Ernani' at Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Photo © 2011 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the image for higher resolution
Roberto Pollastri was in the pit on 11 May 2011, the opening night of the production, and the basis for this review. Normally, he is well known for his work on twentieth century and even contemporary composers. Also, often Ernani's orchestration is considered a simple play for routine conductors. Instead, Pollastri gave strength to the musical drama by enhancing the control over the dynamic of each entire Act, not of the individual musical numbers. Right from the prelude he sets forth all the musical ideas featuring the two main dramatic issues of the opera: the solo trumpet and trombone theme (Ernani's fatal oath to Don Ruy) and the lyrical theme capturing Ernani and Elvira's love.
Ferruccio Furlanetto as Don Ruy in Verdi's 'Ernani' at Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Photo © 2011 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the image for higher resolution
Ernani requires singers as great as in Il Trovatore. Elvira was one of Dame Joan Sutherland's favorite roles. Dimitra Theodossiou took up the task; the audience felt she was at ease from the andantino of the cavatina Ernani Involami and all the ornamental gestures that follow it; she exploded in all her vocal abilities in the finale, her duet with Ernani (Rudy Park replaced Roberto Aronica who was ill) become a trio with Don Ruy (Ferruccio Furlanetto), a real profusion of melodic ideas where the lyricism of Theodossiou and Park is contrasted with the grave dissonance of Furlanetto. Theodossiou and Furlanetto received real accolades from the audience, and Park a good deal of open stage and curtain applauses.
Dimitra Theodossiou as Elvira in Verdi's 'Ernani' at Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Photo © 2011 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the image for higher resolution
Park had the right pitch, from the cavatina in double aria format on to the second act andante of jealousy, till Ferma, Crudel, Estinguere in the last act. Furlanetto is a veteran of the Don Ruy role; with age, his acute are not as pure as they used to be, but he makes up with his deep grave tonalities. Marco Di Felice is a comparatively young baritone for the part of Don Carlo. He excelled in O' De' Verd'anni Miei, the third act aria which is the turning point of the drama; in the aria he was able to express the extreme change of atmosphere -- from somber musical recollections of a florid baritone to new-found strength and broadness of expression.
The chorus, conducted by Lorenzo Fratini, deserves a special mention, especially for Si Ridesti il Leon di Castiglia.
Overall, a good success.
Copyright © 15 May 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
GIUSEPPE VERDI
FRANCESCO MARIA PIAVE
BOLOGNA
ITALY
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venerdì 17 giugno 2011
Dramatic Beauty in Music and Vision May 16
Dramatic Beauty
Works by Eötvös and Bartók,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
It is always a thrill to listen to a new composition conducted by the composer himself, especially if the composer is highly appreciated by the listener. I much enjoyed Peter Eötvös' Le Balcon at the 2002 Aix-en-Provence Festival and consider Trois Soeurs one of the best contemporary operas -- I know it only through the recording conducted by Kent Nagano. As his recent Glyndebourne opera, Love and Other Demons, so vividly demonstrated, Peter Eötvös has a blistering talent for orchestral color. And there was plenty of orchestral color at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia main symphony hall on 2 May 2011 when, as a part of a series of three concerts, Eötvös conducted his own concerto for violin and orchestra and Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle. An interesting and well received attempt to bring contemporary and twentieth century music to subscribers mostly accustomed to eighteenth and nineteenth century repertory.
Eötvös's violin concerto is called Seven (Memorial for the Columbia Astronauts). It was composed as a requiem for the astronauts of the Space Shuttle who died on 1 February 2003 when their ship exploded in the sky over Texas. 'Seven' refers to the number of astronauts who were killed in the disaster. It was premièred at the 2007 Lucerne Festival under Pierre Boulez's baton. Eötvös himself describes the work as a 'very personal monologue and the musical expression of my sympathy towards the seven astronauts who lost their lives while exploring space in fulfillment of a fundamental dream of mankind.'
Peter Eötvös and Patricia Kopatchinskaja perform 'Seven'. Photo © 2011 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
More than a requiem, the piece is a two-movement elegy without any religious atmosphere. Soloist Patricia Kopatchinskaja launches straight in on high, with stratospheric violin textures offset by ensemble sounds so tantalizing you have to scrutinize each player to work out how the effect is made. Since a keyboard sampler forms part of the mix, you often remain merely bewitched and bewildered. Creating an unsettling stereophonic impact, six violinists were positioned around the first tier of the huge concert hall, their solo voices speaking in signal and response to Kopatchinskaja, who continued her journey of poetic rhapsody alone on stage. The sense of figures lost in space was only too vivid, and expertly performed by all.
The concert hall setup gave the first hint that Eötvös comes from a recent avant-garde tradition -- an avant-garde closer to the French than to the German experience. Four nearly identical groups of percussion, each dominated by a hanging gong, were on a raised platform at the back. Fanned out between them and the podium was the orchestra, grouped not by instrumental types but in the manner of several mini-orchestras with mixed strings, woodwinds, and brass. Also, spread along the length of the first tier walkway -- as mentioned -- were six other 'satellite' string players. Making use of several compositional techniques and drawing from the different musical and cultural traditions, Seven has lots of dissonant and atonal clusters that may not be appreciated by more traditional listeners but that delighted your reviewer. After a few seconds of shock, the audience applauded warmly. My impression is that their applause was more for the performers, especially the soloist, than for the violin concerto.
After the twenty minutes of Eötvös' concerto, the program included the sixty minutes of Bartók's only opera, Bluebeard's Castle. A hundred years ago, it was considered avant-garde, ie Hungarian avant-garde molded by the experience of listening to Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. Thus, in a way, the concert was a travel through a century of Magyar avant-garde music. Bluebeard's Castle was finished in 1911 (when Bartók was just thirty years old) on a text by Béla Balász, a Hungarian poet of some prominence at that time, but for an array of musicological and political reasons was staged only in 1918; it had an immediate but short-lived success because the final months of World War I had darkened over the Hungarian musical scene. Outside Hungary, the opera has been slow in making headway in opera houses. The main reason was its unusual structure: a large, almost oversized, orchestra and only two singers (a dramatic soprano/mezzo and a baritone/bass). There were long, and rather peculiar disputes, as to whether Bluebeard's Castle should be considered a fully-fledged opera, a 'scenic symphony' or a 'drama accompanied by a symphony'. Albeit these disputes can be dismissed as pedantic, in my impression it works more effectively in a concert hall than in an opera house.
Front right, from left to right: Ildiko Komlosi, Peter Eötvös and Peter Fried with, behind them, the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, during the performance of Bartók's 'Bluebeard's Castle'. Photo © 2011 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
I saw it fully staged in Rome, Budapest, Palermo and Washington. As times and tastes have changed, the symbolic libretto 'à la Maeterlinck' is the part of the work which has been shown to be less robust. Without the symbolic paraphernalia, Bluebeard's Castle shows all its dramatic beauty: the secrets included in man's interior world. The music, more than the text, demonstrates how each of us contains the best and the worst in our material condition and only the shining intoxication of fresh love can sometime dissipate the dark threat. In Bartók, however, the hidden places of the masculine self are forbidden even to his new love. In that, he is a clear son of his times; the basic assumption is masculine superiority even though tempered by a parallel assumption of women's 'hidden places for themselves'. The fresh love is the bridge to pass from bestial cruelty and lust for power to the pleasures of material gains and aesthetic gratification and, finally, lordship over a large and peaceful kingdom. The musicologist David Johnson rightly wrote that 'Bartók found the right musical expression for each part of this large design and yet never lost sight of the totality of the design. In the end we are surprised not by the complexity of Bluebeard's Castle but by its beautiful simplicity'.
From left to right: Peter Fried, Ildiko Komlosi and Peter Eötvös at the end of the performance of Bartók's 'Bluebeard's Castle'. Photo © 2011 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
Eötvös had at his baton one of the best European symphony orchestras and two excellent singers, Ildiko Komlosi and Peter Fried. The orchestral score is extremely colorful and, at the same time, tense. Peter Fried has a part centered on declamation, whilst Ildiko Komlosi hazards more rhythmic variety, almost seeming to want to loosen the rigidity in which she is contained. They did quite well.
There were ten minutes of applause.
Copyright © 16 May 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
BELA BARTOK
HUNGARY
ROME
ITALY
<< M&V home Concert reviews Greek Passion >>
Works by Eötvös and Bartók,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
It is always a thrill to listen to a new composition conducted by the composer himself, especially if the composer is highly appreciated by the listener. I much enjoyed Peter Eötvös' Le Balcon at the 2002 Aix-en-Provence Festival and consider Trois Soeurs one of the best contemporary operas -- I know it only through the recording conducted by Kent Nagano. As his recent Glyndebourne opera, Love and Other Demons, so vividly demonstrated, Peter Eötvös has a blistering talent for orchestral color. And there was plenty of orchestral color at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia main symphony hall on 2 May 2011 when, as a part of a series of three concerts, Eötvös conducted his own concerto for violin and orchestra and Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle. An interesting and well received attempt to bring contemporary and twentieth century music to subscribers mostly accustomed to eighteenth and nineteenth century repertory.
Eötvös's violin concerto is called Seven (Memorial for the Columbia Astronauts). It was composed as a requiem for the astronauts of the Space Shuttle who died on 1 February 2003 when their ship exploded in the sky over Texas. 'Seven' refers to the number of astronauts who were killed in the disaster. It was premièred at the 2007 Lucerne Festival under Pierre Boulez's baton. Eötvös himself describes the work as a 'very personal monologue and the musical expression of my sympathy towards the seven astronauts who lost their lives while exploring space in fulfillment of a fundamental dream of mankind.'
Peter Eötvös and Patricia Kopatchinskaja perform 'Seven'. Photo © 2011 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
More than a requiem, the piece is a two-movement elegy without any religious atmosphere. Soloist Patricia Kopatchinskaja launches straight in on high, with stratospheric violin textures offset by ensemble sounds so tantalizing you have to scrutinize each player to work out how the effect is made. Since a keyboard sampler forms part of the mix, you often remain merely bewitched and bewildered. Creating an unsettling stereophonic impact, six violinists were positioned around the first tier of the huge concert hall, their solo voices speaking in signal and response to Kopatchinskaja, who continued her journey of poetic rhapsody alone on stage. The sense of figures lost in space was only too vivid, and expertly performed by all.
The concert hall setup gave the first hint that Eötvös comes from a recent avant-garde tradition -- an avant-garde closer to the French than to the German experience. Four nearly identical groups of percussion, each dominated by a hanging gong, were on a raised platform at the back. Fanned out between them and the podium was the orchestra, grouped not by instrumental types but in the manner of several mini-orchestras with mixed strings, woodwinds, and brass. Also, spread along the length of the first tier walkway -- as mentioned -- were six other 'satellite' string players. Making use of several compositional techniques and drawing from the different musical and cultural traditions, Seven has lots of dissonant and atonal clusters that may not be appreciated by more traditional listeners but that delighted your reviewer. After a few seconds of shock, the audience applauded warmly. My impression is that their applause was more for the performers, especially the soloist, than for the violin concerto.
After the twenty minutes of Eötvös' concerto, the program included the sixty minutes of Bartók's only opera, Bluebeard's Castle. A hundred years ago, it was considered avant-garde, ie Hungarian avant-garde molded by the experience of listening to Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. Thus, in a way, the concert was a travel through a century of Magyar avant-garde music. Bluebeard's Castle was finished in 1911 (when Bartók was just thirty years old) on a text by Béla Balász, a Hungarian poet of some prominence at that time, but for an array of musicological and political reasons was staged only in 1918; it had an immediate but short-lived success because the final months of World War I had darkened over the Hungarian musical scene. Outside Hungary, the opera has been slow in making headway in opera houses. The main reason was its unusual structure: a large, almost oversized, orchestra and only two singers (a dramatic soprano/mezzo and a baritone/bass). There were long, and rather peculiar disputes, as to whether Bluebeard's Castle should be considered a fully-fledged opera, a 'scenic symphony' or a 'drama accompanied by a symphony'. Albeit these disputes can be dismissed as pedantic, in my impression it works more effectively in a concert hall than in an opera house.
Front right, from left to right: Ildiko Komlosi, Peter Eötvös and Peter Fried with, behind them, the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, during the performance of Bartók's 'Bluebeard's Castle'. Photo © 2011 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
I saw it fully staged in Rome, Budapest, Palermo and Washington. As times and tastes have changed, the symbolic libretto 'à la Maeterlinck' is the part of the work which has been shown to be less robust. Without the symbolic paraphernalia, Bluebeard's Castle shows all its dramatic beauty: the secrets included in man's interior world. The music, more than the text, demonstrates how each of us contains the best and the worst in our material condition and only the shining intoxication of fresh love can sometime dissipate the dark threat. In Bartók, however, the hidden places of the masculine self are forbidden even to his new love. In that, he is a clear son of his times; the basic assumption is masculine superiority even though tempered by a parallel assumption of women's 'hidden places for themselves'. The fresh love is the bridge to pass from bestial cruelty and lust for power to the pleasures of material gains and aesthetic gratification and, finally, lordship over a large and peaceful kingdom. The musicologist David Johnson rightly wrote that 'Bartók found the right musical expression for each part of this large design and yet never lost sight of the totality of the design. In the end we are surprised not by the complexity of Bluebeard's Castle but by its beautiful simplicity'.
From left to right: Peter Fried, Ildiko Komlosi and Peter Eötvös at the end of the performance of Bartók's 'Bluebeard's Castle'. Photo © 2011 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
Eötvös had at his baton one of the best European symphony orchestras and two excellent singers, Ildiko Komlosi and Peter Fried. The orchestral score is extremely colorful and, at the same time, tense. Peter Fried has a part centered on declamation, whilst Ildiko Komlosi hazards more rhythmic variety, almost seeming to want to loosen the rigidity in which she is contained. They did quite well.
There were ten minutes of applause.
Copyright © 16 May 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
BELA BARTOK
HUNGARY
ROME
ITALY
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Christ Re-Crucified in Music and Vision May 3
Christ Re-Crucified
GIUSEPPE PENNISI was at
the Italian première of
Bohuslav Martinu's Greek Passion
The Teatro Massimo of Palermo is one of the most innovative opera houses in Italy. It deserves, no doubt, to be visited by anyone going to Sicily; for opera-goers, it is simply 'a must'. Just a few weeks ago, I reviewed the world première of Marco Tutino's Senso, commissioned by the Teatro Massimo in co-production with a number of major European Opera Houses. Your reviewer was back in Palermo on 29 April 2011 for another première: Bohuslav Martinu's The Greek Passion. This is not a world première but the first staging in Italy of a rarely performed opera of the twentieth century which the author had barely completed before his death. The opera, with its English libretto, is known in the United Kingdom because it has been performed at both Covent Garden [read Robert Hugill's review] and English National Opera. It is quite often on stage in Eastern Europe, especially after the religious revival following the fall of Communism, and also in the United States because the Bohemian-born and American naturalized Martinu (1890-1959) wandered for several years between Rome, Nice, Schönenberg (near Basel) and especially New York, even though his letters to friends, especially in the latter part of his life, reveal a daunting nostalgia for his beloved Brno and Prague.
A scene from Bohuslav Martinu's 'The Greek Passion' at Teatro Massimo, Palermo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
A few words on the composer: Martinu is known as a celebrated violinist and pianist in the first part of the twentieth century. Also he was a well-respected conductor and a successful author of chamber and symphonic music but barely appreciated for his operas (fifteen but not widely circulated). His style is an eclectic travel through the first half of twentieth century music; he never accepted the oft-prevailing twelve note row system but developed a very personal blend of Czech national music, French impressionism and Stravinsky's neo-classicism as well as neo-Baroque counterpoint and American jazz. In his later years (when he was composing The Greek Passion and the lyric one-act Arianne), Martinu strove for a simple and direct musical language with emphasis on melody as well as the on the incorporation of ethnic themes (of course, Greek for The Passion) along with his long-time Slavic background. This blend has had considerable influence on modern American tonal opera (Pasatieri, Argento, Bolcom -- just to mentioned a few). Martinu did not marginalized himself as his compatriot Leos Janácek willingly did; Janácek was born thirty-six years before Martinu only a few miles away (in nearby Moravia) but rarely made a trip even only to Prague and was always looking East, ie at Slavic and Russian music. Martinu was in the mainstream of Western European and later American music but never at the center of it.
The origins of the opera require some comments. It is based on a well-known novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, who also authored widely read and translated novels such as Zorba the Greek and Last Temptation. The novel's original title is quite catchy: Christ Re-Crucified. It was written in 1948 but as many as twenty-three translations had been counted by 1953 -- thus it was a real best seller. In 1957, it was also the basis of Jules Dassin's movie with an all-star cast (Melina Mercouri, Maurice Ronet, Jean Servais, Roger Hanin, Pierre Vaneck, René Lefevre); the movie was awarded an important prize at the Cannes Festival and was very successful in the late fifties and early sixties. It can still be seen now and then on television. There have also been two television serials: in 1969 in English by the BBC in six parts, and in 1975 in Greek by the Greek national television in as many as seventy episodes. Finally, in 1987 in Budapest, the National Magyar Opera House unveiled Ecce Homo by Sándor Szokolay; I found no records of revivals or of performances outside Hungary. This indicates, though, how the subject is topical and ready for filming as well as apt to musical theatre.
A scene from Bohuslav Martinu's 'The Greek Passion' at Teatro Massimo, Palermo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
There are two distinct versions of Martinu's The Greek Passion. He completed the text and the music a few months before dying, but the opera appeared too innovative to the management of Zurich Opera House, especially due to the frequent mélologues (rhythmic dialogues with orchestra accompaniment); thus, it was drastically revised for its 1961 Zurich début. This version has been recorded a couple of times under Charles Mackerras' baton. The first version was edited by Ales Brezina and unveiled in 1999 at the Bregenz Festival and revived in London, Thessaloniki and a few other places; although unofficial recordings of some of these performances can be found in the secondary market, there is neither a CD nor a DVD in the main official channels. The Palermo production is based on this first version as retrieved and edited by the musicologist Ales Brezina. This explains why on 29 April 2011, many major music critics from all over Europe were in the Teatro Massimo. This review is based on that very performance.
A scene from Bohuslav Martinu's 'The Greek Passion' at Teatro Massimo, Palermo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
The plot revolves around the 'Passion Play' being traditionally performed, every seven years, in a small Greek village in Anatolia; the period is the 1920s and the Lykovrissi village (like the rest of the area) is under Turkish domination, but Greece has the ambition to get that part of Europe under its control. Thus, there is a delicate balance between the Turks and the local Greek populace. With the help of the elders, the most important priest of the community, Father Grigoris, assigns roles to the villagers: the young shepherd Manolios is given that of Jesus, even though he does not consider himself to be worthy or up to it. The attractive widow Katerina (indeed, the village's prostitute) would be Mary Magdalene, the tanner (and bully money lender) Paniat, Judas, and so on. Lykovrissi is a rural but a relatively well-off village as compared with other Greek settlements in Anatolia. In this rather idyllic Easter holiday atmosphere, the harsh reality of national oppression (strongly felt by a Czech) and social clash ignites the drama: the conflict between, on the one hand, the pauperized, hungry and famished refugees from another Greek village (on the other side of the Mount Sarakina) just burnt and razed down by the Turks (as a consequence of some politicking and fighting); on the other, the selfish Lykovrissi populace, also Turkish-dominated, but well-fed and, by and large, unwilling to stop the Easter celebration, and to ruffle the feathers of their Turkish masters, just to help the undesired 'newcomers'. In the novel, as well as in Dassin's movie, the story is told with brutal frankness, knife-blade and blood as well as sensuality (in the relationship between Manolios and Katerina). There are also several sub-plots (which justify the seventy episodes of the Greek television serial) involving the relationship of the community with the Turks, especially with the Turkish 'Aga' (proconsul) a sadistic homosexual especially attracted by young men, and Katerina's sacrifice for the community when the Aga's latest favorite -- an arrogant Turkish boy -- is found dead. There is also quite a bit of sex: Katarina sleeps with almost all the men in the village, tries to bring Manolios and his disciples to her bed but feels regret and dies as a saint. Thus a fair amount of blood and glut spiced with sensuality and a smell of sex. The right recipe for a novel, a film and TV serials.
A scene from Bohuslav Martinu's 'The Greek Passion' at Teatro Massimo, Palermo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
In Martinu's opera, the slant is different: softer, gentler, more elegant and, fundamentally, full of hope in a better future due to the Divine Providence. The emphasis is on how the characters progress beyond their initial dimension by their gradual and profound identification with the roles allotted to them in the Passion Play, especially the change in personality of the kind and defenseless shepherd (till then, considered the simpleton of the village) Manolios. With his three friends (in the Passion Play, they have the roles of the apostles James, Peter and John) and with Katerina (the local source of comfort for the village's male youth), Manolios becomes the hero confronting squarely Father Grigoris in order to help the 'brother' refugees. He subverts the existing co-existence order between the dominated Greeks and the dominant Turks. He is excommunicated by Father Grigoris and killed by Paniat-Judas. Martinu is less interested in the harsher and even sensual aspects of the plot than in the motif of Christ who continues to descend on Earth to be found again and again in the poor and in the humbled. He employs opulent choral singing and a complex orchestral structure, often timbre-based, and with the inclusion of traditional instruments (the harmonium, the shepherds' primitive flute) both in the pit and on the stage. He gives the solo vocal parts sparingly designed but expressively contoured singing, even in ceremonial and static situations. He delves in melodic wealth, especially for Katerina, as well as in returning motifs (more mnemonic -- ie to recall situation and personalities -- than Wagnerian -- ie to construct a newer musical language by intertwining themes). The themes are a) 'the Cross' (from the very beginning of the overture); b) the 'Kyrie Eleison' as a sign of compassion; c) the 'altruistic love', exploding in Katerina's arioso; and d) the 'village life'. The melodic line, of course, also draws on psalmody, liturgical singing, Greek orthodox chorale and folk-religious songs. Asher Fisher delves into this rich orchestration to uncover its beauty but in full knowledge that Martinu was after 'music drama' for the international audience; this is why the libretto is in English and in his letter to Zurich Opera management he stressed the need to do 'real theatre'.
'Real theatre' is what Damiano Michieletto (stage director), Paolo Frantin (set designer), Silvia Aymonimo (costumes) and Alessandro Carletti (lighting) do. There is impressive revolving four level scenic machinery where all the different locations of the village (the main square, the Church, the restaurants, Katerina's house-brothel, the cemetery, the surrounding hills and mountains) can be seen; the action moves swiftly in a cinematic manner. The pathos increases as the plot develops, also due to the excellent acting of the singers. The action is moved from Anatolia in the twenties to anyplace in Europe today; this is very topical in Sicily as one of its islands, Lampedusa, is flooded by immigrants from Africa.
Sergey Nayda as Manolios in Bohuslav Martinu's 'The Greek Passion' at Teatro Massimo, Palermo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
Vocally the two choruses (a regular chorus and a children's chorus) directed by Andrea Faidutti and Salvatore Punturo deserve an applause because of their critical key role in the opera. Of the twenty soloists, at least four (all barely known on the Italian musical scene) need be to mentioned: Sergey Nayda (Manolios) is a young heldentenor with a clear timbre and a good acute in a role, for many aspects, similar (vocally) to that of Laça in Janácek's Jenufa, Judith Howarth (Katerina) a 'soprano assoluto' with a strong center register and excellent phrasing, and Mark S Doss and Luis-Ottavio Faria, two basses, as the Parish priests of, respectively, Lykovrissi and of the refugee community.
I hope that other theatres will revive the production in Italy and abroad. Nonetheless, we want a DVD!
Copyright © 3 May 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
BOHUSLAV MARTINU
ITALY
CZECH REPUBLIC
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GIUSEPPE PENNISI was at
the Italian première of
Bohuslav Martinu's Greek Passion
The Teatro Massimo of Palermo is one of the most innovative opera houses in Italy. It deserves, no doubt, to be visited by anyone going to Sicily; for opera-goers, it is simply 'a must'. Just a few weeks ago, I reviewed the world première of Marco Tutino's Senso, commissioned by the Teatro Massimo in co-production with a number of major European Opera Houses. Your reviewer was back in Palermo on 29 April 2011 for another première: Bohuslav Martinu's The Greek Passion. This is not a world première but the first staging in Italy of a rarely performed opera of the twentieth century which the author had barely completed before his death. The opera, with its English libretto, is known in the United Kingdom because it has been performed at both Covent Garden [read Robert Hugill's review] and English National Opera. It is quite often on stage in Eastern Europe, especially after the religious revival following the fall of Communism, and also in the United States because the Bohemian-born and American naturalized Martinu (1890-1959) wandered for several years between Rome, Nice, Schönenberg (near Basel) and especially New York, even though his letters to friends, especially in the latter part of his life, reveal a daunting nostalgia for his beloved Brno and Prague.
A scene from Bohuslav Martinu's 'The Greek Passion' at Teatro Massimo, Palermo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
A few words on the composer: Martinu is known as a celebrated violinist and pianist in the first part of the twentieth century. Also he was a well-respected conductor and a successful author of chamber and symphonic music but barely appreciated for his operas (fifteen but not widely circulated). His style is an eclectic travel through the first half of twentieth century music; he never accepted the oft-prevailing twelve note row system but developed a very personal blend of Czech national music, French impressionism and Stravinsky's neo-classicism as well as neo-Baroque counterpoint and American jazz. In his later years (when he was composing The Greek Passion and the lyric one-act Arianne), Martinu strove for a simple and direct musical language with emphasis on melody as well as the on the incorporation of ethnic themes (of course, Greek for The Passion) along with his long-time Slavic background. This blend has had considerable influence on modern American tonal opera (Pasatieri, Argento, Bolcom -- just to mentioned a few). Martinu did not marginalized himself as his compatriot Leos Janácek willingly did; Janácek was born thirty-six years before Martinu only a few miles away (in nearby Moravia) but rarely made a trip even only to Prague and was always looking East, ie at Slavic and Russian music. Martinu was in the mainstream of Western European and later American music but never at the center of it.
The origins of the opera require some comments. It is based on a well-known novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, who also authored widely read and translated novels such as Zorba the Greek and Last Temptation. The novel's original title is quite catchy: Christ Re-Crucified. It was written in 1948 but as many as twenty-three translations had been counted by 1953 -- thus it was a real best seller. In 1957, it was also the basis of Jules Dassin's movie with an all-star cast (Melina Mercouri, Maurice Ronet, Jean Servais, Roger Hanin, Pierre Vaneck, René Lefevre); the movie was awarded an important prize at the Cannes Festival and was very successful in the late fifties and early sixties. It can still be seen now and then on television. There have also been two television serials: in 1969 in English by the BBC in six parts, and in 1975 in Greek by the Greek national television in as many as seventy episodes. Finally, in 1987 in Budapest, the National Magyar Opera House unveiled Ecce Homo by Sándor Szokolay; I found no records of revivals or of performances outside Hungary. This indicates, though, how the subject is topical and ready for filming as well as apt to musical theatre.
A scene from Bohuslav Martinu's 'The Greek Passion' at Teatro Massimo, Palermo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
There are two distinct versions of Martinu's The Greek Passion. He completed the text and the music a few months before dying, but the opera appeared too innovative to the management of Zurich Opera House, especially due to the frequent mélologues (rhythmic dialogues with orchestra accompaniment); thus, it was drastically revised for its 1961 Zurich début. This version has been recorded a couple of times under Charles Mackerras' baton. The first version was edited by Ales Brezina and unveiled in 1999 at the Bregenz Festival and revived in London, Thessaloniki and a few other places; although unofficial recordings of some of these performances can be found in the secondary market, there is neither a CD nor a DVD in the main official channels. The Palermo production is based on this first version as retrieved and edited by the musicologist Ales Brezina. This explains why on 29 April 2011, many major music critics from all over Europe were in the Teatro Massimo. This review is based on that very performance.
A scene from Bohuslav Martinu's 'The Greek Passion' at Teatro Massimo, Palermo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
The plot revolves around the 'Passion Play' being traditionally performed, every seven years, in a small Greek village in Anatolia; the period is the 1920s and the Lykovrissi village (like the rest of the area) is under Turkish domination, but Greece has the ambition to get that part of Europe under its control. Thus, there is a delicate balance between the Turks and the local Greek populace. With the help of the elders, the most important priest of the community, Father Grigoris, assigns roles to the villagers: the young shepherd Manolios is given that of Jesus, even though he does not consider himself to be worthy or up to it. The attractive widow Katerina (indeed, the village's prostitute) would be Mary Magdalene, the tanner (and bully money lender) Paniat, Judas, and so on. Lykovrissi is a rural but a relatively well-off village as compared with other Greek settlements in Anatolia. In this rather idyllic Easter holiday atmosphere, the harsh reality of national oppression (strongly felt by a Czech) and social clash ignites the drama: the conflict between, on the one hand, the pauperized, hungry and famished refugees from another Greek village (on the other side of the Mount Sarakina) just burnt and razed down by the Turks (as a consequence of some politicking and fighting); on the other, the selfish Lykovrissi populace, also Turkish-dominated, but well-fed and, by and large, unwilling to stop the Easter celebration, and to ruffle the feathers of their Turkish masters, just to help the undesired 'newcomers'. In the novel, as well as in Dassin's movie, the story is told with brutal frankness, knife-blade and blood as well as sensuality (in the relationship between Manolios and Katerina). There are also several sub-plots (which justify the seventy episodes of the Greek television serial) involving the relationship of the community with the Turks, especially with the Turkish 'Aga' (proconsul) a sadistic homosexual especially attracted by young men, and Katerina's sacrifice for the community when the Aga's latest favorite -- an arrogant Turkish boy -- is found dead. There is also quite a bit of sex: Katarina sleeps with almost all the men in the village, tries to bring Manolios and his disciples to her bed but feels regret and dies as a saint. Thus a fair amount of blood and glut spiced with sensuality and a smell of sex. The right recipe for a novel, a film and TV serials.
A scene from Bohuslav Martinu's 'The Greek Passion' at Teatro Massimo, Palermo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
In Martinu's opera, the slant is different: softer, gentler, more elegant and, fundamentally, full of hope in a better future due to the Divine Providence. The emphasis is on how the characters progress beyond their initial dimension by their gradual and profound identification with the roles allotted to them in the Passion Play, especially the change in personality of the kind and defenseless shepherd (till then, considered the simpleton of the village) Manolios. With his three friends (in the Passion Play, they have the roles of the apostles James, Peter and John) and with Katerina (the local source of comfort for the village's male youth), Manolios becomes the hero confronting squarely Father Grigoris in order to help the 'brother' refugees. He subverts the existing co-existence order between the dominated Greeks and the dominant Turks. He is excommunicated by Father Grigoris and killed by Paniat-Judas. Martinu is less interested in the harsher and even sensual aspects of the plot than in the motif of Christ who continues to descend on Earth to be found again and again in the poor and in the humbled. He employs opulent choral singing and a complex orchestral structure, often timbre-based, and with the inclusion of traditional instruments (the harmonium, the shepherds' primitive flute) both in the pit and on the stage. He gives the solo vocal parts sparingly designed but expressively contoured singing, even in ceremonial and static situations. He delves in melodic wealth, especially for Katerina, as well as in returning motifs (more mnemonic -- ie to recall situation and personalities -- than Wagnerian -- ie to construct a newer musical language by intertwining themes). The themes are a) 'the Cross' (from the very beginning of the overture); b) the 'Kyrie Eleison' as a sign of compassion; c) the 'altruistic love', exploding in Katerina's arioso; and d) the 'village life'. The melodic line, of course, also draws on psalmody, liturgical singing, Greek orthodox chorale and folk-religious songs. Asher Fisher delves into this rich orchestration to uncover its beauty but in full knowledge that Martinu was after 'music drama' for the international audience; this is why the libretto is in English and in his letter to Zurich Opera management he stressed the need to do 'real theatre'.
'Real theatre' is what Damiano Michieletto (stage director), Paolo Frantin (set designer), Silvia Aymonimo (costumes) and Alessandro Carletti (lighting) do. There is impressive revolving four level scenic machinery where all the different locations of the village (the main square, the Church, the restaurants, Katerina's house-brothel, the cemetery, the surrounding hills and mountains) can be seen; the action moves swiftly in a cinematic manner. The pathos increases as the plot develops, also due to the excellent acting of the singers. The action is moved from Anatolia in the twenties to anyplace in Europe today; this is very topical in Sicily as one of its islands, Lampedusa, is flooded by immigrants from Africa.
Sergey Nayda as Manolios in Bohuslav Martinu's 'The Greek Passion' at Teatro Massimo, Palermo. Photo © 2011 Franco Lannino. Click on the image for higher resolution
Vocally the two choruses (a regular chorus and a children's chorus) directed by Andrea Faidutti and Salvatore Punturo deserve an applause because of their critical key role in the opera. Of the twenty soloists, at least four (all barely known on the Italian musical scene) need be to mentioned: Sergey Nayda (Manolios) is a young heldentenor with a clear timbre and a good acute in a role, for many aspects, similar (vocally) to that of Laça in Janácek's Jenufa, Judith Howarth (Katerina) a 'soprano assoluto' with a strong center register and excellent phrasing, and Mark S Doss and Luis-Ottavio Faria, two basses, as the Parish priests of, respectively, Lykovrissi and of the refugee community.
I hope that other theatres will revive the production in Italy and abroad. Nonetheless, we want a DVD!
Copyright © 3 May 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
BOHUSLAV MARTINU
ITALY
CZECH REPUBLIC
<< M&V home Concert reviews St John Passion >>
Extreme Sex in Music and Vision 28 April
Extreme Sex
Set in the aftermath of a nuclear war,
the first performance of
Luca Francesconi's 'Quartett'
is reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
The Teatro alla Scala has a rather traditional, or more appropriately, conservative audience. Thus, its effective and efficient press office had gently prepared the opening night elegant crowd for the shock of the world premiere of Luca Francesconi's Quartett on 26 April 2011 -- just in the middle of the Easter Holiday when Parsifal or other 'spiritual' and/or 'holy' operas are normally on stage in major European opera houses. Francesconi's latest work for the stage was commissioned by the Teatro alla Scala in co-production with the Vienna Festwochen, English National Opera and Amsterdam Opera, but it was booked by other theatres (mostly French and American) even before its world premiere. A clear signal that sex attracts audience even in electronic acoustics and in eighty minutes of dense text (in English) and music.
Quartett is based on a widely performed play by Heiner Müller, one of the twentieth century's most important avant-garde playwrights. He himself described this text as 'a reflex on the problem of terrorism, using material which on the surface has nothing to do with it'. The play is a dark, playful, and erotically-charged reworking of Chaderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses in which the familiar characters of the Marquise, and her longtime lover, Valmont, put on mask after mask in an elaborate dance of seduction and perverse love-play. Older now, exhausted from the monotony of pleasure-seeking, they can find sustenance only in their ability to inflict pain on each other. Locked in a power-struggle in which neither will yield, their passion to destroy each other binds them together with a ferocity that can only be dissolved in the cold embrace of death -- in a world just destroyed by a nuclear war. The set is, at the same time, a seventeenth century elegant drawing room and a bunker after a hypothetical World War Three and nuclear death for the humanity. For the two protagonists (a soprano and a baritone), theirs is a haunting journey into a landscape of ache, of the hunger for meaning, and of the fear of the void that yawns beneath our frail civilization and ourselves. Müller's Quartett is a brief dialogue -- only twelve pages in the published text -- with its reptilian imagery in stark opposition to several stage adaptations of Laclos. By reducing the characters to two, Müller focuses on the manipulative power play between Merteuil and Valmont and by having those two play-act each other's roles and the roles of women Valmont seduces, he moves his work close to the terrain of Jean Genet in The Maids.
A scene from Luca Francesconi's 'Quartett' at Teatro alla Scala, Milan. Photo © 2011 Rudy Amisano. Click on the image for higher resolution
Over a decade after his death, Müller continues to have an enormous influence on European playwriting, dramaturgy, and performance. The journal New German Critique devoted a special issue to his work. He is the only playwright to have ever received such an honor. In 2009, one of Europe's leading intellectual publishing houses, Suhrkamp, issued the final three volumes in a twelve-volume edition of Müller's collected works. The only twentieth century German dramatist who holds the same status is Bertolt Brecht. Müller has also paved the way for a new generation of directors, playwrights, and dramaturgs who regard themselves as 'samplers'. Müller adopted Brecht's notion of Kopien (German for 'copying'), the practice of regarding texts by others as material to be used, imitated, and rewritten. In regards to Brecht's own oeuvre, Müller stated 'to use Brecht without criticizing him is treason.' For Müller, the work of other writers and artists was not seen as private property; it was to be used as raw material for his own work. Thus, Müller's work in the theater marks the beginning of a tradition of densely poetic dramaturgy based in the logic of association, rather than linear 'dramatic' narrative. With Müller's work, theater is a forum for examining history; it is 'a dialogue with the dead'.
Allison Cook as the Marquise and Robin Adams as Valmont in Luca Francesconi's 'Quartett' at Teatro alla Scala, Milan. Photo © 2011 Rudy Amisano. Click on the image for higher resolution
Quartett is vastly different from Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the best preferred novel by the unlucky French Queen Marie-Antoinette. Even though Chaderlos de Laclos' novel smells and sweats eroticism at every single page, its intention is moralistic: a plea for better education for young ladies (so that they cannot to be easily seduced by older libertines) and severe punishment for the two dissolute protagonists (the Marquise and her degenerated lover Valmont). Les Liaisons Dangereuses has already been the subject of several movies (directed, eg, by Vadim, Frears, Forman and Kumble) and by two recent operas (by the American Conrad Susa and the Belgian Piet Swets) as well as by a couple of ballets. In my opinion, only Vadim's movie (with Gérard Philippe and Jeanne Moreau as protagonists and a lush black-and-white photography) caught Chaderlos de Laclos' intentions in a transposition of the plot to the Parisian wild 1950s -- the twilights of the Fourth Republic.
Thus, Quartett is Les Liaisons Dangereuses seen through Müller, firstly, and by Francesconi, secondly. Luca Francesconi studied piano at the Conservatory of Milan and composition with Azio Corghi, Karlheinz Stockhausen (in Rome) and Luciano Berio (at Tanglewood). He also spent a period in Boston studying jazz. Between 1981 and 1984 he worked as an assistant to Berio. In 1990 he founded Agon Acustica Informatica Musica in Milan, a center for music research and production using new technologies. His fundamental experience has been at IRCAM, the Parisian contemporary music and electronic music center created and animated by Pierre Boulez. Thus, he has a rather unique language: he is a bridge between Darmstadt's serial twelve note row system and French calligraphic writing, molded with electronic-acoustics. Similar bridge functions have been played by Eötvös, Ligeti, Xenakis, Scelsi and Sani, among others. He is, of course, miles away from improvisation à la Cage and minimalism à la Glass. In Quartett there are ariosos, duets and even a 'cavatina' like in Romantic and neo-Romantica operas, even though the subject is grueling and both the orchestral and the vocal writing are clearly of the twenty first century. Since February 2008, Francesconi has been the Artistic Director of the music sector of the Biennale in Venice. Although he is also a well known conductor and is known mostly for his instrumental music, Francesconi has already a number of successful operas in his handbag. A final comment before focusing on the performance: Quartett is one of the major points of a maxi Festival (Suona Francese -- 'Play as the French do it'), involving one hundred and sixty different events (and over five hundred artists) in forty Italian cities from April to June; this year Suona Francese is entirely dedicated to contemporary music.
Allison Cook as the Marquise and Robin Adams as Valmont in Luca Francesconi's 'Quartett' at Teatro alla Scala, Milan. Photo © 2011 Rudy Amisano. Click on the image for higher resolution
The stage set and direction are entrusted to Alex Ollé and the Catalan Group La Fura Dels Baus. In the center of the stage there is cube midway from the stage and the scenic tower. The cube looks like a bunker but the sparse furnishing recalls the seventeenth century. There the Marquise and Valmont play their extreme sex to death: during the 'cavatina', the Marquise masturbates herself and the play goes on to experience a full gamut of positions (from fellatio to sodomy), but there is neither erotic tension nor joy, as the sex road is geared to tragic death. Vocally, Allison Cook (the Marquise) is almost a coloratura soprano with very impervious acute. Robin Adams (Valmont) is a baritone strong in the central register and in the legato. They both must sing in the most unusual positions and do a commendable job. Around the cube, black and white projections show the aftermath of a major war (most probably a nuclear war) with destruction and aimless people in the ruins. Müller's basic concept is there, but there is not much of Chaderlos'.
Allison Cook as the Marquise and Robin Adams as Valmont in Luca Francesconi's 'Quartett' at Teatro alla Scala, Milan. Photo © 2011 Rudy Amisano. Click on the image for higher resolution
The music is interesting and effective. It requires a large orchestra in the pit (conducted by Susanna Mälkki, one of the most successful Finnish conductors) and a smaller orchestra behind the set (conducted by the young Canadian Jean-Michaël Lavoie), an imposing chorus (echoing The Marquise's and Valmont's troubles) and a large electronic acoustic apparatus which envelopes the audience. As mentioned, the twelve note row system is only partly followed and is mixed with traditional operatic conventions, including an orchestral intermezzo.
Most likely Quartett will go a long way. La Scala's audience was lukewarm; there were neither protest nor contestation but only four curtain calls.
Copyright © 28 April 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
LA SCALA
MILAN
ITALY
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Set in the aftermath of a nuclear war,
the first performance of
Luca Francesconi's 'Quartett'
is reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
The Teatro alla Scala has a rather traditional, or more appropriately, conservative audience. Thus, its effective and efficient press office had gently prepared the opening night elegant crowd for the shock of the world premiere of Luca Francesconi's Quartett on 26 April 2011 -- just in the middle of the Easter Holiday when Parsifal or other 'spiritual' and/or 'holy' operas are normally on stage in major European opera houses. Francesconi's latest work for the stage was commissioned by the Teatro alla Scala in co-production with the Vienna Festwochen, English National Opera and Amsterdam Opera, but it was booked by other theatres (mostly French and American) even before its world premiere. A clear signal that sex attracts audience even in electronic acoustics and in eighty minutes of dense text (in English) and music.
Quartett is based on a widely performed play by Heiner Müller, one of the twentieth century's most important avant-garde playwrights. He himself described this text as 'a reflex on the problem of terrorism, using material which on the surface has nothing to do with it'. The play is a dark, playful, and erotically-charged reworking of Chaderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses in which the familiar characters of the Marquise, and her longtime lover, Valmont, put on mask after mask in an elaborate dance of seduction and perverse love-play. Older now, exhausted from the monotony of pleasure-seeking, they can find sustenance only in their ability to inflict pain on each other. Locked in a power-struggle in which neither will yield, their passion to destroy each other binds them together with a ferocity that can only be dissolved in the cold embrace of death -- in a world just destroyed by a nuclear war. The set is, at the same time, a seventeenth century elegant drawing room and a bunker after a hypothetical World War Three and nuclear death for the humanity. For the two protagonists (a soprano and a baritone), theirs is a haunting journey into a landscape of ache, of the hunger for meaning, and of the fear of the void that yawns beneath our frail civilization and ourselves. Müller's Quartett is a brief dialogue -- only twelve pages in the published text -- with its reptilian imagery in stark opposition to several stage adaptations of Laclos. By reducing the characters to two, Müller focuses on the manipulative power play between Merteuil and Valmont and by having those two play-act each other's roles and the roles of women Valmont seduces, he moves his work close to the terrain of Jean Genet in The Maids.
A scene from Luca Francesconi's 'Quartett' at Teatro alla Scala, Milan. Photo © 2011 Rudy Amisano. Click on the image for higher resolution
Over a decade after his death, Müller continues to have an enormous influence on European playwriting, dramaturgy, and performance. The journal New German Critique devoted a special issue to his work. He is the only playwright to have ever received such an honor. In 2009, one of Europe's leading intellectual publishing houses, Suhrkamp, issued the final three volumes in a twelve-volume edition of Müller's collected works. The only twentieth century German dramatist who holds the same status is Bertolt Brecht. Müller has also paved the way for a new generation of directors, playwrights, and dramaturgs who regard themselves as 'samplers'. Müller adopted Brecht's notion of Kopien (German for 'copying'), the practice of regarding texts by others as material to be used, imitated, and rewritten. In regards to Brecht's own oeuvre, Müller stated 'to use Brecht without criticizing him is treason.' For Müller, the work of other writers and artists was not seen as private property; it was to be used as raw material for his own work. Thus, Müller's work in the theater marks the beginning of a tradition of densely poetic dramaturgy based in the logic of association, rather than linear 'dramatic' narrative. With Müller's work, theater is a forum for examining history; it is 'a dialogue with the dead'.
Allison Cook as the Marquise and Robin Adams as Valmont in Luca Francesconi's 'Quartett' at Teatro alla Scala, Milan. Photo © 2011 Rudy Amisano. Click on the image for higher resolution
Quartett is vastly different from Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the best preferred novel by the unlucky French Queen Marie-Antoinette. Even though Chaderlos de Laclos' novel smells and sweats eroticism at every single page, its intention is moralistic: a plea for better education for young ladies (so that they cannot to be easily seduced by older libertines) and severe punishment for the two dissolute protagonists (the Marquise and her degenerated lover Valmont). Les Liaisons Dangereuses has already been the subject of several movies (directed, eg, by Vadim, Frears, Forman and Kumble) and by two recent operas (by the American Conrad Susa and the Belgian Piet Swets) as well as by a couple of ballets. In my opinion, only Vadim's movie (with Gérard Philippe and Jeanne Moreau as protagonists and a lush black-and-white photography) caught Chaderlos de Laclos' intentions in a transposition of the plot to the Parisian wild 1950s -- the twilights of the Fourth Republic.
Thus, Quartett is Les Liaisons Dangereuses seen through Müller, firstly, and by Francesconi, secondly. Luca Francesconi studied piano at the Conservatory of Milan and composition with Azio Corghi, Karlheinz Stockhausen (in Rome) and Luciano Berio (at Tanglewood). He also spent a period in Boston studying jazz. Between 1981 and 1984 he worked as an assistant to Berio. In 1990 he founded Agon Acustica Informatica Musica in Milan, a center for music research and production using new technologies. His fundamental experience has been at IRCAM, the Parisian contemporary music and electronic music center created and animated by Pierre Boulez. Thus, he has a rather unique language: he is a bridge between Darmstadt's serial twelve note row system and French calligraphic writing, molded with electronic-acoustics. Similar bridge functions have been played by Eötvös, Ligeti, Xenakis, Scelsi and Sani, among others. He is, of course, miles away from improvisation à la Cage and minimalism à la Glass. In Quartett there are ariosos, duets and even a 'cavatina' like in Romantic and neo-Romantica operas, even though the subject is grueling and both the orchestral and the vocal writing are clearly of the twenty first century. Since February 2008, Francesconi has been the Artistic Director of the music sector of the Biennale in Venice. Although he is also a well known conductor and is known mostly for his instrumental music, Francesconi has already a number of successful operas in his handbag. A final comment before focusing on the performance: Quartett is one of the major points of a maxi Festival (Suona Francese -- 'Play as the French do it'), involving one hundred and sixty different events (and over five hundred artists) in forty Italian cities from April to June; this year Suona Francese is entirely dedicated to contemporary music.
Allison Cook as the Marquise and Robin Adams as Valmont in Luca Francesconi's 'Quartett' at Teatro alla Scala, Milan. Photo © 2011 Rudy Amisano. Click on the image for higher resolution
The stage set and direction are entrusted to Alex Ollé and the Catalan Group La Fura Dels Baus. In the center of the stage there is cube midway from the stage and the scenic tower. The cube looks like a bunker but the sparse furnishing recalls the seventeenth century. There the Marquise and Valmont play their extreme sex to death: during the 'cavatina', the Marquise masturbates herself and the play goes on to experience a full gamut of positions (from fellatio to sodomy), but there is neither erotic tension nor joy, as the sex road is geared to tragic death. Vocally, Allison Cook (the Marquise) is almost a coloratura soprano with very impervious acute. Robin Adams (Valmont) is a baritone strong in the central register and in the legato. They both must sing in the most unusual positions and do a commendable job. Around the cube, black and white projections show the aftermath of a major war (most probably a nuclear war) with destruction and aimless people in the ruins. Müller's basic concept is there, but there is not much of Chaderlos'.
Allison Cook as the Marquise and Robin Adams as Valmont in Luca Francesconi's 'Quartett' at Teatro alla Scala, Milan. Photo © 2011 Rudy Amisano. Click on the image for higher resolution
The music is interesting and effective. It requires a large orchestra in the pit (conducted by Susanna Mälkki, one of the most successful Finnish conductors) and a smaller orchestra behind the set (conducted by the young Canadian Jean-Michaël Lavoie), an imposing chorus (echoing The Marquise's and Valmont's troubles) and a large electronic acoustic apparatus which envelopes the audience. As mentioned, the twelve note row system is only partly followed and is mixed with traditional operatic conventions, including an orchestral intermezzo.
Most likely Quartett will go a long way. La Scala's audience was lukewarm; there were neither protest nor contestation but only four curtain calls.
Copyright © 28 April 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
LA SCALA
MILAN
ITALY
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Orchestral Nuances in Music and Vision April 21
Orchestral Nuances
Thanks to a sparkling 'Barber of Seville',
GIUSEPPE PENNISI rediscovers
the beauty of Rossini's orchestration
Il Barbiere di Siviglia is the only Rossini opera which has always been on stage, even during the Romanticism and Verismo periods when most of his productions had disappeared from the theatres of Europe and North America. The libretto is a lot of fun and the music sparkles like good, earthy red Lambrusco wine, whereas Paisiello's earlier Barbiere is sentimental and slightly melancholic. The Rossini opera is not merely slapstick. It is more subtle than it superficially appears to be. Dramatically and musically, Il Barbiere contrasts two parallel but quite distinct worlds: that of Figaro -- efficient, quick, someone who calls a spade a spade -- and that of all the other characters, all left behind, fearful and yielding, verbose and bombastic. Even the good-looking and wealthy Almaviva is plaintive, although imbued with music of the highest elegance right from the beginning. But a mathematician or an economist would tell you from the start of the opera that according to game theory, the wits of Figaro and of Rosina would defeat all the others.
For several decades, however, Barbiere was presented in a severely modified form: Rosina was sung by a light lyric soprano rather than by a mezzo or, even better, a coloratura alto (a rather rare bird, especially before the Baroque revival); the bravura aria for the tenor 'Cessa di più resistere' was just eliminated from the finale; and several other modifications were made to simplify and schematize the score. Vittorio Gui's detailed work on the original source materials for his 1942 revival in Florence did much to root out the worst mistreatments and adaptations that tradition had imposed on the opera; since the publication of Alberto Zedda's critical edition, Rossini's original text and score have been restored to general circulation, but the tradition of treating Barbiere as vulgar rump or an impersonal farce for slapsticks and marionettes rather than a comedy of character has not entirely vanished. An exemplary production was provided by Abbado and Ponnelle in 1968 at Salzburg and La Scala; it toured several continents. Also Zurich has recently offered excellent unabridged productions, featuring Cecilia Bartoli.
Ketevan Kemoklidze as Rosina and Bruno Praticò as Bartolo in Act I of Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' in Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
However, the subtleties of both the libretto and the score were not at all taken into account in the two productions of Il Barbiere di Siviglia staged at the Rossini Opera Festival (ROF) in Pesaro. The ROF is, for Rossini lovers, equivalent to the Bayreuth Festival for Wagnerians. The 1992 production had, as its main set, the Bologna Archiginnasio (a classroom for anatomy lessons in one of the most ancient European universities). The 2005 production was staged in Bartolo's house, looking like a prison. There can be little fun and even less subtlety in an anatomy classroom or in a jail. Thus, even excellent singing was largely in vain. A new ROF philological Barbiere is expected next August. It will presented in a concert version; staging seems to scare the producers.
This does mean that in Italy good productions are wanting. For instance a 2005 production by the Fiesole School of Music was revived by a number of Provincial theatres (Jesi, Fermo, Udine and Ravenna) in 2009; the production was signed by Damiano Michelietto (then very young, now an enfant prodige collecting rewards on the European scene). It requires, on stage, only some twenty chairs, twelve umbrellas, a wooden staircase and a few balloons. The overture is in a second (or third class) compartment of a local train. The opera is a Fellini circus: Figaro is dressed like a fox, Basilio like a snake, Bartolo like a dog, and Rosina is a preppy Ivy League Yankee. The pace of the show is swift; there are plenty of gags worthy of the Marx Brothers, and a lot of laughs from the audience. Another top class low cost production was staged recently in Palermo and reviewed in Music & Vision on 25 September 2010: again a young stage director, Francesco Micheli, a young conductor, Michele Mariotti, and a young cast of singers offered us a fresh and modern Barbiere. I would love to see it in other Italian and foreign theatres: a real top bargain.
Ketevan Kemoklidze as Rosina and Luca Salsi as Figaro in Act I of Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' in Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
The recent Barbiere unveiled in Parma on 15 April 2011 -- this review is based on the opening performance -- has, in the two key roles (Almaviva and Rosina) the same singers as the Palermo production (Dmitry Korchak and Ketevan Kemoklidze). They have grown in the last seven months. Korchack takes the challenge of 'Cessa di più resistere', an impervious bravura aria with a constellation of high Cs before turning into a rondeau. The aria was re-introduced by Rockwell Blake in the seventies and now only a very few tenors dare to take it up. Kemoklidze has sharpened her Italian diction which has now reached a very high level; she is a good coloratura alto. Both of them received open stage accolades. The rest of the singers are proven professionals, real veterans of the respective roles: Luca Salsi (a witty Figaro) Bruno Praticò (a pompous Bartolo), Giovanni Furlanetto (a devious Basilio) and Natalian Roman (a sweet and wise Berta).
The stage direction, sets and costumes (Stefano Vizioli, Francesco Calcagnini and Annemarie Heinrich) are rather traditional; they originate from 'Ferrara Musica' where they were produced some ten years ago. Since then, they have been seen in several Italian opera houses; they are elegant but not innovative.
Andrea Battistoni conducting Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' in Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
The mastermind of the success is the musical director: Andrea Battistoni, twenty-four years old (Rossini's age when the opera was composed). He looks as if he were eighteen but has an excellent command of the orchestra. Like Michele Mariotti, he does not come from Muti or Abbado's assistants. Battistoni was trained under Zoltan Szabò in Hungary as well as Mickael Flancksman in Germany. He is a rising star in the European music firmament and will soon also appear on Tokyo's stages. Next year, he will conduct an opera at La Scala. He brings out the generally unheard beauties of Barbiere's orchestration. This is mightily important because many listeners and even opera critics have the impression that for Rossini, until La Donna del Lago in 1819, the orchestra was only a secondary tool to support the action and the singers.
Ketevan Kemoklidze as Rosina and Bruno Praticò as Bartolo in Act I of Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' in Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
Following Lord Derwent's phrase, this Barbiere is 'a nervous outburst of vitality' right from the word go, ie the overture (borrowed from previous Rossini operas such as Elisabetta Regina d'Inghilterra and Aureliano in Palmira) when one can sense Rossini's ear for vocal and instrumental timbres of a peculiar astringency and brilliance, his quick-witted word-setting, and his mastery of large musical forms with their often brilliant and explosive internal variation. Both Beethoven and Verdi loved Barbiere's orchestration and praised it, without one knowing each other's opinion. Nonetheless, in many productions the sophisticated orchestral work is often under-estimated. Battistoni sets it right. Also he gives a rather personal touch: from the orchestra to the singers this is a very sensual Barbiere, most likely because in 1816 Rossini had a complex ménage with Isabella Colbran and other women. To this end, right from the overture, Battistoni slows the tempos gently and delves into the orchestral nuances. Without ever forgetting, however, that the Barbiere wine is sparkling.
Andrea Battistoni conducting Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' in Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
The performance lasted nearly three and a half hours (including the intermission). The full house at Teatro Regio loved it. It can be seen live in nearly four hundred HD European movie houses on 26 April 2011 and on a few TV channels; for the details, please contact p.maier@teatroregioparma.org
Copyright © 21 April 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
GIOACCHINO ROSSINI
THE BARBER OF SEVILLE
PARMA
ITALY
<< M&V home Concert reviews Hallé Orchestra >>
Thanks to a sparkling 'Barber of Seville',
GIUSEPPE PENNISI rediscovers
the beauty of Rossini's orchestration
Il Barbiere di Siviglia is the only Rossini opera which has always been on stage, even during the Romanticism and Verismo periods when most of his productions had disappeared from the theatres of Europe and North America. The libretto is a lot of fun and the music sparkles like good, earthy red Lambrusco wine, whereas Paisiello's earlier Barbiere is sentimental and slightly melancholic. The Rossini opera is not merely slapstick. It is more subtle than it superficially appears to be. Dramatically and musically, Il Barbiere contrasts two parallel but quite distinct worlds: that of Figaro -- efficient, quick, someone who calls a spade a spade -- and that of all the other characters, all left behind, fearful and yielding, verbose and bombastic. Even the good-looking and wealthy Almaviva is plaintive, although imbued with music of the highest elegance right from the beginning. But a mathematician or an economist would tell you from the start of the opera that according to game theory, the wits of Figaro and of Rosina would defeat all the others.
For several decades, however, Barbiere was presented in a severely modified form: Rosina was sung by a light lyric soprano rather than by a mezzo or, even better, a coloratura alto (a rather rare bird, especially before the Baroque revival); the bravura aria for the tenor 'Cessa di più resistere' was just eliminated from the finale; and several other modifications were made to simplify and schematize the score. Vittorio Gui's detailed work on the original source materials for his 1942 revival in Florence did much to root out the worst mistreatments and adaptations that tradition had imposed on the opera; since the publication of Alberto Zedda's critical edition, Rossini's original text and score have been restored to general circulation, but the tradition of treating Barbiere as vulgar rump or an impersonal farce for slapsticks and marionettes rather than a comedy of character has not entirely vanished. An exemplary production was provided by Abbado and Ponnelle in 1968 at Salzburg and La Scala; it toured several continents. Also Zurich has recently offered excellent unabridged productions, featuring Cecilia Bartoli.
Ketevan Kemoklidze as Rosina and Bruno Praticò as Bartolo in Act I of Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' in Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
However, the subtleties of both the libretto and the score were not at all taken into account in the two productions of Il Barbiere di Siviglia staged at the Rossini Opera Festival (ROF) in Pesaro. The ROF is, for Rossini lovers, equivalent to the Bayreuth Festival for Wagnerians. The 1992 production had, as its main set, the Bologna Archiginnasio (a classroom for anatomy lessons in one of the most ancient European universities). The 2005 production was staged in Bartolo's house, looking like a prison. There can be little fun and even less subtlety in an anatomy classroom or in a jail. Thus, even excellent singing was largely in vain. A new ROF philological Barbiere is expected next August. It will presented in a concert version; staging seems to scare the producers.
This does mean that in Italy good productions are wanting. For instance a 2005 production by the Fiesole School of Music was revived by a number of Provincial theatres (Jesi, Fermo, Udine and Ravenna) in 2009; the production was signed by Damiano Michelietto (then very young, now an enfant prodige collecting rewards on the European scene). It requires, on stage, only some twenty chairs, twelve umbrellas, a wooden staircase and a few balloons. The overture is in a second (or third class) compartment of a local train. The opera is a Fellini circus: Figaro is dressed like a fox, Basilio like a snake, Bartolo like a dog, and Rosina is a preppy Ivy League Yankee. The pace of the show is swift; there are plenty of gags worthy of the Marx Brothers, and a lot of laughs from the audience. Another top class low cost production was staged recently in Palermo and reviewed in Music & Vision on 25 September 2010: again a young stage director, Francesco Micheli, a young conductor, Michele Mariotti, and a young cast of singers offered us a fresh and modern Barbiere. I would love to see it in other Italian and foreign theatres: a real top bargain.
Ketevan Kemoklidze as Rosina and Luca Salsi as Figaro in Act I of Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' in Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
The recent Barbiere unveiled in Parma on 15 April 2011 -- this review is based on the opening performance -- has, in the two key roles (Almaviva and Rosina) the same singers as the Palermo production (Dmitry Korchak and Ketevan Kemoklidze). They have grown in the last seven months. Korchack takes the challenge of 'Cessa di più resistere', an impervious bravura aria with a constellation of high Cs before turning into a rondeau. The aria was re-introduced by Rockwell Blake in the seventies and now only a very few tenors dare to take it up. Kemoklidze has sharpened her Italian diction which has now reached a very high level; she is a good coloratura alto. Both of them received open stage accolades. The rest of the singers are proven professionals, real veterans of the respective roles: Luca Salsi (a witty Figaro) Bruno Praticò (a pompous Bartolo), Giovanni Furlanetto (a devious Basilio) and Natalian Roman (a sweet and wise Berta).
The stage direction, sets and costumes (Stefano Vizioli, Francesco Calcagnini and Annemarie Heinrich) are rather traditional; they originate from 'Ferrara Musica' where they were produced some ten years ago. Since then, they have been seen in several Italian opera houses; they are elegant but not innovative.
Andrea Battistoni conducting Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' in Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
The mastermind of the success is the musical director: Andrea Battistoni, twenty-four years old (Rossini's age when the opera was composed). He looks as if he were eighteen but has an excellent command of the orchestra. Like Michele Mariotti, he does not come from Muti or Abbado's assistants. Battistoni was trained under Zoltan Szabò in Hungary as well as Mickael Flancksman in Germany. He is a rising star in the European music firmament and will soon also appear on Tokyo's stages. Next year, he will conduct an opera at La Scala. He brings out the generally unheard beauties of Barbiere's orchestration. This is mightily important because many listeners and even opera critics have the impression that for Rossini, until La Donna del Lago in 1819, the orchestra was only a secondary tool to support the action and the singers.
Ketevan Kemoklidze as Rosina and Bruno Praticò as Bartolo in Act I of Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' in Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
Following Lord Derwent's phrase, this Barbiere is 'a nervous outburst of vitality' right from the word go, ie the overture (borrowed from previous Rossini operas such as Elisabetta Regina d'Inghilterra and Aureliano in Palmira) when one can sense Rossini's ear for vocal and instrumental timbres of a peculiar astringency and brilliance, his quick-witted word-setting, and his mastery of large musical forms with their often brilliant and explosive internal variation. Both Beethoven and Verdi loved Barbiere's orchestration and praised it, without one knowing each other's opinion. Nonetheless, in many productions the sophisticated orchestral work is often under-estimated. Battistoni sets it right. Also he gives a rather personal touch: from the orchestra to the singers this is a very sensual Barbiere, most likely because in 1816 Rossini had a complex ménage with Isabella Colbran and other women. To this end, right from the overture, Battistoni slows the tempos gently and delves into the orchestral nuances. Without ever forgetting, however, that the Barbiere wine is sparkling.
Andrea Battistoni conducting Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' in Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
The performance lasted nearly three and a half hours (including the intermission). The full house at Teatro Regio loved it. It can be seen live in nearly four hundred HD European movie houses on 26 April 2011 and on a few TV channels; for the details, please contact p.maier@teatroregioparma.org
Copyright © 21 April 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
GIOACCHINO ROSSINI
THE BARBER OF SEVILLE
PARMA
ITALY
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Too Clever by Half in Music and Vision 16 April
Too Clever by Half
A very British version of Mozart's
'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' returns to Rome,
experienced by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
Die Entführung aus dem Serail ('The Abduction from the Seraglio') is Mozart's first real masterwork. On a personal basis, your reviewer prefers the composer's previous opera, Idomeneo Re di Creta. However, only in Die Entführung did Mozart fully display all his talent in dealing with musical theatre. Mozart composed it for the National Singspiel Theatre at the Vienna Burgtheater in 1782. The libretto really fired his genius. Mozart had not dared to suggest modifications to the librettist of Idomeneo but he took a very active part in constructing the libretto of Die Entführung. Whilst in Idomeneo (see M&V: 3 March 2010) the key to the music, more than to the plot, was Mozart's neurotic relationship with his father (as well as with his women), in Die Entführung the twenty-six-year-old composer threw all his joy for life, his lust, his sexual appetite and his ambiguities. As in later Mozart operas, Die Entführung has an 'open ending': we will never know whether Konstanze and Belmonte will live happily together ever after or whether she will regret not having had wild sex -- and maybe also love -- with Selim.
Charles Castronovo as Belmonte in Mozart's 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Photo © 2011 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
Mozart's epistolary shows how concerned he was with both the musical and dramatic construction of the text and how precisely he knew which dialogue scene could be built into a vocal ensemble. He laid great emphasis on clear and consistent delineation of characters so that he could intensify their personalities with the music. Way back in 1782, the Vienna première of Die Entführung was a smashing success. In 1783, there were as many as nine different productions in the Germanic world. In 1784, the Singspiel was translated into Polish for a major staging in Warsaw. In 1785, there were as many as forty new productions, in 1798 it was performed in French in Paris. It reached London (in a rhythmic translation into English) only in 1827; there is a record of sold out performances in New York in 1860 (when Mozart operas were little known on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean).
Charles Castronovo as Belmonte and Maria Grazia Schiavo as Konstanze in Mozart's 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Photo © 2011 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
It was staged for the first time in Italy as late as in 1935 as a part of the Florentine Musical May Festival; by then, the twentieth century Mozart revival was well underway and had its center in Glyndebourne. This can be explained by the fact that it was very late when Italy came to appreciate the Singspiel form, where spoken parts alternate with musical numbers -- just the very opposite of 'comic opera' and 'melodramma giocoso'. Only in the late 1960s was a magnificent La Scala production -- staged by Giorgio Strehler -- first seen in all major opera houses. Later, in 2002, there was a very good production in Florence (Mehta -- Grams). Many of the other Italian productions have not left any important marks.
Rodney Clarke as Selim in Mozart's 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Photo © 2011 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
Die Entführung is now catching up in Italy. This season there are three different productions: two are touring Provincial 'traditional' theatres and one was unveiled on 12 April 2011 in Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. This review is based on the 12 April performance -- a real event because Die Entführung returned to Rome's major opera house after nearly forty years of absence. It is a first-class production. This is why the staging deserves to be seen and heard in the Italian capital and to travel to other opera houses in Italy and abroad.
Jaco Huijpen as Osmin in Mozart's 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Photo © 2011 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
The plot is well-known: how a group of clever Christians (Konstanze, Blonde, Belmonte and Pedrillo) escape from captivity under a Muslim Bey (Selim) and his terrible (and sadistic) henchman (Osmin). In Mozart's time, the background was the territorial and cultural intersection of the Islamic lands and the older Christian civilization of Europe, especially Spain; Belmonte's father is the Governor of Oran on the coast of North Africa. In the background, there was also the menacing, albeit unsuccessful, siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683. More fundamentally, there was the Enlightenment, but -- careful! -- Selim is the Enlightened despot not the Christian lot. Most likely this is a mirror of infighting between Christian Freemason lodges within Bavaria, Austria and part of Switzerland in Mozart's time. This is another aspect of Die Entführung's ambiguity, difficult to seize unless one is very familiar with the religious politics of the time. Now, stage directors have the strong temptation to update the plot and to show a clash of civilization (as it was recently done in Berlin and Naples with mixed results). This is a grossly oversimplified view.
Rodney Clarke as Selim with, behind, left to right, Cosmin Ifrim as Pedrillo, Beate Ritter as Blonde, Maria Grazia Schiavo as Konstanze and Charles Castronovo as Belmonte in Mozart's 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Photo © 2011 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
The stage director of this Rome production, Graham Vick, does not fall into this trap. He provides, in a way, a very British Die Entführung. The Serail is a cube. Even though, in conversation, Vick says that the idea comes from Fellini's Casanova, this is his own special trademark: in 1997 a huge cube was the focal point of his staging of Verdi's Macbeth at La Scala. Around the cube (which became an iPad in the third act) and under a shining blue sky, Die Entführung becomes a comedy of intrigues and errors without any political undertones or overtones. It is not, however, an Italian comedy with a fair amount of slapstick. The stage set and costumes are by Richard Hudson; lighting is by Giuseppe Di Iorio. The acting is quite stylized and elegant, suitable for a lightweight play rather than for a Singspiel featuring arias such as 'Martern aller Arten' which belong to the opera seria universe. It's a precious show where Vick is too clever by half, and much too British. Some of the ambiguity gets lost in the staging.
Beate Ritter as Blonde and Cosmin Ifrim as Pedrillo in Mozart's 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Photo © 2011 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
However, it fully recouped in the musical direction (Gabriele Ferro) and in the singing. Under Ferro's baton, the overture is a bubbling Allegro in C major with a martial and colorful Turkish style. Yet it is subject to abrupt changes of mood; the crescendo lurches into the dominant minor, anticipating the confusion, and the ambiguity, of the action to come. The Allegro resumes after a low middle section in C minor with a foretaste of the sentiment, with a hesitant but passionate melody. Thus, Ferro sets from the outset how we deal with two different worlds: Konstanze (Maria Grazia Schiavo), Belmonte (Charles Castronovo) (and Selim) belong to that of an opera seria such as Idomeneo, whilst Pedrillo (Cosmin Ifrim), Blonde (Beate Ritter) and especially Osmin (Jaco Huijpen) are midway between melodramma giocoso and opera buffa. Between these two worlds, the musical invention is lavish: from Belmonte's gentle opening aria to Konstanze's cluster of arias in the second act, from Blonde and Pedrillo's duets to Osmin's cavatina. Ferro emphasizes the use of piccolo and triangle to provide further Turkish atmosphere.
Maria Grazia Schiavo as Konstanze in Mozart's 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Photo © 2011 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
Maria Grazia Schiavo is a soprano assoluto; she came to prominence for her skills in the Baroque repertoire; now she masters a very wide range from coloratura to mezza voce; she ascends easily to top notes and descends from them with equal ease. She received well deserved accolades after her arias. Charles Castronovo is a young but already well-known American lyric tenor, but his performances in Italy are rare. This was an excellent opportunity to get to know his phrasing, his legato and his high Cs. He too was warmly applauded open stage. The others were all of a good high level. It was an excellent idea to have a bass-baritone (Rodney Clarke) in the spoken role of Selim.
A flaw: not one of the singers is German; their singing and their dialogue can be understood, but their diction leaves quite a bit to be desired. However, only German speaking audiences will notice this.
Copyright © 16 April 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
TURKEY
AUSTRIA
UNITED KINGDOM
ROME
ITALY
GRAHAM VICK
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A very British version of Mozart's
'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' returns to Rome,
experienced by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
Die Entführung aus dem Serail ('The Abduction from the Seraglio') is Mozart's first real masterwork. On a personal basis, your reviewer prefers the composer's previous opera, Idomeneo Re di Creta. However, only in Die Entführung did Mozart fully display all his talent in dealing with musical theatre. Mozart composed it for the National Singspiel Theatre at the Vienna Burgtheater in 1782. The libretto really fired his genius. Mozart had not dared to suggest modifications to the librettist of Idomeneo but he took a very active part in constructing the libretto of Die Entführung. Whilst in Idomeneo (see M&V: 3 March 2010) the key to the music, more than to the plot, was Mozart's neurotic relationship with his father (as well as with his women), in Die Entführung the twenty-six-year-old composer threw all his joy for life, his lust, his sexual appetite and his ambiguities. As in later Mozart operas, Die Entführung has an 'open ending': we will never know whether Konstanze and Belmonte will live happily together ever after or whether she will regret not having had wild sex -- and maybe also love -- with Selim.
Charles Castronovo as Belmonte in Mozart's 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Photo © 2011 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
Mozart's epistolary shows how concerned he was with both the musical and dramatic construction of the text and how precisely he knew which dialogue scene could be built into a vocal ensemble. He laid great emphasis on clear and consistent delineation of characters so that he could intensify their personalities with the music. Way back in 1782, the Vienna première of Die Entführung was a smashing success. In 1783, there were as many as nine different productions in the Germanic world. In 1784, the Singspiel was translated into Polish for a major staging in Warsaw. In 1785, there were as many as forty new productions, in 1798 it was performed in French in Paris. It reached London (in a rhythmic translation into English) only in 1827; there is a record of sold out performances in New York in 1860 (when Mozart operas were little known on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean).
Charles Castronovo as Belmonte and Maria Grazia Schiavo as Konstanze in Mozart's 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Photo © 2011 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
It was staged for the first time in Italy as late as in 1935 as a part of the Florentine Musical May Festival; by then, the twentieth century Mozart revival was well underway and had its center in Glyndebourne. This can be explained by the fact that it was very late when Italy came to appreciate the Singspiel form, where spoken parts alternate with musical numbers -- just the very opposite of 'comic opera' and 'melodramma giocoso'. Only in the late 1960s was a magnificent La Scala production -- staged by Giorgio Strehler -- first seen in all major opera houses. Later, in 2002, there was a very good production in Florence (Mehta -- Grams). Many of the other Italian productions have not left any important marks.
Rodney Clarke as Selim in Mozart's 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Photo © 2011 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
Die Entführung is now catching up in Italy. This season there are three different productions: two are touring Provincial 'traditional' theatres and one was unveiled on 12 April 2011 in Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. This review is based on the 12 April performance -- a real event because Die Entführung returned to Rome's major opera house after nearly forty years of absence. It is a first-class production. This is why the staging deserves to be seen and heard in the Italian capital and to travel to other opera houses in Italy and abroad.
Jaco Huijpen as Osmin in Mozart's 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Photo © 2011 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
The plot is well-known: how a group of clever Christians (Konstanze, Blonde, Belmonte and Pedrillo) escape from captivity under a Muslim Bey (Selim) and his terrible (and sadistic) henchman (Osmin). In Mozart's time, the background was the territorial and cultural intersection of the Islamic lands and the older Christian civilization of Europe, especially Spain; Belmonte's father is the Governor of Oran on the coast of North Africa. In the background, there was also the menacing, albeit unsuccessful, siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683. More fundamentally, there was the Enlightenment, but -- careful! -- Selim is the Enlightened despot not the Christian lot. Most likely this is a mirror of infighting between Christian Freemason lodges within Bavaria, Austria and part of Switzerland in Mozart's time. This is another aspect of Die Entführung's ambiguity, difficult to seize unless one is very familiar with the religious politics of the time. Now, stage directors have the strong temptation to update the plot and to show a clash of civilization (as it was recently done in Berlin and Naples with mixed results). This is a grossly oversimplified view.
Rodney Clarke as Selim with, behind, left to right, Cosmin Ifrim as Pedrillo, Beate Ritter as Blonde, Maria Grazia Schiavo as Konstanze and Charles Castronovo as Belmonte in Mozart's 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Photo © 2011 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
The stage director of this Rome production, Graham Vick, does not fall into this trap. He provides, in a way, a very British Die Entführung. The Serail is a cube. Even though, in conversation, Vick says that the idea comes from Fellini's Casanova, this is his own special trademark: in 1997 a huge cube was the focal point of his staging of Verdi's Macbeth at La Scala. Around the cube (which became an iPad in the third act) and under a shining blue sky, Die Entführung becomes a comedy of intrigues and errors without any political undertones or overtones. It is not, however, an Italian comedy with a fair amount of slapstick. The stage set and costumes are by Richard Hudson; lighting is by Giuseppe Di Iorio. The acting is quite stylized and elegant, suitable for a lightweight play rather than for a Singspiel featuring arias such as 'Martern aller Arten' which belong to the opera seria universe. It's a precious show where Vick is too clever by half, and much too British. Some of the ambiguity gets lost in the staging.
Beate Ritter as Blonde and Cosmin Ifrim as Pedrillo in Mozart's 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Photo © 2011 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
However, it fully recouped in the musical direction (Gabriele Ferro) and in the singing. Under Ferro's baton, the overture is a bubbling Allegro in C major with a martial and colorful Turkish style. Yet it is subject to abrupt changes of mood; the crescendo lurches into the dominant minor, anticipating the confusion, and the ambiguity, of the action to come. The Allegro resumes after a low middle section in C minor with a foretaste of the sentiment, with a hesitant but passionate melody. Thus, Ferro sets from the outset how we deal with two different worlds: Konstanze (Maria Grazia Schiavo), Belmonte (Charles Castronovo) (and Selim) belong to that of an opera seria such as Idomeneo, whilst Pedrillo (Cosmin Ifrim), Blonde (Beate Ritter) and especially Osmin (Jaco Huijpen) are midway between melodramma giocoso and opera buffa. Between these two worlds, the musical invention is lavish: from Belmonte's gentle opening aria to Konstanze's cluster of arias in the second act, from Blonde and Pedrillo's duets to Osmin's cavatina. Ferro emphasizes the use of piccolo and triangle to provide further Turkish atmosphere.
Maria Grazia Schiavo as Konstanze in Mozart's 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera. Photo © 2011 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
Maria Grazia Schiavo is a soprano assoluto; she came to prominence for her skills in the Baroque repertoire; now she masters a very wide range from coloratura to mezza voce; she ascends easily to top notes and descends from them with equal ease. She received well deserved accolades after her arias. Charles Castronovo is a young but already well-known American lyric tenor, but his performances in Italy are rare. This was an excellent opportunity to get to know his phrasing, his legato and his high Cs. He too was warmly applauded open stage. The others were all of a good high level. It was an excellent idea to have a bass-baritone (Rodney Clarke) in the spoken role of Selim.
A flaw: not one of the singers is German; their singing and their dialogue can be understood, but their diction leaves quite a bit to be desired. However, only German speaking audiences will notice this.
Copyright © 16 April 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
TURKEY
AUSTRIA
UNITED KINGDOM
ROME
ITALY
GRAHAM VICK
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Mahler versus Mahler Musix and Vision April 8
Mahler versus Mahler
Two symphony orchestras are playing Mahler in Rome,
by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
Gustav Mahler was born in 1860 in Bohemia and died in 1911 in Vienna. Thus, during these months, there are two almost parallel anniversaries: 150 years from his birth and 100 from his death. In Rome, two major orchestras have programmed all Mahler's symphonies (and also other music of his) over two 'seasons': namely, from late Spring 2010 until Autumn 2011. I think the Italian capital is the only city where a Mahler fan, like this reporter, can enjoy and compare the composer's nearly full production as played by two quite different orchestras in a span of relatively few months. These two parallel cycles are the evidence that Mahler himself was very right when he reacted to the lack of attention by musicians and reviewers by saying 'Miene Zeit wird kommen' ('My time will come'). I do not know whether any other European town has the privilege of running two Mahler cycles in parallel; certainly, no other Italian town has taken up the task. The Summer Salzburg Festival has a special Mahler section but politically and geographically that is in a different country and musically in a different universe.
Gustav Mahler conducting the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in 1907. Click on the image for higher resolution
The two orchestras are the 103-year-old Orchestra Sinfonica dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the ten-year-old Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma of the Fondazione Roma. The former happened to be conducted by Mahler himself at the beginning of the twentieth century and has already performed all Mahler's music in 1997-2005, ie over an eight year period (but during those years, quite a few symphonies and lieder were played several times by a variety of conductors). The latter has been described in Music & Vision on 4 March 2010 in a long report which illustrated its origins and a tour in Austria.
They are different not only in 'age'. The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia has a budget of nearly fifty million euros per annum -- half provided by the State, the Regional Government and the City Council of Rome. The Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma has a budget of some five million euros per annum, almost entirely provided by a charity, the Fondazione Roma, and receives not even a penny of public subsidies. The ticket prices of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma are about half those of the Sinfonica of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. A curiosity: the latter performs in the 1900 seat Auditorium di Via della Conciliazione which was, for nearly forty years, the 'home' of the former.
Mahler's double marathon in Rome is very different than the cycle implemented, also in the Italian capital, in 1997-2005 . Not only there is a clear competition of young David versus experienced Goliath , but the overall reading is more cohesive and compact than the previous one. In 1997-2005, there was a real crowd of conductors, with major variations in approach and style. Now, at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, five symphonies are entrusted to Antonio Pappano, two to Valery Gergiev and the others to Mikko Franck and Andris Nelson. At the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma, all Mahler's works are conducted by Francesco La Vecchia who, in parallel, has full Mahler programs in Budapest and Seoul.
Francesco La Vecchia conducting the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma . Click on the image for higher resolution
We are half way through the path. A few general comments can be made before focusing on the last two concerts. Pappano has an operatic origin; thus he tends to emphasize the role of soloist and of the chorus and the dramatic tints of the scores. Gergiev loves strong colors and rhythm. La Vecchia follows as strictly as possible Mahler's own instructions.
Let us look at the four most recent concerts: the Symphony No 9, heard on 7 March 2011 conducted by Francesco La Vecchia at the Auditorium in Via della Conciliazione and on 4 April conducted by Antonio Pannano, the Symphony No 1 conducted by Antonio Pappano at the Sala Santa Cecilia on 14 March and the Symphony No 5 under the baton of Francesco La Vecchia on 3 April.
Although the Symphony No 9 has the traditional number of movements (four), it is unusual in that the first and last are slow rather than fast. As is often the case with Mahler, one of the middle movements is a ländler, a traditional Austrian dance. Some scholars hold strong opinions about the similarity of the emotional scope between this Symphony and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 6: in both the first movement can be seen as an epic, autobiographical storm through the tragedies of life, the second movement is a dance, there is a third movement of fast, manic spin (along with flashbacks), and the finale seems like a farewell to life itself. Francesco La Vecchia places emphasis on the Symphony as a farewell; in fact, it was performed after Mahler's death under Bruno Walter's baton and has many points in common with Das Leid von der Erde, Mahler's last will. The first movement embraces a loose sonata form. The key areas provide a continuation of the tonal juxtaposition displayed in earlier works. The work opens with a hesitant, syncopated motif (which La Vecchia, like Leonard Bernstein, interprets as a depiction of Mahler's irregular heartbeat); this motif returns at the height of the movement's development as a sudden intrusion of 'death in the midst of life', announced by trombones and marked within the score 'with the greatest force'. The second movement, the ländler, echoes a dance of death. In the third movement, in the form of a rondo, La Vecchia showed the final maturation of Mahler's contrapuntal skills. The final movement, marked zurückhaltend ('very slowly and held back'; literally, 'reservedly'), opens for strings only. La Vecchia and the orchestra showed how it incorporates a direct quote from the rondo's middle section and becomes an elegy.
Antonio Pappano conducting the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Mahler's Symphony No 1. Photo © 2011 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
In Pappano's hands, Symphony No 9 has stronger colors and tints. It is a grand post-romantic melodrama in four acts. In the first movement, the main subject is man's love for nature; Mahler had a special 'composer's hut' built near his home in Alt-Schluderbach where he would read, think and compose surrounded by the woods. Under Pappano's passionate and professional baton, from the serene sense of nature, the symphony moves to a dramatic recall of life-time memories (the second movement) and to the despair of knowing that the end is now near. In the fourth movement, the slow Adagio is the finding of a Zen-like peace. A simply magnificent, albeit very personal, performance.
Also, Symphony No 1 has four movements:
1. Langsam, Schleppend ('Slowly, dragging') Immer sehr gemächlich ('very restrained throughout')
2. Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell ('Moving strongly, but not too quickly'), Recht gemächlich ('restrained'), a Trio and a ländler-
3. Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen ('Solemnly and measured, without dragging'), Sehr einfach und schlicht wie eine Volksweise ('very simple, like a folk-tune'), and Wieder etwas bewegter, wie im Anfang ('something stronger, as at the start'), a funeral march based on the children's song 'Bruder Martin'
4. Stürmisch bewegt -- Energisch ('Stormily agitated -- Energetic')
The Symphony has also a title, 'The Titan', but it is not 'programme music' or a 'symphonic poem' as was usual at the end of the nineteenth century. The title is just after a novel that Mahler had read and appreciated when he was working on the score. In the interpretation by Pappano and the orchestra, the accent was on the love for nature as an anticipation of the pantheistic vision clearly Mahler embraced in the last few years of his life after a long path: he had been born as a Jew but he was a non-believer, he had converted to Roman Catholicism in a grand manner but just to become General Director of the Vienna Opera (ten years of sufferings due to the many intrigues), and finally -- as fully shown in Symphony No 9 and in Das Lied von der Erde, he had taken up a pantheistic form of Zen. Rightly Pappano and the orchestra emphasized the colors and the tints.
Gustav Mahler. Click on the image for higher resolution
On 3 April, in the Auditorium di Via della Conciliazione, Francesco La Vecchia received accolades at the end of the Symphony No 5. As remarked in Music & Vision of 18 November 2010, when I reviewed the same Symphony as conducted by Valery Gergiev as a part of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Mahler cycle, this is one of Mahler's best known concert pieces in Italy, also because its fourth movement (Adagietto) was the music chosen by Luchino Visconti to accompany one of his latest movies (Death in Venice). In November, Gergiev provided a muscular reading of the symphony and placed a special emphasis on the third movement (Scherzo). La Vecchia has a philological approach with fire in the funeral march and in the Rondo closing the symphony but with the baton softly caressing the orchestra in the Adagietto, performed as a love letter by Gustav Mahler to his wife Alma. Really moving.
All four concerts were warmly applauded.
Copyright © 8 April 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
GUSTAV MAHLER
CZECH REPUBLIC
VIENNA
ANTONIO PAPPANO
ROME
ITALY
ORCHESTRAL MUSIC
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Two symphony orchestras are playing Mahler in Rome,
by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
Gustav Mahler was born in 1860 in Bohemia and died in 1911 in Vienna. Thus, during these months, there are two almost parallel anniversaries: 150 years from his birth and 100 from his death. In Rome, two major orchestras have programmed all Mahler's symphonies (and also other music of his) over two 'seasons': namely, from late Spring 2010 until Autumn 2011. I think the Italian capital is the only city where a Mahler fan, like this reporter, can enjoy and compare the composer's nearly full production as played by two quite different orchestras in a span of relatively few months. These two parallel cycles are the evidence that Mahler himself was very right when he reacted to the lack of attention by musicians and reviewers by saying 'Miene Zeit wird kommen' ('My time will come'). I do not know whether any other European town has the privilege of running two Mahler cycles in parallel; certainly, no other Italian town has taken up the task. The Summer Salzburg Festival has a special Mahler section but politically and geographically that is in a different country and musically in a different universe.
Gustav Mahler conducting the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in 1907. Click on the image for higher resolution
The two orchestras are the 103-year-old Orchestra Sinfonica dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the ten-year-old Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma of the Fondazione Roma. The former happened to be conducted by Mahler himself at the beginning of the twentieth century and has already performed all Mahler's music in 1997-2005, ie over an eight year period (but during those years, quite a few symphonies and lieder were played several times by a variety of conductors). The latter has been described in Music & Vision on 4 March 2010 in a long report which illustrated its origins and a tour in Austria.
They are different not only in 'age'. The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia has a budget of nearly fifty million euros per annum -- half provided by the State, the Regional Government and the City Council of Rome. The Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma has a budget of some five million euros per annum, almost entirely provided by a charity, the Fondazione Roma, and receives not even a penny of public subsidies. The ticket prices of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma are about half those of the Sinfonica of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. A curiosity: the latter performs in the 1900 seat Auditorium di Via della Conciliazione which was, for nearly forty years, the 'home' of the former.
Mahler's double marathon in Rome is very different than the cycle implemented, also in the Italian capital, in 1997-2005 . Not only there is a clear competition of young David versus experienced Goliath , but the overall reading is more cohesive and compact than the previous one. In 1997-2005, there was a real crowd of conductors, with major variations in approach and style. Now, at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, five symphonies are entrusted to Antonio Pappano, two to Valery Gergiev and the others to Mikko Franck and Andris Nelson. At the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma, all Mahler's works are conducted by Francesco La Vecchia who, in parallel, has full Mahler programs in Budapest and Seoul.
Francesco La Vecchia conducting the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma . Click on the image for higher resolution
We are half way through the path. A few general comments can be made before focusing on the last two concerts. Pappano has an operatic origin; thus he tends to emphasize the role of soloist and of the chorus and the dramatic tints of the scores. Gergiev loves strong colors and rhythm. La Vecchia follows as strictly as possible Mahler's own instructions.
Let us look at the four most recent concerts: the Symphony No 9, heard on 7 March 2011 conducted by Francesco La Vecchia at the Auditorium in Via della Conciliazione and on 4 April conducted by Antonio Pannano, the Symphony No 1 conducted by Antonio Pappano at the Sala Santa Cecilia on 14 March and the Symphony No 5 under the baton of Francesco La Vecchia on 3 April.
Although the Symphony No 9 has the traditional number of movements (four), it is unusual in that the first and last are slow rather than fast. As is often the case with Mahler, one of the middle movements is a ländler, a traditional Austrian dance. Some scholars hold strong opinions about the similarity of the emotional scope between this Symphony and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 6: in both the first movement can be seen as an epic, autobiographical storm through the tragedies of life, the second movement is a dance, there is a third movement of fast, manic spin (along with flashbacks), and the finale seems like a farewell to life itself. Francesco La Vecchia places emphasis on the Symphony as a farewell; in fact, it was performed after Mahler's death under Bruno Walter's baton and has many points in common with Das Leid von der Erde, Mahler's last will. The first movement embraces a loose sonata form. The key areas provide a continuation of the tonal juxtaposition displayed in earlier works. The work opens with a hesitant, syncopated motif (which La Vecchia, like Leonard Bernstein, interprets as a depiction of Mahler's irregular heartbeat); this motif returns at the height of the movement's development as a sudden intrusion of 'death in the midst of life', announced by trombones and marked within the score 'with the greatest force'. The second movement, the ländler, echoes a dance of death. In the third movement, in the form of a rondo, La Vecchia showed the final maturation of Mahler's contrapuntal skills. The final movement, marked zurückhaltend ('very slowly and held back'; literally, 'reservedly'), opens for strings only. La Vecchia and the orchestra showed how it incorporates a direct quote from the rondo's middle section and becomes an elegy.
Antonio Pappano conducting the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Mahler's Symphony No 1. Photo © 2011 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
In Pappano's hands, Symphony No 9 has stronger colors and tints. It is a grand post-romantic melodrama in four acts. In the first movement, the main subject is man's love for nature; Mahler had a special 'composer's hut' built near his home in Alt-Schluderbach where he would read, think and compose surrounded by the woods. Under Pappano's passionate and professional baton, from the serene sense of nature, the symphony moves to a dramatic recall of life-time memories (the second movement) and to the despair of knowing that the end is now near. In the fourth movement, the slow Adagio is the finding of a Zen-like peace. A simply magnificent, albeit very personal, performance.
Also, Symphony No 1 has four movements:
1. Langsam, Schleppend ('Slowly, dragging') Immer sehr gemächlich ('very restrained throughout')
2. Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell ('Moving strongly, but not too quickly'), Recht gemächlich ('restrained'), a Trio and a ländler-
3. Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen ('Solemnly and measured, without dragging'), Sehr einfach und schlicht wie eine Volksweise ('very simple, like a folk-tune'), and Wieder etwas bewegter, wie im Anfang ('something stronger, as at the start'), a funeral march based on the children's song 'Bruder Martin'
4. Stürmisch bewegt -- Energisch ('Stormily agitated -- Energetic')
The Symphony has also a title, 'The Titan', but it is not 'programme music' or a 'symphonic poem' as was usual at the end of the nineteenth century. The title is just after a novel that Mahler had read and appreciated when he was working on the score. In the interpretation by Pappano and the orchestra, the accent was on the love for nature as an anticipation of the pantheistic vision clearly Mahler embraced in the last few years of his life after a long path: he had been born as a Jew but he was a non-believer, he had converted to Roman Catholicism in a grand manner but just to become General Director of the Vienna Opera (ten years of sufferings due to the many intrigues), and finally -- as fully shown in Symphony No 9 and in Das Lied von der Erde, he had taken up a pantheistic form of Zen. Rightly Pappano and the orchestra emphasized the colors and the tints.
Gustav Mahler. Click on the image for higher resolution
On 3 April, in the Auditorium di Via della Conciliazione, Francesco La Vecchia received accolades at the end of the Symphony No 5. As remarked in Music & Vision of 18 November 2010, when I reviewed the same Symphony as conducted by Valery Gergiev as a part of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Mahler cycle, this is one of Mahler's best known concert pieces in Italy, also because its fourth movement (Adagietto) was the music chosen by Luchino Visconti to accompany one of his latest movies (Death in Venice). In November, Gergiev provided a muscular reading of the symphony and placed a special emphasis on the third movement (Scherzo). La Vecchia has a philological approach with fire in the funeral march and in the Rondo closing the symphony but with the baton softly caressing the orchestra in the Adagietto, performed as a love letter by Gustav Mahler to his wife Alma. Really moving.
All four concerts were warmly applauded.
Copyright © 8 April 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
GUSTAV MAHLER
CZECH REPUBLIC
VIENNA
ANTONIO PAPPANO
ROME
ITALY
ORCHESTRAL MUSIC
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