Verdi - Un giorno di regno (Garsington, 2024)

Giuseppe Verdi - Un giorno di regno

Garsington Opera, 2024

Chris Hopkins, Christopher Alden, Joshua Hopkins, Henry Waddington, Grant Doyle, Madison Leonard, Christine Rice, James Micklethwaite, Oliver Sewell, Daniel Vening, Robert Murray

OperaVision - 5th July 2024

One of the great things about opera, or an opera, is that it is never something done, recorded, wrapped up and archived, but always something waiting to be rediscovered and revitalised for a new age. An opera that is deemed a failure by the critics and public on its opening night two centuries ago can be revived and lauded as a masterpiece today. Similarly, an opera that once drew acclaim and sold out theatres for years can fall out of fashion or get lost and forgotten as musical tastes and style moves elsewhere. Verdi's Un giorno di regno, ossia Il finto Stanislao, the composer's second opera, was by any measure a complete failure, its initial run at La Scala in Milan in 1840 cancelled after one performance. Written in the period following the death of his wife and two children, the composer himself disavowed the work, but although it is unlikely to ever be considered a masterpiece today, that doesn't necessarily mean that we should accept an initial judgement of the work as the final word on it.

Another early Verdi opera Alzira (1845) was also judged by the public, critics and composer alike as a failure, but I've certainly seen one successful production (Buxton, 2018) that if not revealing it to be a lost masterpiece, at least shows it is better than the reputation that has clung to it, and is at least as good as any of Verdi’s early works. The difference between Alzira and Un giorno di regno however is that the former - albeit in an exotic location - is very much in the familiar Verdi idiom of a nation under an oppressive rule, while the latter is the composer’s first attempt at writing comedy, something he concluded he just wasn't very good at. It would only be at the end of his career over 50 years later that he would attempt comedy again in his final opera Falstaff, and at that stage there is little dispute that he was able to create a comic masterpiece.

But in 1840 it's clear that in Un giorno di regno ('A One-Day Reign', or 'King for a Day') Verdi was working outside of his yet to be fully established comfort zone. The plot isn't really worth relating in any detail or indeed following closely as the opera itself progresses. It involves a French officer Cavaliere di Belfiore "for complex reasons of state" impersonating the Polish king Stanislaus for the day as a guest at the home of the Baron of Kelbar, where a double wedding is soon to be held. His daughter Giulietta is to be married against her will to the financier La Rocca, separating her from the distraught but penniless Edoardo. The Baron's niece, the Marchesa del Poggio, is also to be married to a mystery groom since her lover Belfiore seems to have disappeared, but doesn't the king look suspiciously like him?… In the tradition of such tangled relationships and disguised identities, chaos and hilarity ensue. Except of course historically we know that wasn't the case.

Where you might expect a lightness of comic touch in the situations of the fake Stanislaus sorting out the romantic complications and making fools of the greedy rich elite, Verdi wades straightaway into Un giorno di regno with highly dramatic scoring, heroic proclamations and booming choruses. Any good production of an opera however (as with the Buxton Alzira) can choose to shift the focus over to the strengths of the work and mitigate against its weaknesses. You would presume that would have to be the intention and approach of any company brave enough to tackle Un giorno di regno, and that indeed is exactly what Garsington do here under the direction of Christopher Alden.

The strengths of this opera however are actually in the music, it's just that the weakness in the plot or perhaps it's the unsuitability and disparity between the tone of the music and the comic plot that makes things a little difficult for a director. But clearly not insurmountable and the way the Garsington production handles this is quite clever and entertaining. You can do a lot by playing up the visual comedy, all the actors well-directed here to puff up the absurdity of their characters - not in a parodic way (well, just a little), but rather as a broad comedy. It's not meant to be subtle; it is still early Verdi after all. As for the huge choruses, the early chorus of nationalistic pride here is depicted as the king's secret service bodyguards, dressed in black suits and sunglasses, all donning the colours of the national team to celebrate a news report of the Polish football team’s success. That fits perfectly. The TV news reports (the channel Forte News with its amusingly tag line of 'Loud. In 4/4 time. All the time.') are also very effective for filling in details of the plot that could otherwise be missed.

Character definition goes a long way to making this tongue-in-cheek update workable. When we are introduced to her, the Baron’s rebellious daughter Giulietta, who has been separated from her Edoardo for a more advantageous marriage and is thereby "suffering in mortal anguish", wears long unkempt threaded hair, is dressed in grungy tracksuit and flipflops, and has a 'Not My King' poster on the wall. Her rebellious nature is underlined (very heavily here) as she deals awkwardly with a delivery guy who has just delivered an online order of a self-assembly bomb and detonator. Giulietta is perfectly defined by the production design even before she sings a note, since you can't totally trust Verdi to get it right at this stage in his second opera. Musically it's wonderful, but the tone and libretto all feel wrong for the situation - Giulietta's ladies-in-waiting cooing a chorus (not that anyone coos in a Verdi opera) of "Why does sorrow cloud her angelic features?" - unless it's delivered with heavy sarcasm. 

The Garsington production doesn't stoop to making fun of such expressions, but sets Verdi's music more in character with the visual comedy of the production design than the silly/earnest 19th century libretto. It helps that the characterisation and singing performances are strong enough to carry it. In this scene for example, beautifully sung by Madison Leonard, her delivery is spot-on, striking the balance between sorrow and angry defiance; "Inclined to melancholy" she can pout with the best of them. Likewise the defining of the Treasurer La Rocca as a financier whose greed is turned against him when he seeks a more advantageous 'promotion' over the promise of marriage to the Marchesa fits nicely, as does the characterisation of the Baron as a ruthless oligarch and arms dealer. All have a surprising relevance to mocking the totalitaritechnocapitalist (© First Dog on the Moon) powers we see continuing to rise even in the aftermath of this 2024 production. Not so funny in real life, that bit.

Charles Edwards' set design for this 21st century visualisation of the opera is marvellous. The large stage at Garsington is employed to show-off a modern mansion of fashionable minimalism and expensive good taste, albeit one that doesn't necessarily extend to the choice of attire of those within. The Baron, CEO of Kelbar Defence industries, gives the king a boardroom presentation of the latest models of weaponry and helicopters, all ready to sell. Somehow it also helps to sell this adventurous scene of Verdi's where the business meeting on war goes on simultaneously with Edoardo and Giulia romancing in the next room. As an arms dealer moreover, the idea of a 'shotgun wedding' takes on a new meaning when the Baron learns that La Rocca has declined the offer to marry the Baron's daughter after the better offer that has been made by the pretend king.

All of this suitably amplifies the plot to rise to the level of the music, but inevitably it all becomes a bit silly: the opera and the production both. Or fun if you like, with Henry Waddington's Barone di Kelbar and Grant Doyle's La Rocca not only delivering superb singing performances, but also while engaging in comic slapstick and a duel as a food fight with spaghetti bolognese at five paces. There is plenty of entertainment like this in the singing and performances of Christine Rice as the Marchesa del Poggio and Joshua Hopkins as Belfiore, some of it distracting, some of it a welcome distraction that helps lift the slow movement towards reconciliation and resolution in the second act. It's never less than entertaining and as good a production as you are ever likely to see of Un giorno di regno.

External links: Garsington opera, OperaVision

Rossini - Il Turco in Italia (Aix-en-Provence, 2014)

Gioachino Rossini - Il Turco in Italia 

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2014 

Marc Minkowski, Christopher Alden, Adrian Sâmpetrean, Olga Peretyatko, Alessandro Corbelli, Lawrence Brownlee, Pietro Spagnoli, Cecelia Hall, Juan Sancho

ARTE Concert - Live Streaming, July 2014

For it to be one of the composer's early comedies, composed the year after L'Italiana in Algeri, there is nonetheless something of an air of sophistication and modernism in Rossini's Il Turco in Italia. There may not be any greater subtlety or examination of cultural differences in the clash of Western and Eastern traditions than the previous work, but there is a little more interest in examining problematic areas in the relationship between men and women. Those questions might not be examined quite to the same level of sophistication and invention as Mozart, but if L'Italiana in Algeri is Rossini's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Il Turco in Italia is his Così Fan Tutte.

What sets Il Turco apart from L'Italiana is the unusual almost post-modern, proto-Pirandellian meta-fiction device of the work being devised, orchestrated and more or less written as it goes along by a Poet seeking to create a drama. In reality, his role is not much more than that of the manipulations of Don Alfonso in Così Fan Tutte, but it's a gift for an opera director who wants to play with the work on various levels. It's maybe not so complex for the conductor. Although there are moments of brilliance, musically it's pretty much Rossini by numbers, but there's a considerable amount of fun to be had in generating and measuring the famous Rossini drive through to the end of the work. In both respects then, Il Turco in Italia is more clever than inspired, and the same could be said for the Aix-en-Provence production.

In Christopher Alden's production, the Poet is indeed central to the purpose as well as the development of the drama. He's seen labouring over his writing desk during the overture, only finding inspiration when six characters in search of an author arrive in the little Italian port town where he has taken up residence. One is the flirty Fiorilla who is cheating on her husband Don Geronio with her lover Don Narciso, making both men's lives miserable. Now she has her eye set on the exotic figure of a Turkish prince, Selim, who has just arrived in town. The attraction is mutual, but Selim has other attachments - whether he wants them or not - with Zaida, who has fled from his displeasure with her faithful Albazar, the two of them also in town now with a group of bohemian travellers.

Recognising the potential of this situation as material for a drama, the poet Prosdocimo starts to manipulate the six characters towards his own ends. He doesn't, it has to be said, do an awful lot that is original with them, falling back into the standard plot devices like stirring jealousy with letters and getting them to adopt disguises in a way that causes confusion and havoc at masked balls. Then again, they are fairly stock characters - flirty young wife, jealous older husband, timid lover and exotic foreigner, with a couple to be added as sacrificial secondary characters (think Masetto and Zerlina from Don Giovanni) to stir up the jealousy, infidelity and the drama even further. It's not surprising that this serves to give Rossini fairly run-of-the-mill material for by-the-numbers writing, although being Rossini, it's often dazzling and entertaining, particularly when there is a good cast available, and there's a good cast available here.

Alden evidently emphasises the manipulation of the drama for the Poet/Composer/Director's own ends. Six characters, two women and four men is not the ideal arrangement for a happy ending, but it's enough for the poet to work though several troubled combinations. Alden's poet accordingly works furiously at his typewriter and hands out scripts for the characters to perform. The men seem happy or resigned to play the roles that life has allotted them, the stronger female roles less so. Fiorilla at one stage takes the typewriter into her own hands here and writes the part for herself, refusing to accept conventions, but - somewhat predictably and unexcitingly as far as the potential of the opera goes (and sadly for the weaker examples of the species, Don Narciso and Albazar are written out), the status quo is more or less resumed by the end.

The set design doesn't do an awful lot with the potential of the work either, set in what looks like a large tiled Turkish bath-house (without baths), with the large figure head of a ship being wheeled on at certain points for no discernible reason. Curtains are used not so much in a manner to highlight the dramatic satire as provide opportunities for minor prop changes. It functions well enough however, leaving the real work to be done with the characterisation - such as it is - and the direction of the performances. The potential is indeed at its best when it allows Fiorilla to make her own mark on the Poet's script in Act II when she makes her feelings known to Selim about his indecision with regard to choosing between her and Zaida.

It's also at its best in this scene because it has the strengths of the singers Adrian Sâmpetrean and Olga Peretyatko there to make it work. Both are marvellous, Sâmpetrean's smooth bass complementing the Peretyatko's bright soprano. Peretyatko also has the necessary star-quality and vocal range to carry off a strong female Rossini lead like this, her delivery of Fiorilla's final aria 'Squallida veste, e buona' every bit as impressive as it ought to be. As has been characteristic of this year's Aix festival, the casting has been strong right across the board and there are no weaknesses elsewhere in Turco. Alessandro Corbelli provides good singing and comic acting as Geronio; Lawrence Brownlee's slumped-over Narciso delivers some gorgeous self-pitying arias; Pietro Spagnoli is solid as the master-of-ceremonies poet holding it all together; Cecelia Hall is a sparkling Zaida; and Juan Sancho makes a fine song and dance of Albazar's only aria.

Links: ARTE Concert, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence