Tutino - The Embers (Armel Opera Festival, 2014 - Webcast)

Marco Tutino - The Embers

Szeged National Theatre, 2014

Sándor Gyüdi, Attila Toronykóy, Tamás Altorjay, Jean-Philippe Biojout, Szilveszter Szélpál, Tivadar Kiss, Krisztina Kónya, Boglárka Laczák

Armel Opera Festival, ARTE Concert - 9 October 2014

Based on a novel by Sándor Márai, Embers deals with the passing of time, with youthful ideals and old-age regrets, with friendship and love and how it too can change over time and under the cold gaze of reflection. The time span of the work also presents an allegorical level of the change that occurred in the world around the turn of the 20th century. Marco Tutino's one-act opera effectively treats the question of youthful friendship and idealism embittered by the passing of time within its musical composition, while the production of the work's world premiere at the 2014 Armel Opera Festival, highlights the supernatural element that expresses the allegorical side of the work.

The drama in the opera is divided between the present of 1940 and a significant moment in 1899. In the present, and old man Henrik lives a solitary and embittered existence in a room of faded paintings. He has advised his servant Nini that he is expecting a visit from an old friend Konrad, but the prospect of the visit is not one that brings him any happiness. It stirs up old memories of a time when Henrik was in love with Kristina. All his life Henrik has had suspicions stemming from events one day in July 1899, the day of the hunt. Kristina's presence in Konrad's room and a suspicion that Konrad actually took aim at him during the hunt, have led him to believe that they had an affair. Many years later, having walked out on both of them, Henrik still replays the events in his mind, unable to find any answers. He hopes that Konrad's visit after 40 years will put matters to rest.

Dealing with the passing of time, questions of regret for the past, of falling in love with the wrong person, of a love triangle situation resulting in jealousy and the shattering of illusions, Embers recalls both Eugene Onegin and Pélleas et Mélisande, and Marco Tutino's score even employs the same musical language. It's a modern score however and there are no direct or indirect quotes of Tchaikovsky or Debussy, but it uses contrasting styles to highlight the differences between the periods. On the one side there is the joy and youthful idealism of the three young people before the Great War and on the other is the bitter experience that has marked Henrik in the present just as another world war commences.

There's a personal element then to the sense of disillusionment with love and friendship, but it's tied then into a reflection on the differences between a more carefree time in the Austro-Hungarian empire of the late 19th century and the reality of the 20th century post-war world. It's as if the actions of Konrad, prepared to take a shot at his best friend, are a betrayal of the old rules of decency, duty and behaviour that has led to or in a way foreshadowed the barbarism unleashed in the Great War. In Henrik's mind, at least, and that's the world that the composer attempts to explore in Embers. Tutino is aware of how these historical events changed the musical landscape of the 20th century, and it's the reflection of that in the score that marks it out from Tchaikovsky and Debussy's musical treatments of such subject matter.

That contrast is also reflected in Attila Toronykóy's direction of the world premiere of the work for the Szeged National Theatre at the Armel Opera Festival. If there are any suggestions of Eugene Onegin and Pélleas et Mélisande, it perhaps as much to do with how the two distinct periods of the work are treated, the past played out in 19th century period with younger versions of the main characters, while the present is a much more shadowy and unsettling abstract world of dark undercurrents where morals have been subverted. This takes an abstraction of being practically photo-negative, the older Henrik wearing a white suit with dark grey shirt, his face blanched white, the glass of wine he holds coloured blue. Portraits on the wall are also negatives, as is the significant scene - one fixed in Henrik's mind - of one man pointing a gun at another on the day of the hunt.

The timelines are however not entirely distinct and the past does bleed into the present. Rather than the ghosts being those of the past, the production design places emphasis on it being the older Henrik and Konrad who are the ghosts. Shadows of themselves, you might say, broken by the past, but the final lines of the libretto give this a more literal (or perhaps ethereal) reading. Perhaps both Konrad and Henrik have died in the war and are restless spirits that are still looking for answers. Inevitably, definitive answers are hard to come by.

The Armel Opera Festival is also a singing competition, and both the competition singers for this performance - Tamás Altorjay singing the bass role of the older Henrik and Jean-Philippe Biojout singing the bass-baritone role of the older Konrad - richly expressed the dark melancholic undercurrents of the libretto. Despite the focus being on the older and younger versions of the men, the importance of the woman in the middle is not neglected, and Krisztina Kónya gave an outstanding performance as Kristina. The younger men were sung by Szilveszter Szélpál and Tivadar Kiss, with Boglárka Laczák giving a fine performance also in the role of Nini.

Links: ARTE Concert, Armel Opera Festival

Verdi - Simon Boccanegra

Giuseppe Verdi - Simon Boccanegra

Szeged National Theatre, Hungary - 2013

Tamás Pál, Zsuzsa Molnár, Vasile Chisiu, Stefano Olcese, Adrienn Miksch, Attila Réti, András Kiss, Bálint Börcsök, Szilvia Dobrotka, József Varga

Armel Opera Festival, Szeged - ARTE Live Web - 10th October 2013

Simon Boccanegra is by no means a typical work by Verdi. The composer had by this stage moved beyond the bluster of the works of his "galley years" - beautifully melodic, dramatically driven and often musically inspired though many of them are - towards a maturity of style in his middle-period that didn't rely quite so much on the standard number format of the classic Italian opera tradition. The melodrama is still there in mid-period Verdi, and the composer had yet to have the full involvement of a librettist like Arrigo Boito who would provide him with material truly worthy of his talents (though Boito did later add the Act II Council Chamber scene for the revised version of Simon Boccanegra), but there is nonetheless a greater subtlety and attention to characterisation in the fascinating works from this period.

Not that you would notice this from the 2013 Szeged National Theatre production of Simon Boccanegra presented at the Armel Opera Festival. It's not a bad production by any means, and it's always intriguing to see a work based on the original staging as described in documents from the time, but it's inevitably going to look rather old-fashioned with singers mostly standing facing the audience rather than interacting with one another and belting out the numbers in the classic 'park-and-bark' or 'stand-and-deliver' manner. For a lot of Verdi, if you've got good singers - and the Szeged are strong-voiced and more than capable of meeting the demands - you can get away with this. For early Verdi anyway. For a work like Simon Boccanegra, which relies on moments of tender expression and charged emotions more than dramatic developments to get its full impact across, you need a little more sensitivity than you get here.

Although the production doesn't really help them then, the two competition singers Vasile Chisiu and Stefano Olcese cope well nonetheless with the challenges that are to be found in the roles of Jacopo and Boccanegra. Much like Verdi's La Forza del Destino, there's a Prologue that sits widely apart from the main events of the opera, and it's important that there is a noticeable change in the personalities of the two characters who find themselves in opposition to one another, partly through maturity but also through them having to carry the weight of the tragic and tumultuous events that have divided them. I think that is clearly drawn in the production, at least in as far as it is important for the two main characters, and both performers do well in their attempts to show the necessary gravitas and rich characterisation that would have defined them in the in-between years.

Neither however are entirely strong enough singers with the kind of experience necessary to really bring roles like this to life. A Boccanegra really needs a mature Verdian baritone of experience, a Leo Nucci, a Thomas Hampson or - at a stretch - Placido Domingo, who has proved that he can inhabit the baritone role fairly successfully. It's a considerable challenge however for Vasile Chisiu, and if he doesn't have the ideal power, range or experience to step convincingly into a role like this with the kind of personality it requires, it's a good performance nonetheless and sung well. The unimaginative stage directions probably don't help, and certainly don't do Stefano Olcese any favours as Jacopo Firese, but he often seems disengaged from the drama, singing out to the audience rather than in response to what is happening on stage. Again, there's a nice bass-baritone voice there but it lacks the depth of characterisation required to make the melodrama in the story work convincingly.

Conductor and director Tamás Pál and the Szeged Symphony Orchestra gives a good account of the work, but the subtleties and melancholic undercurrents of the score seem to founder on the failure of the staging to match the necessary tension and drama to the work. The original set designs are well realised by the production team and it's certainly of interest to see the work close to how it might originally have been staged, but for a Verdi work like Simon Boccanegra to fully come alive to a modern audience it would require better direction and singers of considerably greater stature and ability than we have here.

The Armel Opera Festival performance of Simon Boccanegra can be viewed for free for six months after the performance on the ARTE Live Web streaming service. Subtitles are French only.