Latvian National Opera, 2019
Jānis Liepins, Aik Karapetian, Vladislav Sulimsky, Dana Bramane, Irakli Kakhidze, Romāns Polisadovs, Rihards Millers
ARTE Concert
L'incantesimo (The Enchantment) by Italo Montemezzi is a bit of a rarity for an Italian composer who is now only really known - if known at all - for his opera L'amore dei tre re. Completed in 1943, after the composer fled Mussolini's Italy for America, the short one-act opera has been revived in Riga by the Latvian National Opera and proves to be a good accompaniment for the verismo themes of Leoncavallo's Pagliacci.
As an early twentieth century composer, Montemezzi might be associated with verismo but as the title suggests, L'incantesimo's medieval fairy-tale setting is about as far as you can get on the opposing side of verismo. Musically, Montemezzi is clearly influenced by Wagner and there might be some similarities with the symbolism in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, but there is a verismo character to the music, coloured by the fantastical lush orchestration of Rimsky-Korsakov's legends.
As a shorter work, the approach to music and myth in L'incantesimo is closer to Strauss's Daphne or Rachmaninoff's Aleko, another short work that pairs very well with Pagliacci if a company is adventurous enough. Not that L'incantesimo is much less hot-bloodedly romantic than Cavalleria Rusticana, but the magical fantasy setting perhaps allows a little more leeway for soaring verismo sentiments, rivalry and spilling of blood.
The blood spilled in L'incantesimo however is that of a deer, but not just any ordinary deer. Folco, a medieval lord, has been disturbed by a strange vision while hunting in the woods on a snowy winter evening. He tells his wife Griselda how while chasing down a wolf, a white hind appeared and, as he struck the deer with his knife, it looked up at him with Griselda's suffering eyes.
Frightened and a little shocked, Folco summons his friend Rinaldo asking him to bring a fortune-teller to interpret the vision for him. Rinaldo, a man who once loved and is still in love with Griselda, brings the necromancer Salomone, who tells Folco that the deer tells the true nature of his love for Griselda, that he is only moved by pity for her and in love with death. Folco goes back to try to save his 'deer', but finds that his love has died, leaving Rinaldo the opportunity to again express his feelings for Griselda.
L'incantesimo is an intense little work with not a great deal of dramatic action. Everything is described and enacted with great emotional feeling in the singing, particularly the romantic tenor role of Rinaldo, who essentially is the one who casts the spell here in his expression of his love for Griselda. The lyricism carries its own drama, and with a good tenor - Irakli Kakhidze here singing it wonderfully - it can become a vivid charged piece, soaring up there as much as any verismo work.
Under the direction of Aik Karapetian, the Latvian National Opera's production gives this rarity the full works, the set having a dark fantasy feel, the romantic surges that Jānis Liepins gets the orchestra behind visualised in a huge and slightly sinister moon that hangs over Folco's grand castle under gently falling snow. With its long lines of through composition it certainly emphasises similarities the work might have with Pelléas et Mélisande. There's much to admire also in the dramatic writing for the voice and the singing performances in Riga.
Links: Latvian National Opera, ARTE Concert
