Puccini - Madama Butterfly (London, 2017)

Giacomo Puccini - Madama Butterfly

Royal Opera House, London - 2017

Antonio Pappano, Moshe Leiser, Patrice Caurier, Ermolela Jaho, Marcelo Puente, Scott Hendricks, Elizabeth Deshong, Carlo Bosi, Jeremy White, Yuriy Yurchuk, Emily Edmonds

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

Straight off I'm sure you can think of two good reasons why you would want to watch yet another version of Madama Butterfly, this one recorded at the Royal Opera House in 2017. The first reason is that it's conducted by Antonio Pappano, who has delivered some sublime performances of Puccini at Covent Garden. The second is Ermonela Jaho and again it's primarily for her Puccini, first really coming to attention of the London audience in Suor Angelica. There's a third reason obviously, which is the opera itself which is sure to have a compelling charge with this combination of artists.

As it happens you won't be disappointed or let down by any of those expectations. What is rarer, and which you might not see at the Royal Opera House production nor expect to see, is a production that successfully explores the work in any new way or adapts its themes. No matter what else a director brings to Madama Butterfly it simply has to deliver on colour, spectacle and exoticism above all else. Much like Richard Jones' recent refresh of the Royal Opera House's La Bohème, Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier keep this production relatively traditional but hopefully not too familiar, allowing it to be adaptable to the tone and themes of the work rather than simply providing pretty picture postcard imagery.

The house that Pinkerton purchases for his new Japanese bride then retains the familiar paper panelled walls of a traditional Japanese house, but they are oversized screens that when raised offer different views and backgrounds. Initially we have a period photo view of Nagasaki when Pinkerton arrives, a cherry blossom and rolling hills in a Japanese painting for Cio-Cio-San's arrival that has the same stylised feel as the Royal Opera House's Turandot, making it look like the ROH are aiming for a middle-of-the-road consistent style in their Puccini operas (and perhaps elsewhere).

The production retains the familiarity of the location, keeps the costumes traditional and sticks to the themes of culture clash and romantic ideals. The background representation and lighting however become a little more abstractly tied to the emotional undercurrents as the opera progresses. The background goes black for the stormy arrival of the Bonze and Kate Pinkerton first appears as an ominous shadow silhouetted against the screens outside. The end of Butterfly's dreams is accompanied by the falling blooms of a magnolia, again against a death black background.

As expected then Ermonela Jaho's performance is worth seeing. She doesn't always have the fullness of voice that you need for the role, but there's some lovely singing here, true passion and a strong dramatic performance, all of which combined succeed in hitting you where it hurts. Pappano is equally adept turning it on and holding back at all the right places, showing us the cracks beneath the gloss as Butterfly's ideal surrenders to the reality. And regardless of whether the story may be manipulative, there is a heightened emotional realism of the passions in Madama Butterfly that Puccini succeeds in delivering and which the production at least attempts to emulate.

Since we are enumerating good reasons why this particular production is worth watching, the next on the list would be Elizabeth Deshong. No slight on Marcelo Puente who sings Pinkerton well even though he's characterisation here is a little non-committal, but it's Elizabeth Deshong's Suzuki who really impresses, expressing everything that Cio-Cio-San is unable or unwilling to recognise and making it just as heartfelt as those revelations that eventually reach her mistress. Scott Hendricks - ouch! - is sadly well out of his comfort zone as Sharpless and it does unfortunately present a rather jarring effect in the scenes in which he appears. Carlo Bosi on the other hand is an experienced Goro, but - perhaps like the production as a whole - it's all too familiar to really allow any nuance or newness to creep in.

On Blu-ray, Madama Butterfly is a treat for the quality of the visual presentation, not least for how the lossless high resolution audio tracks allow the listener to appreciate the detail of the composition and the quality and dynamism of the musical performance. Extras include an Introduction to the opera, Pappano and Jaho in rehearsal and a Cast Gallery. Helen Greenwald recounts the history of the work's composition, its dramatic inspiration and its oriental musical influences, as well as the now familiar account of the catastrophic reception of the work at its premiere at La Scala in Milan.

Links: Royal Opera House

Verdi - Giovanna d'Arco (La Scala, 2015 - Webcast)

Giuseppe Verdi - Giovanna d'Arco

Teatro alla Scala, 2015

Riccardo Chailly, Moshe Leiser, Patrice Caurier, Anna Netrebko, Francesco Meli, Devid Cecconi, Dmitry Beloselskiy

ARTE Concert - 7 December 2015

I suppose it can't be easy for La Scala to aspire to be a modern progressive European opera house and at the same time keep the more vociferous elements of its audience happy. The opening performance of the new season on the day celebrating the city's patron saint is always a useful barometer for measuring where the Milan opera house is going to sit in the coming year and how successful those efforts are going to be. Based on the new production of Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco, with Riccardo Chailly taking over from Daniel Barenboim as principal conductor, there seems to be some measure of compromise involved and a return to the Scala's core Italian repertoire. While there might be a few reservations, it's hard however not to see the big opening night performance as being largely a successful one.

It's probably safest to give the Italian public at La Scala a Verdi opera, but based on last year's Tcherniakov La Traviata, that's not necessarily a guarantee of unanimous acclaim. Rather than beg comparisons with another Rigoletto or La Traviata, La Scala have instead chosen to open the 2015/16 season with of one of the composer's lesser-known but worthy early operas, Giovanna d'Arco, one moreover that was first performed at La Scala in Milan in 1845. If it's done right you're onto a winner and La Scala take no chances here engaging Anna Netrebko, a singer willing and capable of adding another striking Verdi soprano role to her repertoire. It's a role she has sung before only in concert in Salzburg in 2013, but here she performs it on the dramatic stage for the first time. Netrebko doesn't disappoint.

Joan of Arc is one of those challenging Verdi soprano roles that sound amazing when they are done right, but there are few who are capable of doing it with the kind of passion, control and personality that Netrebko brings to the role here. Her deep voice does occasionally sound like it's getting 'woolier', but it's a big and expressive voice that can take on the technical challenges of Giovanna. Netrebko can also throw herself into a performance without putting a step wrong or a note out of place. Her performance here is utterly professional, almost too good you might even think and too smooth in delivery, but no - it's simply superb singing and a fine dramatic performance, no bones about it.

It's by no means a one-woman show however, and there are other significant roles in this opera that are well cast here, with Francesco Meli a wonderfully lyrical Carlo VII, and good supporting performances from Devid Cecconi replacing Carlos Alvarez as Giacomo and Dmitry Beloselskiy as Talbot. It helps that these performances are all complementary, working well with one another and with Netrebko - Meli in particular forming an incredible duo with Netrebko. I wasn't totally sold on the musical performance under Chailly. Musically, it feels a little restrained and this early Verdi could do with a bit more 'letting loose'. I haven't seen any criticism of Chailly elsewhere however, so it's perhaps best not to judge that from the less than perfect medium of a streamed internet broadcast.

Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier production seems to find a good compromise between period and conceptual, but it doesn't work entirely satisfactorily. It's perhaps not the most original way of achieving that, Giovanna here seeming to be a 19th century woman suffering a mental breakdown, identifying in her dreams with Joan of Arc. The idea has merit and basis in the underlying psychology of Joan of Arc, particularly with how it's explored in Solera's libretto based on Friedrich Schiller's drama. The woman/Joan appears to have suffered a trauma, perhaps sexual, and seeks to find empowerment in her dreams of being the religious saviour of her people. Her love for her king is somewhat ambiguous however, and it raises troubling notions of how she can retain her purity and chastity, particularly in relation to her father and society look upon her presumption.

The action then all takes place in Giovanna's bedroom, the floor and walls slightly tilted, the king appearing in her visions all in gold, like a statue come to life. By the end of the prelude however, the dream has exploded into full-blown delusion, the armies and citizens pouring through the walls in spectacular fashion. The whole things brings to mind Netrebko's performance in Iolanta for the Met, and the father here is similarly a protective, powerful authority figure who attempts to hold her back from her true self or who she wants to be. She needs to be grander to overcome his objection and concerns and be seen as pure in his eyes. The whole father-daughter set-up very much Verdi however, and thematically very close to Rigoletto. Chailly highlights those musical references in the shimmering lightning effects of one scene and particularly in the final death scene.

Leiser and Caurier take this theme of religious purity and redemption a little bit further, having Jesus walk onto the stage and pass on a cross for her to carry - but it fits in with the heightened drama here and the frequent references to Giovanna's chastity. It also strengthens the charge of blasphemy laid against Giovanna for her to be burnt at the stake. It has an internal consistency then, even if it is far removed from Verdi, Solera and Schiller's original idea, never mind the historical reality. You could see this Giovanna's battlefield death as merely being a delusion of a woman on the stake, only the stake is also a delusion in this version, which doesn't leave you with a whole lot of reality to grasp onto. You get a fairly modern production then, but it's one which still allows all the armour and stirring calls to battle. Most of all however you have Verdi and Anna Netrebko, and I think most would happily settle for that.

Links: ARTE Concert, Teatro alla Scala

Mozart - Die Zauberflote (Wiener Staatsoper, 2014 - Webcast)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Die Zauberflöte

Weiner Staatsoper, 2014

Adam Fischer, Moshe Leiser, Patrice Caurier, Benjamin Bruns, Markus Werba, Thomas Ebenstein, Franz-Josef Selig, Iride Martinez, Olga Bezsmertna, Jochen Schmeckenbecher, Benedikt Kobel, Regine Hangler, Ulrike Helzel, Carole Wilson, Annika Gerhards, Marian Talaba, Janusz Monarcha

Wiener Staatsoper Live at Home - 4 January 2015

There are many ways to play Die Zauberflöte and different types of emphasis you can place on each of the different aspects and rich themes of the work. It can be playful or esoteric, dark or light, grand, ritualistic and ceremonial, or an all-out comedy that delights in the absurd situations and characters. Ideally, of course, a production should incorporate all of the above, but it helps if it settles for a consistent tone or purpose. Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier's production for the Vienna State Opera does fit in a bit of everything, even if it is a little messy about it, but it's overall purpose is more difficult to determine.

In my experience, you can almost always get an idea of the tone of a production of Die Zauberflöte by looking at how the Three Ladies are dressed. (It's true, you can try this at home by looking at the production photos of any Die Zauberflöte). In this case it's a bit mix and match, an assortment of formal dress, ballroom glitter, gypsy chic and pantomime dame, with no uniformity even between the ladies themselves. The same applies to non-period specific dress the rest of the cast wear, with Tamino in Turkish pants and a hooded sweatshirt, Pamina in a prom dress, and Papageno at least looking traditionally bird-creature like. It's not that I'm trying (or likely) to get a job as a fashion writer, but by the end there does seem to be some significance to the use of costumes to the overall purpose that Leiser and Caurier have adopted here for the work.

The directors' view of Die Zauberflöte seems to be based on the notion of its childlike view of the world. There are mysterious forces at work that as a child we aren't entirely able to make sense of. The behaviours and deeper motivations at work between mother and father (Königen der Nacht and Sarastro) aren't easy to determine, there are dangers all around, rites of passage that have to be navigated and arduous tasks and seem to serve no useful purpose. At the end of the trials in this production however, Tamino and Pamina haven gained wisdom and knowledge and emerge dressed in smart business suits ready for the adult world outside. Papageno, of course, by refusing to accept the demands of  adulthood, doesn't change and retains his childhood innocence and ignorance.

That doesn't sound like it's entirely in the spirit of Mozart and Schikaneder's original intentions for this magical adventure. If Mozart was certainly aiming to show that knowledge and enlightenment is better than ignorance and superstition, it wasn't with the intention of moulding people into conformity as corporate drones in suits. I don't know for certain, but that might not entirely be the end of the story in this production. Leiser and Caurier, in their all encompassing view of the work, do seem to give due consideration and acknowledgement to one of the most important elements of the work, one reflected in the title itself. Die Zauberflöte celebrates music in all its forms, from popular melodies to grand ceremonial and sacred pieces, and through music we can perhaps still get back in touch with the mystic, with the magical, with childhood.

Or perhaps I'm being over-generous. There is a lack of consistency to the production and an absence of the sense of otherworldly wonder that you would associate with much of Die Zauberflöte. On the other hand, the familiar set-pieces are at least often given a different spin, do relate to the content and the themes and even raise a wry smile now and again. The serpent first appears as a shadow before its decapitated remains fall onto the stage; the Queen of the Night makes a suitably impressive entrance, as well as a good exit in Act II with chairs flying in her wake; Monostatos and his "Polizei" sprout tutus when they encounter Papageno and his magic bells; and there's even a fun collection of wild animals dancing to Tamino's magic flute. You'll even find glowing pyramids in profusion in Sarastro's kingdom, so the production isn't devoid of traditional symbols and imagery.

The real quality of Die Zauberflöte, and where the work really comes to life, is in the colour that Mozart injects into the music, and in the colour of the characters themselves. This is where the absurd story gains true meaning and magic - which, as I say, I think the director's acknowledge - but it's not entirely borne out by the rather rote and colourless musical and singing performances here in Vienna. Conducted by Adam Fischer, the music is beautifully played, but it's a full orchestration and not period instruments. It comes across then as rather homogeneous, lacking character and conviction for the variety of tones in this opera, never exciting, never stirring, driven or even as playful as it might be. The pace is also rather leaden, draining the energy out of pieces like Pamina and Pagageno's duet and almost dragging 'In diesen heiligen Hallen' to a grinding halt.

The performers try hard to find a way to work between the music and the stage direction, but - with the exception of Thomas Ebenstein's energetic Monostatos - they don't manage to bring any additional edge or colour to the production. The singing can hardly be faulted, Benjamin Bruns a capable Tamino, Olga Bezsmertna a lyrical Pamina and Markus Werba a bright Papageno, but the performances come across as somewhat rote, over-familiar and unengaging, with little real personality injected into the them. On the musical theme of the work, Tamino says that every note he plays on his magical flute "stems from the heart". Music from the heart is what you get from Mozart too, and that's where the magic in Die Zauberflöte lies, but there was little sense of it here.

This performance of Die Zauberflöte was streamed for live broadcast via the Wiener Staatsoper's Live at Home streaming service. The next broadcast is David McVicar's production of TRISTAN UND ISOLDE on 18th Jan, while Richard Strauss's SALOME can be seen on 23rd Jan.

Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming programme; Staatsoper Live at Home video

Handel - Giulio Cesare in Egitto

George Frideric Handel - Giulio Cesare in Egitto

Salzburg Festival, Haus für Mozart, 2012

Giovanni Antonini, Moshe Leiser, Patrice Caurier, Andreas Scholl, Cecilia Bartoli, Anne Sofie von Otter, Philippe Jaroussky, Christophe Dumaux, Jochen Kowalski, Ruben Drole, Peter Kálmán

ARTE Live Web Internet Streaming, 27 May 2012

The question of how to stage a Baroque opera, rather different in form from the more familiar narrative drama form established in 19th century opera, has been a tricky issue that has had to be addressed in order to bring these works back into the modern opera repertoire. How do you make a rather long-winded and out-dated style of opera appealing enough to engage an audience through all the ornate embellishments and opera seria conventions? It helps of course if the score is by Handel, and it helps if the opera in question has a subject as juicy as Julius Cesar’s campaign in Egypt and his romantic encounter with Cleopatra, with some beautiful, memorable arias, and a considerable amount of profuse romantic declarations and rejections, and large amounts of political plotting and scheming. Despite being the most popularly staged Handel opera, the work - four hours long and featuring no less than four principal countertenor/castrato roles - does present considerable challenges in the staging of these event, since most of the action is alluded to only in the brief recitative and usually takes place off-stage. An “authentic” period treatment for the four hours of Giulio Cesare in Egitto could be a bit of a slog for an audience without some visual entertainment, and it seems to be with that principle in mind that Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier’s production of Handel’s 1724 opera for the 2012 Salzburg Pentecost Festival (newly under the directorship of Cecilia Bartoli) is certainly nothing like a period treatment.

Let’s just take a couple of early examples to see how they approach the long drawn-out expressions of deep emotions that establishes the characters and their relation to each other in the critical First Act. Cornelia, aghast at the murder of her husband Pompeo, his head cut off and presented to Cesare by Tolomeo in a misguided attempt to gain favour and the rule of Egypt, sings of her loss in an exquisite lament (‘Priva son d’ogni conforto’) that doesn’t actually require her to do anything dramatically, just emote the pain. Sung eloquently and movingly by Anne Sofie von Otter, the sentiments don’t really need any further elaboration, but Leiser and Caurier choose to show the depths of Cornelia’s despair by having her place her head in the jaws of a crudely manufactured giant rubber crocodile. Or - how should one stage the aria ‘L’empio, sleale, indegno’, where Tolomeo vents his anger at Cesare, while standing alone on the stage? Well, Leiser and Caurier have him tear apart a foam dummy of Cesar (one that bizarrely has arrived earlier on the top of the limousine bearing the arrival of the Roman Emperor), pulling bloody innards out of the stomach and biting into them.

Evidently such scenes clearly bear no relation to naturalism, never mind tradition, and as the early booing from the audience at Tolomeo’s tantrum here demonstrates, it’s clearly not for everyone. Whether it’s to your taste or not, in both cases, it can’t be denied that the visual expression of those scenes don’t really do anything more than simply match the extravagance and depth of feelings as they are expressed by both characters through the excessively ornate terms of the da capo aria. The nature of the convention and its lack of adherence to any kind of naturalism in dramatic situations is even played upon in Act II, when Cesare’s General, Curio - dressed in modern army combat gear - looks on in a frustrated manner as he tries to get the Emperor into a bulletproof vest and away from a group of assassins approaching them in Cleopatra’s palace, only for Cesare to insist on returning to the front of the stage to finish the long repetitions of his da capo aria. It’s clever, it’s knowing, it’s aware of the conventions and working within them, but most importantly, Leiser and Caurier’s production of Giulio Cesare in Egitto is never boring.

Updating the involvement of a major Western power in the turmoil of the Middle-East to a modern setting is however clearly always going to generate some amount of controversy and to their credit, Leiser and Caurier don’t shy away from scenes that, in some cases, almost seem designed to shock and provoke a reaction. Little of that however relates to any actual commentary on real-life modern-day situations other than in the broadest of terms, but there are certainly recognisable features of present-day Egypt, the wider Middle-East conflict and recent Arab Spring rebel uprisings, with the stage bearing all the signs of a desert war, littered with burning tanks and, um, giant lizards. As head of the invading foreign power, Cesare here is keen to strike up a deal with the new regime, installing Tolomeo as the new puppet ruler in an arrangement that will be beneficial to Rome for the setting up of oil wells in the region. In this context, having seen his father killed by this cruel regime, Sesto becomes a terrorist and straps a bomb around his waist for a suicide attack, assisted by his grieving mother. Bombs rain down in a shock-and-awe battle towards the end of the conflict, as the rebels take on the government forces. Without having to make any overt commentary on the Middle East, it’s a scenario that a modern audience would be able to relate to - certainly more than Cesar’s campaign in Egypt in 48 BC - but what is even more surprising is how well it actually works hand-in-hand with the themes, if not the actual historical events, recounted in Handel’s work.

The directors however - depending on your view - could be seen as pushing things a little too far into parody. Certainly the abuse of power, the sexual improprieties and the mistreatment of women that go along with it are all part and parcel of the exercise of political authority and ambition - as is Cleopatra’s use of seduction to try to gain power herself - but the manner in which these scenes are depicted seems to be fully considered according to the nature of the characters and not merely put in to shock the audience. For Cleopatra’s part, it all seems to be done with a sense of fun, and Cecilia Bartoli (well used to working with this directing team) throws herself bravely into the role, and not just in singing terms - which you would expect anyway. She seems to enjoy playing the part of this sexy temptress, vamping it up in a leather outfit that emphasises her ample bosom, or as a dancing girl with feather fans, even dancing like an Egyptian while wearing a wig of the Queen’s famous bob hairstyle. At one point in Act II she even rides a rocket bomb (as Cupid’s dart) into the sky, which earns huge applause, although her stunning delivery of the aria might have had something to do with that. Her character’s slip into lamentations in the second half of the work however is handled without any such fuss or spectacle (although she also feels like sacrificing herself to the rubber crocodile at one point). So too, the enslavement of Cornelia and the attempts to use her as a bargaining tool for sale on is treated with great delicacy, but the “villains” less so, Tolomeo shown jerking off to a porn mag while singing “Belle dee di questo core”.

More than simply setting out to shock or upset, the impression given is that, in their attempt to prove that opera seria doesn’t have to be just a long series of tedious arias with short sections of recitative to set them up, the directors have perhaps just gone too far in the other direction and thrown in far too many ideas that don’t always work. This Giulio Cesare in Egitto is just overflowing with ideas and there’s almost too much to take in. But one thing for sure is that it’s never, ever boring, and in a four-hour Handel opera, that’s quite an achievement. Just as importantly, it doesn’t detract from what it the most important element of the work, and that is its expression through the singing. Bartoli, as noted above, is just outstanding, fully entering into the role and singing it beautifully, powerfully and with genuine feeling and understanding for the character of Cleopatra. Andreas Scholl’s delicate countertenor also fully embodies the character of Cesare, the singing impassioned, the da capo coloratura both expressive and impressive. The real key to the success of this production however lies in the equal attention given to the superb casting and performances of the other roles, particularly Anne Sofie von Otter’s Cornelia and Philippe Jaroussky’s Sesto. Their expressions of deep anguish underpin the seriousness of drama and its conviction, and they are both outstanding in individual arias, but particularly impressive in their ‘Son nata a lagrimar’ duet. Christophe Dumaux as Tolomeo, Jochen Kowalski as Nireno, Peter Kálmán as Curio and Ruben Drole as Achilla also give fine performances that ensure that there are no weak elements here as far as the singing is concerned.

Giulio Cesare in Egitto was recorded on 27th May 2012 and broadcast live by the French/German television channel ARTE. It is currently available to view in its entirety for free on their ARTE Live Web site.

Rossini - Otello ossia Il Moro di Venezia

Gioachino Rossini - Otello ossia Il Moro di Venezia

Opernhaus Zurich, 2012

Muhai Tang, Moshe Leiser, Patrice Caurier, John Osborn, Cecilia Bartoli, Peter Kálmán, Javier Camarena, Edgardo Rocha, Liliana Nikiteanu, Nicola Pamio, Ilker Arcayürek

Medici Live Internet Steaming, 8th March 2012

There’s always going to be some difficulty in staging Rossini’s Otello ossia Il Moro di Venezia, and it’s not just because of the liberties that Rossini’s opera takes with Shakespeare’s work. True, the libretto by Francesco Maria Berio di Salsi doesn’t really keep to the development or characterisation of Shakespeare’s work, but it does manage to get to the heart of the drama and retain some of the dark mood of the piece. No, much of the difficulty with staging Otello is due to the often static nature of the work which is still tied closely to the conventions of opera seria, with long-winded expressions of agonising emotions and a great deal of repetition.

It’s only the brilliance of Rossini’s musical inventiveness in the scoring that makes it work so well as an opera, matching the music more closely to the moods, reducing recitative and solo lamentations in favour of concerted pieces that carry the drama through, playing out the drama through sung conversations. It doesn’t always manage to break free from the restrictions of the format however, which can be rather punishing on the singers and the audience, so a stage production requires a certain amount of inventiveness as well. Directed by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier, who failed to enliven Halévy’s semiseria Clari for the Zurich Opera, despite the best efforts of its champion Cecilia Bartoli and John Osborn (also on board here), the team fare rather better with Otello, but one suspects that the reason for its success here – and why their previous collaboration wasn’t quite so successful – has much to do with Rossini’s rather more invigorating writing.

Initially, things don’t look promising in the rather dreary Act I. There’s nothing at all wrong with the updating the work to a modern setting, to a “corridors of power” wood-panelled waiting room, populated by figures in formal suits and high-ranking military naval uniforms, with rooms leading off in the background where various committees no doubt plan future strategies. It’s as good as setting as any for the plotting and scheming that lies at the heart of the work, but unfortunately, it proves to be rather dreary and static for the opening dramatic exposition. Figures standing around, there’s a bit of slow pacing up and down, and little to enliven the characterisation or solemn declamation as the Moor Otello returns battle, having defeated the Turks and regained Cyprus for Venice as the centre of the Adriatic Republic.

While there is professional jealousy over Otello’s success on the part of Rodrigo and Iago that is set-up in Act I, and some consideration of the Moor’s outsider status as a black-skinned African, evidently the main focus of the rivalry is over Otello gaining favour with Desdemona. In this version however, Otello is already secretly married to Desdemona, so when Iago suggests that she may be unfaithful, it really requires no great manipulation – Otello, insecure about his own position, is all too ready to mistrust Desdemona. Being somewhat opera seria in structure, the expressions of emotional turmoil are however given precedence over any consistency in characterisation or motivation, which makes this dramatically weak and inconsistent. The nature of Otello and Desdemona’s relationship has scarcely been established by the plot and by little actual confidences shared between them (Verdi would do this much better in his version), only in Desdemona’s expressions of her love to Emilia, her lady in waiting. If it’s all insufficiently established in dramatic terms, the music makes it much more compelling.

Act II and Act III in particular see Rossini at his best, breaking free of those operatic restrictions, using duets, ensembles and rising repetition to ramp up the tension and emotional fever pitch of the situation. Even if the stage direction gives the performers little to do in the absence of any conventional drama, Rodrigo’s ‘Che ascolto’ in Act II could hardly be more chilling, given a particularly powerful delivery here by Javier Camarena. In an opera that requires no less than three tenors in demanding singing roles, that intensity is matched in Otello and Iago’s Act II scene. If dramatically it’s less than convincing, musically it’s powerful, avoiding recitative and putting the emotion into the singing. Working with this kind of material, John Osborn does a good line in all-consuming jealousy in ‘Non m’inganno’ that is matched by Edgardo Rocha’s Iago enjoying the thrill of twisting people to his will, Rossini managing to encapsulate both emotions within the duetto.

Desdemona is rather less well-defined, carrying an over-urgency in everything she sings, which means that Cecilia Bartoli often sounds rather strident. No, not shrill – never that. Bartoli is still one of the finest – if not the finest – mezzo-soprano bel canto coloratura singers in the world, at her best when singing Rossini, and she is in terrific voice here. Barring her Act III ‘Willow Song’ however, the role is lacking in colour and shading, and it comes across more perhaps as exaggeratedly strident. It’s still an astonishingly display of singing virtuosity, Bartoli moreover also managing to bring real character to her role. She is absolutely chilling at the end of Act II and throughout Act III, making her inevitable fate at the hands of Otello (the scene had been reworked for a happy end, but the original is used here), dramatically shocking and highly effective. And does Act III contain the earliest example of a ‘mad scene’? It comes close and is certainly depicted as such in the production, Desdemona scrawling on the walls, the whole scene working well with the score.

Happily then, after the rather unimaginative first Act and start of the second, Leiser and Caurier’s stage direction picks up to meet the exceptionally high standard of the singing and the intensity of the musical arrangements – superbly conducted under Muhai Tang. The cold emptiness of Desdemona’s bedroom at the start of Act II and in Act III (perhaps this is how it’s intended to appear for a reason) are necessarily minimal, but the success of the production hinges on the playing out of the seeds of jealousy sown by Iago. This scene takes place in what looks like a seedy Turkish bar, with a fridge and a pool table. If the contrast to the preceding (and subsequent) scenes only underlines the outsider status of Otello, it’s effective, but it also proves to be the ideal place for the barroom brawl that erupts between the highly charged natures (wound up of course by Iago) of Otello and Rodrigo, the two men grabbing pool cues and heading for the back alley through the fire-doors at the back, despite Desdemona’s vain (over-urgent and strident) attempts to restrain them.

It’s clear then that the directors have recognised the difficulties of staging Otello and approached it well, using broader strokes in the sets to contrast the nature of the Moor with those of the state, using lighting effectively for mood, but also seeking to find smaller details to highlight. It isn’t always possible to bring any great subtlety to the work within the restrictions of the libretto and the almost opera seria-like arrangements, but this is more than compensated for by the vibrant delivery of the score and the outstanding singing performances.

The opera is currently available to view in its entirety and for free on the Medici.tv web site.

Halévy - Clari

Jacques Fromental Halévy - Clari

Opernhaus Zürich, 2008

Adam Fischer, Moshe Leiser & Patrice Caurier, Cecilia Bartoli, John Osborn, Eva Liebau, Oliver Widmar, Giuseppe Scorsin, Carlos Chausson, Stefania Kaluza

Decca - DVD

It’s very rare to see any work by Jacques Fromental Halévy performed nowadays, and he may indeed be an unjustly neglected composer, but discovered by Cecilia Bartoli while exploring the repertoire of the famous Rossinian mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran, this early work, Clari from 1828, composed to allow her to demonstrate her extraordinary range, is certainly one of his most obscure and forgotten works by the composer. Respectfully played with period instruments by the Zurich La Scintilla orchestra under the baton of Adam Fischer, treated to a fresh production from Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier to give some character to a dreary and uneventful plot, and with Bartoli demonstrating her wonderful vocal range, Zurich Opera certainly give the opera a fair shot, but whether Clari is an opera that merits such treatment is debatable, and the overall feeling is that it really wouldn’t have been such a great loss if it had remained buried.

Composed for an Italian libretto, before Halévy’s more famous, or at least more celebrated, French opéra comique work, Clari is an opera semiseria, which doesn’t mean that it’s only half-serious and plays its silly plot out with tongue firmly in cheek (although the production half-heartedly and perhaps out of necessity plays it that way). Rather, it’s a kind of mixture of opera seria (long after it had gone out of fashion even in 1828) and bel canto, full of long arias pondering internalised emotions expressed with extravagant coloratura in the da capo singing. This is fine if an opera has an involving plot and strong characterisation that can bear the weight of all the deep expressions of guilt and shame that are agonised over in Clari, but the story is not so much ludicrous as flat and pedestrian.

It involves a young peasant girl, Clari, who leaves her family in the provinces and runs off with a rich Duke in search of wealth, a better life and, most importantly love – or at least at the bare minimum, marriage. The Duke however hasn’t fulfilled his promises in this respect – to the great shame of her parents – and when he starts referring to Clari as his cousin, the young woman is further dismayed with the situation she is in. When the Duke’s servants Germano, Bettina and Luca put on a play for Clari before assembled guests at a birthday party in her honour, the story so resembles her own situation that Clari – believing it to be real (!) – faints out of shame. That’s about as far as any plot goes in Act I. Act II has each of the characters agonise over the situation until Clari eventually recovers from the shock and decides she has to run away, returning to her home in the country to try to gain the forgiveness of her parents in Act III.

As far as dramatic and emotional content, that’s about as far as it goes. One doesn’t necessarily expect a complex or credible plot in a bel canto opera, but really, the libretto, by Pietro Giannone, is pretty banal and sparseness of the plot and hollowness of the emotional charge scarcely merits all the moaning and wailing about wanting to die of the shame and guilt of it all that is expressed at length in the arias. None of it feels sincere, although it not for want of trying on the part of the performers or the stage direction team. Leiser and Caurier go for a non-specific relatively modern time period, glitzy and colourful with big props in the style of Richard Jones, adding humorous and self-knowing little touches, but none of it is enough to breathe any life into this corpse of an opera, and their efforts consequently feel leaden and fall flat.

The Zurich audience don’t seem to be sure what to make of it either, laughing politely at one or two places, but are clearly bewildered about what to make of the character of Clari herself or the amount of effort and technique Cecilia Bartoli expends on the empty phrases of the libretto, all in the vain attempt to make her character come to life. It’s only in Act III that they belatedly decide to applaud the efforts of John Osborn’s Duke and give an enthusiastic and deserved ovation for Bartoli – but one feels they might have mistaken her gargantuan efforts as signaling the end of the opera a little before its time. Eva Liebau as Bettina and Carlos Chausson as Clari’s father also make notable contributions, but it’s hard to take their roles seriously or indeed “semiseriously”.

Released on DVD only as a 2-disc set, the colourful qualities of the staging suffer a little from the lack of a High Definition presentation. The image looks reasonably well in the brighter sequences, but it’s a little murkier in the scenes at the end of Act II and start of Act III. Perhaps being spoilt by DTS HD-Master Audio mixes, the quality of the audio lacks precision of tone, particularly on the lower frequencies, but it’s actually not bad on either mix, although I think the LPCM Stereo wins out over the DTS 5.1 Surround. There are no extra features on the DVD set, but there is a worthwhile booklet enclosed which includes an interview with Bartoli, an introduction to the work, productions notes, a synopsis and even a photo-novella of the opera.