Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Le nozze di Figaro
Royal Opera House, 2015
David McVicar, Leah Hausman, Ivor Bolton, Erwin Schrott, Sophie Bevan, Stéphane Degout, Ellie Dehn, Kate Lindsey, Carlo Lepore, Krystian Adam, Louise Winter, Alasdair Elliott, Jeremy White, Robyn Allegra Parton
Royal Opera House Cinema Live - 5 October 2015
David McVicar's production of Le Nozze di Figaro has been in residence at the Royal Opera House since 2006 and, based on its successful 2015 revival broadcast live to cinemas, it's going to be a hard one to evict. Mozart's great masterpiece is by no means immune to reinvention and reinterpretation, but as the efforts to reinvigorate the last couple of productions of Don Giovanni in Covent Garden show (Zambello and Holten), you can't improve on perfection. Mozart's perfection, that is, just to be clear, but McVicar's production for the Royal Opera House isn't too shabby either.
The secret to the success of the production is that it doesn't try to compete with Mozart and Da Ponte. That's a battle you are never going to win. McVicar's production looks like it is merely functional, traditional and period but there's a lot more to it than that. It's true that there's nothing particularly jarring in the set or costume design, (which is actually updated to around 1830, not that you'd notice), and nothing out of place that might distract your attention away from what it important in Le Nozze di Figaro. In no particular order since they are equally important in that they have to work together; the music, the comedy/drama and attention to the detail of the characterisation.
That all sounds pretty obvious, but it's even more important in a work like Le Nozze di Figaro, which relies on fully rounded characterisation of each one of its many individual characters. You can't really have one weaker that the rest as it will have a knock-on effect on how they interact with one another. True, some are more important to get right than others, and it's more noticeable when they have a greater impact on the key moments and scenes and in the main arias. The last thing you want to do however, particularly when you have good singers in these roles, is mess around with the characterisation. The strength of McVicar's production and the main reason it has longevity is in how he establishes those vital aspects of characterisation in such a way that a new cast can slot into it (and a revival director like Leah Housman) with minimal disruption.
So much for characterisation, if one can really just separate it out from all the other elements. The comedy/drama aspect of The Marriage of Figaro however has to integrate and support the personalities and their interaction. Mozart and Da Ponte's collaboration towards this aspect is nothing short of miraculous. It's never any simple, single emotion either in Le Nozze di Figaro, but rather there's always a deeper, sometimes contrasting and sometimes hidden emotion underlying the surface one. Most evidently the contrast is made explicit in the conflict between the characters - one person's joy brings another one disappointment - and that what brings an edge to the comedy and inspires Mozart's dazzling and incredibly intricate ensembles. The conflicting emotions are there however even within an individual at any given moment, and it's there that you find the poignancy in those famous arias.
This is something you just don't mess around with. Mozart's ability here is such that it not only takes opera into a realm far beyond what the constraints of the previous Baroque tradition, but it's a measure of his genius that there are few composers since who can even come close to him in this regard. McVicar's production seems to be fully aware of this and helps bring out the depth of underlying humanity that lies behind every individual character and in every complex scene where they interact. Given that all of them are equally important to the overall balance and effect, you might still think that particular attention needs to be given nonetheless to Figaro and perhaps Susanna, but in practice, from experience, it would appear to be more important to get the characterisation of Count Almaviva right and establish the nature of his relationship with the Countess as the key link upon which all of the others revolve.
Don Giovanni is more open to interpretation - he can be a victim of his desires and uncontrollable impulses, he can be a sleazy seducer, or he can be a vile aggressor (and an infinite degree of nuance in-between) - but, perhaps because of the more overt class issues and because it is more of a comedy, Count Almaviva is less amenable to interpretation. In some ways he has to exhibit all the characteristics of Don Giovanni's personality simultaneously, not leaning too much towards one aspect or the other. He's not a bumbling fool, nor is he as clever and scheming as he would like to think he is either. As the Countess observes at one point, the Count is jealous only out of pride, which gives one clue to rather more complex motivations, but there is also his position to consider. He acts the way he does because he is a noble and, for better or worse, he has to live up to expectations of how a Count should behave. But he also has human feelings too, and feelings for his wife, even if he has forgotten what they once were.
I would certainly give McVicar credit for his direction here in how he makes all these varied aspects apparent in Count Almaviva's interaction with the other characters, but it's also brilliantly interpreted by Stéphane Degout for all the comic potential that lies within these conflicting, frustrating impulses, weighing and judging every gesture, expression and delivery perfectly. Degout's lyrical baritone is also ideal for this role, and, as ever, he is not just note perfect but dynamically expressive for all those diverse traits. The Countess is just as precisely balanced and even more expressive of her vulnerability in this work and in its interpretation here. Ellie Dehn however isn't quite up to the vocal demands that are required to bring it out, at least not in the first half of this performance. Despite possessing a gorgeous timbre and fullness of tone, her 'Porgi Amor' was weak and imprecise. it could have been nerves, as she fared much better after the interval in her 'Dove sono' and her 'Sull'aria' duet with Sophie Bevan. Bevan herself stepped in as Susanna at the last moment for an indisposed Anita Hartig, her bright performance fitting seamlessly into the production.
Erwin Schrott is, as usual, a law unto himself. He can appear far too casual and relaxed in a role, not really fitting in with the general tone, but his apparently off-hand manner suits Figaro here. By the same token the very relaxed delivery in his singing can appear rather mannered, but it's hard to fault his performance here. Cherubino is a great character, very much the youthful heart of the work, and he should always be a joy. Maybe not steal the show though, and if the role was written any longer it could well do that with someone like Kate Lindsey performing. As it is, Mozart and Da Ponte know just how much of a good thing to give us, so too does Kate Lindsay who is a complete joy every moment she is on the stage.
With this kind of singing and direction, characterisation as a key to the development, pace and tone of the comedy are all perfectly in place. Even in places where the singing isn't particularly strong, the tight knit production can mitigate against any negative impact that this might otherwise have on the work as a whole. Musical support and integration is no less vital and Ivor Bolton's conducting of the Royal Opera House orchestra has a lightness of touch that doesn't exaggerate or overstate the case. This is as close to perfection as any Le Nozze di Figaro gets, and by extension it's as good as opera gets.
Links: Royal Opera House
Gioachino Rossini - Il Signor Bruschino
Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro - 2013
Daniele Rustoni, Teatro Sotterraneo, Carlo Lepore, Maria Aleida, Roberto de Candia, Francisco Brito, David Alegret, Andrea Vincenzo Bonsignore, Chiara Amarù
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
Irony can be used to good effect in opera in certain circumstances. It's always a good fallback when an opera is a little too immersed in period attitudes and behaviours, or when the musical style is no longer in fashion. You'll see irony used a lot with modern productions of Meyerbeer, for example, as in Laurent Pelly's Royal Opera House production of Robert le Diable. Not everyone will agree that it's the best way of viewing all such works, but it helps if the opera in question is a comedy and an entertainment and not expected to be taken seriously.
The good people at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro aren't afraid of applying a little ironical distance to their productions when the occasion demands it. It's not just a case of being clever and modern, as much as the only way of reaching back and finding a way to revitalise works that in the present day would seem a little stagy and conventional. Certainly many of Rossini's early works are far from masterpieces, but there are wonderful innovations, humour and techniques in them that a little judicious irony can bring out and highlight without getting too carried away.
Such an example would be the composer's very first opera, Demetrio e Polibio which the Rossini Opera Festival, with the clever hand of Davide Livermore directing, characterised as a backstage ghost version of a long "dead" opera. With such techniques, creating their own little world where Rossini's works can be appreciated for what they are worth (and sharing them with the world in the form of wonderful Blu-ray releases), the Rossini Opera Festival can be said to have created their own kind of Rossiniland. In Rossiniland, the spirit of Rossini is celebrated and might even have something relevant to offer the modern world, even if that's just mildly diverting entertainment.
The one-act 'farsa giocosa' Il Signor Bruschino is such a minor work that would probably otherwise forever be consigned to obscurity if it were considered in terms of its modest surface merits. It's pleasant, inoffensive, contrived, conventional in the extreme, and running to just over an hour in length, there's no real reason to put on above other great works by the composer other than for the sake of completeness. The Rossini Opera Festival's remit goes far beyond dusting down creaky obscure works for an airing now and again, but really researching new Critical Editions and giving the works the best possible presentation to a modern day audience. There's not a lot of point in trying to recreate their appeal to an early 19th century audience after all, is there?
With this kind of adventurous spirit, the festival are willing to look more widely at how opera can be presented and engage a young collective theatre group with no previous experience of opera directing called Teatro Sotterraneo (Underground Theatre Group) to try to bring something fresh to Il Signor Bruschino. It's a work that could really do with not only a bit of a dusting down, but a bit of restoration work and a good polish as well. It's Teatro Sotterraneo who come up with the ironical Rossiniland concept here, seeing the work in the context of it being performed by guys in suits in a theme park dedicated to the works of Gioachino Rossini.
In the Rossiniland theme park, visitors, tourists and school groups can wander around and see little scenes from in the maestro's works performed by actors in outrageous wigs and colourful 'period' costumes. They munch some popcorn, take a few selfies and then move on to the gift shop or to the next attraction. Inevitably, when there are signs advertising Il Barbiere di Sevilla, La Gazza Ladra and Guglielmo Tell, there's not a lot of reason to hang around the Il Signor Bruschino too long, but a few adventurous souls or couples who have wandered off the beaten path and ended up there seem to enjoy the modest charms of this unusual work.
Within this kind of setting and with such a work, Il Signor Bruschino can seem like a bit of a pastiche or a parody. In terms of music and plot development it's by the numbers romantic farce with confusion over assumed identities and marriage intentions that runs as smoothly and entertainingly as a Haydn comic opera, with some notable Mozart influences in there. Gaudenzio, the father of the bride to be, has some very Sarastro-like moment of intoning gravely, while his daughter Sofia bemoans the cruelty of her situation with a Donna Elvira-like character and occasional Queen of the Night flourishes.
It's never going to be thought a great opera, and even a little ironical distance isn't going to bring out any surprise revelations here. The comedy still falls flat more often than not, raising little more than a chuckle now and again. There is some genuine engagement that comes through however between the 'actor's performance' of the opera and the visitors who stop by. A young couple, for instance, soon lose interest in the plot and are more interested in each other, but it ties in well to Gaudenzio's infuriation with young people being oblivious to those who are trying to act in their interests, or at least think they are. It's nothing profound, it's not particularly clever, but it connects the world of Rossini with the modern world in a nice way.
Musically too there are of course some wonderful Rossini-isms. The overture is a delight (as they always are with Rossini), and has little hammering interludes with the back of the bow on the violins - Rossini far ahead of avant-garde modern composers in that respect. And even though it is only one act long, follows a familiar sequence of numbers and is occasionally weighed down with recitative, Rossini still fills the work with vivacious music, catchy melodies, the occasional bravura aria and a particularly wonderful trio involving Gaudenzio, Bruschino and Florville.
There's a danger that ironical distance can introduce a measure of singing by numbers, not really giving the performers anything substantial to engage with in characterisation that is already insubstantial to begin with. You feel this is the case initially with the bland romantic leads of David Alegret's Florville and Maria Aleida's Sofia, but the singing is wonderful and beautifully suited to the roles, Aleida in particular making rather more of the role with some virtuoso singing. Carlo Lepore and Roberto de Candia however bring great comic vitality to the father roles and Chiara Amarù is a bright Marianna.
On Blu-ray, the opera is given the usual high standard of presentation. The image is perfect and the sound in particular gives a fine indication of the quality of the score and how well Daniele Rustoni conducts the performance. It could be a little less 'classical' and a little more free and energetic though you feel. The extra features on the BD include a Cast Gallery and a short Making Of that explores Teatro Sotterraneo's thoughtful and irreverent approach to directing the production. The BD is region-free, with subtitles in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean.
Gioachino Rossini - L'Italiana in Algeri
Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Liège, 2013
Bruno Campanella, Emilio Sagi, Enkelejda Shkosa, Carlo Lepore, Daniele Zanfardino, Mario Cassi, Liesbeth Devos, Julie Bailly, Laurent Kubla
Grand Théâtre de Liège, 9 February 2013 - ARTE Live Web
The Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège have a good track record with Rossini and bel canto work, particularly on works that have a more comic edge. One of Rossini's big melodramas or opera seria works would present a greater challenge and require some big guns to do it justice, but as they demonstrated most recently with the little known early Rossini opera L'Equivoco Stravagante, with a little bit of resource and imagination, there can be considerable colour and entertainment to be drawn out of the lighter Rossini dramma giocoso works. The requirements for L'Italiana in Algeri lie somewhere in-between. It's a popular comedy, but like Il Barbiere di Sevilla it also requires a good balance between strong singers, comic timing and a sense of style or panache to really make it work. Liège do pretty well on all fronts in their latest production.
Director Emilio Sagi puts the emphasis of the production on style, and there's good reason for that. Much of the comedy of L'Italiana in Algeri (An Italian Girl in Algiers) relies upon the premise of the exoticism and glamour of its Eastern setting, in the palace of Mustafà, the Bey of Algiers, with his seraglio of wives, slaves and eunuchs. The Bey however is tired of his wife Elvira and wants Haly, the captain of his corsairs, to procure an Italian wife for him, so the opera also has to present the idea of Italian style and women as being just as exotically attractive as a North African harem. You can of course make even that idea alone funny - and there's lots of spaghetti eating here to play with that in the Pappataci scene - but the idea of Italian exoticism works best if you set it, as Emilio Sagi does here, in the glamorous age of the Dolce Vita of the 1960s.
The production achieves this impressively with the simplest of means. Enrique Bordolini's sets provide a few pointed Byzantine arches to give a flavour of an Eastern palace, working with the colouration of Eduardo Bravo's lighting and Renata Schussheim's costume designs to make this a most attractive production that works perfectly with the playful tone of Rossini's writing for L'Italiana in Algeri. There's solid work from Bruno Campanella in the pit that is similarly well-attuned to the content. This is consequently a sophisticated Rossini production that emphasises how well the composer could bring his musical resources, his sense of structure and timing to bear to play out a series of entertaining and sometimes silly comic situations. It is not as raucously funny as it might be - some of the recitative is cut, reducing the effectiveness of the situation between Lindoro and Elvira - but the direction and the tone established in Sagi's production is consistent and entertaining.
With only a few minor reservations, the casting is also excellent and certainly as good as it ought to be for this opera. Liège get the right balance of freshness from their regular Italian opera regulars for the secondary roles (solid performances from Julie Bailly, Liesbeth Devos and Laurent Kubla as Zulma, Elvira and Haly) and combine it with experienced singers in the more challenging main roles. Not so much Daniele Zanfardino - last seen in Liège's production of Rossini's L'Equivoco Stravagante - as Lindoro, but he has the right timbre of voice for a Rossini tenor, if not quite the strength or range. That's not so much of an issue here, and he copes well with the demands of the role.
Much more critical to establishing the tone of the dramma giocoso is the range and the interplay between Isabella and the Bey, and the Royal Opéra de Wallonie had two excellent singers in these roles. Carlo Lepore's singing is beautifully grave and musical, his bass working well alongside the other singers, round out in the duets and ensembles. In acting terms, his handling of Mustafa's comic potential was also perfect, suitably commanding, faintly ridiculous and comically lecherous. He needs however a feisty Isabella to be a bit more spirited than the comparatively weak Elvira that he wants to get rid of, but she also has to be demanding enough to knock him into place, and that's exactly what you got with Albanian mezzo-soprano Enkelejda Shkosa.
That's about all you want from L'Italiana in Algeri - a sense of style, a little bit of exoticism, a bit of unstrained comedy and some good singing that doesn't stand out or draw attention just for the sake of ornamentation. The latest Liège production to be broadcast via Internet Streaming, L'Italiana in Algeri can be enjoyed for free for the next few months on the ARTE Live Web site.
Gioachino Rossini - La Cenerentola
RAI Television, 2012
Carlo Verdone, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Lena Belkina, Edgardo Rocha, Anna Kasyan, Annunziata Vestri, Carlo Lepore, Simone Alberghini, Lorenzo Regazzo
BBC Television
La Cenerentola is the latest production from Andrea Andermann, who every year provides Italian television and the world with an ambitious live performance of a popular Italian opera, shot in the actual locations and at the times specified in the libretto, and broadcast live as it is filmed for television. With operas like Tosca and Rigoletto (the latter in particular spectacularly filmed in and around the Ducal Palace in Mantua two years ago), there is an element of the works that is enhanced to some extent by being able to view them in their exact historical locations - locations that also happen to look quite stunning. But Rossini's version of the Cinderella story, La Cenerentola? Well, you can see the problem. How can a fairytale possibly benefit from or even be enhanced by the kind of realism that goes into an Andrea Andermann production?
The notion of setting it in Turin has more to it than helping spread around the benefits that an Andermann production gives to the Italian tourist industry. Turin is traditionally the home of the Italian Royal family, and since Cinderella's marriage to a Prince is a central part of the work, there is some merit and justification in the choice. It doesn't take you long past the opening titles - the Overture at least pleasantly animated to give Cinderella a background that leads to her being an orphan now with a stepfather and stepsisters - to get the feeling however that the whole production is fundamentally misconceived. Setting Don Magnifico's baronial mansion of Act I under harsh overly bright studio lighting for television viewing makes it look neither fairytale-like nor realistic. There are no dark chimney corners, no opulent rooms - it just looks like a studio set with cheap stage costumes and operatic acting. There is some benefit in how it allows the camera to flow along with the action outside the house into the garden for the arrival of the Prince, but otherwise, the opera style seems out of place in its "actual location" surroundings.
More than that, taking La Cenerentola away from the stage actually diminishes the work and reduces the magic of the opera's wonderful centrepiece scenes - the transformation of Cinderella and the coach journeys. Here, in a live setting and in real locations, those scenes can only be done through the animation framing sequences that are inserted periodically to link scenes and acts. Again, one can't help feel that introducing realism to La Cenerentola somewhat defeats the purpose of the work, but it doesn't even have the benefit of theatrical "magic" either. Attempts to add some of that sparkle back in through the sprinkling of "magic dust" and kaleidoscopic effects added in post-production doesn't really make up for what is missing here, and it actually comes across as quite kitsch instead. To its credit, the ballroom scenes filmed in a palace are every bit as spectacular as you would imagine, and much better than anything that could be achieved on the stage.
If the live on-location idea is misconceived for Cinderella, Rossini's work is magical enough to work on its own terms - severely cut though it is here to fit television schedules - and fortunately that's the saving grace of this production. Latvian mezzo-soprano Lena Belkina proved to be very pleasing to the eyes and the ears with a classic dark beauty of Anna Netrebko and even a similarity in appearance with Maria Callas. She doesn't really have the depth, the power or the richness of voice of those singers, or even the fullness of tone and expression that Cecilia Bartoli, for example, has brought to this particular role - but she is well suited to this slightly lighter (lightweight?) production of a Rossini work that should be played with delicacy of tone and bright wit.
Unfortunately, quite aside from the live and on-location issues, the direction of Gianluigi Gelmetti doesn't really exploit the comic brilliance of the work. As well sung as the roles of Cinderella and Don Ramiro are, neither Belkina nor Edgardo Rocha are given enough to do, and their characters come over as rather bland. Even Thisbe and Clorinda, the ugly step-sisters, aren't fully developed here or used to the advantages that Anna Kasyan and Annunziata Vestri are vocally and dramatically capable of bringing to the roles. Only Carlo Lepore's Don Magnifico comes across with the requisite strength of character and voice that lifts the dynamic of the production above the merely functional.
There's no particular flair to the filming either this time around. With Rigoletto in 2010 we had direction and cinematography by filmmakers as renowned as Marco Bellochio and Vittorio Storaro, but La Cenerentola has no such distinction. There's an attempt to bring some visual character by involving a ball of yarn to the "tangled knot" revelation scene, but by and large the direction is rather leaden, and never manages to bring the work to life or match the dazzling wit and sparkling nature of Rossini's music. It's a made-for-TV La Cenerentola, nothing more, that sadly has little to do with Rossini or real opera.
