Teatro Verdi di Busseto, 2010
Andrea Battistoni, Pier Francesco Maestrini, Giovanni Battista Parodi, Sebastian Catana, Susanna Branchini, Roberto de Biasio, Christiano Cremonini, Zyian Atfeh
C-Major - Blu-ray
By the time he came to write Attila for La Fenice in Venice in 1846, Verdi had firmly established, consolidated and refined a style and a structure that would be recognisable in nearly all his subsequent works. Attila is made up of a number of stock situations involving war, vengeanace, romance and betrayal and Verdi packs it with big dramatic numbers and choruses that match the intensity of the emotions. There's nothing inspired here however, nothing that provides any great insights or revelations into the characters or human behaviour. Even worse, there are no great memorable arias or musical numbers.
Dramatically however there's never a dull moment in Attila. Much of the reason for that is down to Verdi's sense of arrangement and his scoring for situation. You can see how all the elements that are to define the drama and the conflict are laid out forcefully, strongly and concisely in the opening scene. Here you have all the euphoria of the Huns' victory in the capture and plunder of Aquilera mixed in with the shame of defeated. In Attila's sense of invulnerability and the proud defiance of Odabella, the daughter of the defeated king, you have the sowing of the seeds of a deeply personal revenge that is only heightened by Odabella's appearance of compliance and subservience. It may be feigned, but her lover Foresto doesn't know that, and just to add further emotional turmoil to the situation, he accuses her of unfaithfulness to him, her father and her country.
And there you have the typical Verdi dramatic situation that stirs the emotions like nothing else, particularly when the composer directs it towards the people of an Italian nation seeking its own independence. The situation between the Roman general Ezio and Attila emphasises the position further. Ezio seeks agreement that Attila will venture no further into Italy, but buoyed by success Attila refuses. "In vain! Who now can restrain the onslaught of the consuming wave?", as the colourful libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and Temistocle Solera puts it, and the intensity of the sentiments in this powerful stand-off situation between two formidable warriors who are respectful of the position of each other is matched by the grave intonations of Verdi's scoring for the bass/bass-baritone roles that play those parts.
The qualities of Verdi's dramatic writing are all there then and the cast for this 2010 production of Attila at the Teatro Verdi di Busseto are more than capable of bringing them out. The theatre - seen previously in the 'Tutto Verdi' release of Oberto - has a tiny stage that you'd scarcely think capable of putting on a work as big and ambitious as this. The use of 3D-CG projections in Pier Francesco Maestrini's direction might not be the ideal solution, but it's a reasonable means of covering the epic settings of battlefields, ships, stormy seas, Roman camps and forest glades. It's a little cheesy, but probably no more so than painted backdrops, which would be the only other feasible option for a stage this size. (In the case of Oberto, Pier' Alli went mainly for minimal props and plain dark backgrounds).
There's still not much room for the singers to do anything more than stand and belt out Verdi's big numbers, but the costumes, the stage directions and the performances all make reasonably good use of the limited resources. Occasionally, for no other reason than having no room to do anything else, the singers run off the stage and back on again to finish their number. The singing performances are mostly fine. If they lack some precision in places the voices are at least all more than big enough for the work and the size of the theatre.
Giovanni Battista Parodi is a fine Attila, and if he doesn't particularly come to life, that's as much to do with Verdi's writing. Robert de Biasio has a classic Italian tenor voice for Foresto. He's not always on the note, but in the context of the live performance, it's fine and he makes a good overall impression. Susanna Branchini's technique could do with some refinement and doesn't have the smoothest legato, but she also gives Odabella all the force and character required. No problems however with Sebastian Catana, who makes a fine Ezio, but this is perhaps the only convincing character in the drama.
The Blu-ray here is part of C-Major's 'Tutto Verdi' collection. The quality of transfer is reasonably good. There's a little bit of flicker in the image but it's generally stable and detailed. The audio doesn't quite have the pristine clarity we expect from High Definition and there's very little surround presence on the DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mix, but it's fine and it gets across the forceful delivery of the opera as conducted by Andrea Battistoni. The BD is all-region, BD25, with subtitles in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Japanese subtitles.
