Ottorino Respighi - La bella dormente nel bosco
Teatro Lirico di Cagliari 2017
Donato Renzetti, Leo Muscato, Veta Pilpenko, Angela Nisi, Antonio Gandía, Vincenzo Taormina, Shoushik Barsoumian, Lara Rotili, Claudia Urru, Enrico Zara, Nicola Ebau
Naxos Blu-ray
Ottorino Respighi's La bella dormente nel bosco (The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods) is unusual and largely unheard of because it wasn't strictly composed as a traditional opera, but as a puppet theatre opera. Whether that has any bearing on the quality of the opera doesn't show, and certainly not in this Cagliari production directed by Leo Muscato. First performed in 1922 and revised in 1934, it comes across rather as colourful and as engaging as any other fairy-tale based opera.
Considering the potential it offers in it's surprising that Sleeping Beauty hasn't been a more popular choice of fairy-tale to set to an opera. It has a strong layout and variety of scenes that are sure to provide drama and entertainment, and that's certainly been borne out at least in ballet. Respighi clearly recognises that potential and introduces ballet as one of the elements that he incorporates quite successfully into this rich blend of music, drama, magical fairy-tale, panto, singing and dancing. Perrault's fairy tale is such that there should be no limits to expression and the composer uses everything at his disposal. As indeed does the director Leo Muscato here.
The opening is a good example of how the story can be enriched, the opera opening indeed in the woods, where the animals of the forest are the first to learn about the birth of the princess from the king's page. The animal noises and gossiping of the creatures puts one in mind of Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen and if you're looking for a model to engage children and tap into deeper sentiments, that's not a bad example to follow. Muscato's production design captures the tone well here, allowing the colour to flow from this into colourful arrival of the fairies in a semi-ballet sequence, using full-stage projections of magical dust sparkle as the fairies bestow their gifts on the princess. It's utterly enchanting.
The arrival of the Green Fairy casting her curse brings an edge of pantomime to the proceedings, which isn't out of place either in a piece devised originally as puppet theatre. The wonderful opportunities for colour and invention are not neglected in the subsequent scenes which put the emphasis on spindles and weaving, using young children as human spindles that are paraded through the court on their banishment by decree of the king. This is elaborated on further in the next scene, where huge balls of yarn and a weave decorate the set that will entrap the princess, and in the giant mice that bear the sleeping beauty funeral-like into the court when all medical efforts to revive her have been exhausted.
The story of La bella dormente nel bosco is as magical on its own account and it can certainly be enhanced by a creative production like this, but that shouldn't preclude some musical enchantment. For his part, Leo Muscato judges the balance perfectly in the scene setting, in the colours, in the traditional costumes, but there's a suspicion that it may all be dazzle and sparkle to enliven what can seem like a lovely but unadventurous composition that rather mechanically runs through all the expected situations in a compact 90 minute opera.
Perhaps one shouldn't expect much of a score written originally for a puppet theatre, but puppet theatre is a valid artform in some places in Europe and Respighi takes the commission seriously and duly delivers. The orchestration is evidently reduced with some piano led arrangements, but this allows occasional solo instruments to leap out beautifully and, when required, to still provide surprisingly big sweeping arrangements. Respighi even takes into account the 300 years that pass while Beauty is Sleeping and introduces some modern Gershwin jazz-like touches into Act III.
Far from academic, it's easy to get lost in the beautiful music and it's lovingly conducted by Donato Renzetti. If it never really dazzles thrills or excites, it certainly has the capacity to enchant and that's exactly what you want from a fairy-tale opera. The singing too has its challenges even none of the roles are large enough to attract starry performances, with much doubling-up and playing of multiple roles. Shoushik Barsoumian stands out however as the good Blue Fairy and Angela Nisi as the Principessa. La bella dormente nel bosco may not be the most obvious choice of revival for the under-represented Respighi, but it's a good popular choice by Cagliari, and one must hope that it leads to others being revived.
The Naxos Blu-ray release is region-free, with subtitles in Italian, English, German, Japanese and Korean. It's not a long opera, running to under 90 minutes, so it fits comfortably onto a BD25 disc. The HD image quality is fine, just lacking that fine clarity when there is movement. The usual PCM stereo and DTS MA 5.1 surround options are there and sound great here for the lighter touches, the solo instruments and broader sweeps. There are no extra features, but the booklet provides information on the history of the work and there is a synopsis.
Links: Teatro Lirico di Cagliari
Giuseppe Verdi - I Due Foscari
Teatro Regio di Parma, 2009
Donato Renzetti, Joseph Franconi Lee, Leo Nucci, Roberto De Biasio, Tatiana Serjan, Roberto Tagliavini, Gregory Bonfatti, Marcella Polidori, Mauro Buffoli, Alessandro Bianchini
Tutto Verdi, ARTE Live Web
Composed in 1844 during the composer's 'galley years', Verdi's I Due Foscari is very much an Italian number opera, but it's a number opera par excellence. All the expected emotions and sentiments are there - stirring expressions of patriotism, pleas to God, arias of despair and calls for vengeance - but the development of the plot is far from the usual template, perhaps too far for the work to ever be a solid part of the composer's popular repertoire. There are however other compensations in this lesser-known Verdi that make it well worth seeing, particularly in this fine 2009 production from the Teatro Regio di Parma.
Visually, it's not an exciting production, but it is staged with a sense of understated grandeur that reflects its 15th century Venetian setting as well as suiting Verdi's intentions for the work and its sombre musical tone. Based on a work by Lord Byron, 'The Two Foscari', there's very little dramatic development in a story that is little more than a murder trial where we get to see neither the murder nor the trial. The accused is Jacopo Foscari, son of the Doge of Venice, who is charged with the murder of one of the Donato family and is to be judged by the Council of Ten. One of the Ten, Loredano, is a bitter rival who resists the pleas of mercy from Jacopo's wife Lucrezia, while the Doge himself knows that he can expect no special favours for his son because of his position.
Act I and Act II then consist mainly of Jacopo and his wife Lucrezia separately and together appealing to God, to the Diecie, to Justice and to the hope of the better nature of Man being revealed, but they are resigned to the expectation of cruelty, hatred, villainy and injustice. Even Verdi recognised in his letters to his librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, that Byron's work required more dramatic developments to engage the audience, particularly in Act I, but in reality nothing much happens. The only real dramatic conflict seems to be over who is the most affected by the situation, and in the end, that's probably the Doge, Francesco Foscari, torn between being a father and serving his duty (not an uncommon situation in a Verdi opera) finding that even as the ruler of Venice, his power is limited.
Dramatic developments might be few then, but with Verdi this is nonetheless enough to create a compelling drama. It helps if you have great singers to play these roles and, fortunately, the casting for this production in Parma is of the highest order. The names might be unfamiliar, but Roberto De Biasio and Tatiana Serjan as Jacopo and Lucrezia make the first two acts rivetting. De Biasio sings with clarity and purpose, even if the sentiments expressed in prison are fairly standard, as he awaits "a fate worse than death" in exile from his country and his family. Tatiana Serjan however is even more impressive and wins hands down over who is most affected by the charges against Jacopo, taking the largest role in the first two acts.
Act III however belongs to the Doge, and this role is in the experienced hands of Leo Nucci. He doesn't disappoint, his grave intonations perfect for expressing the weight of his character's personal conflict, so great this time that it drives him to his death. If Verdi's musical writing is still quite conventional in places, it's in such moments that his musical invention and experiments with instrumentation bring out the qualities of the work and the splendour of his approach to its construction. A numbers opera it might be, filled with numbers repetitively expressing conventional sentiments, but Verdi allows the intensity to build through the first two acts of I Due Foscari before hitting you with a powerful Act II finale and then following it with a showpiece for the baritone Doge.
The staging by Joseph Franconi Lee is in itself not terribly exciting. The sets are minimal representations of the wooden panels of the Ducal Palace and the prison, but shrouded in darkness they create an appropriately oppressive atmosphere. It's very straightforward and traditional in this respect, the director not even finding any means of representing the traditional scene of gothic horror in the prison cell. The visions here all remain in Jacopo's head. The colour schemes however are effective, the Ten in red, other official figures in black, with the Doge and his throne marked out in vivid gold against the warm brown tones of the Ducal Palace chambers. Nothing too exciting then, but the staging serves the historical context, the dramatic function and the musical tone very well.
Well staged, superbly sung, this then is as good an account of this rare Verdi work as you could possibly expect. I Due Foscari is not great Verdi, it's dramatically restricted by the conventions and the constructions of the number opera, but somehow Verdi manages to overcome its limitations. In some ways the opera is a work that is untypical of the composer, but at the same time it is characteristic of his attention to detail and his unerring ability to find exactly the right tone that best meets the dramatic requirements of the work. It might take you right to the end of Act III however to realise just how masterfully that is achieved.
Giuseppe Verdi - Un giorno di regno
Teatro Regio di Parma, 2010
Donato Renzetti, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Guido Loconsolo, Andrea Porta, Anna Caterina Antonacci, Alessandra Maranelli, Ivan Magri, Paolo Bordogna, Ricardo Mirabelli, Seung Hwa Paek
C-Major
Popular wisdom would have it that Verdi was not entirely at home in the genre of comic opera, and history more or less backs this up. You could say that it took him all his life to get to the stage where he was capable of bringing the full wealth of his talent and ability to the genre in his magnificent final work, Falstaff. It's possible also though that it took that length of time for Verdi to get over the abject failure of his first attempt at comic opera writing with his second work, written when he was 26 years old - Un giorno di regno.
A 'melodramma giocoso in due atti' - a comic melodrama in two acts - there are indeed some operatic conventions found in Un giorno di regno that one would not associate with the typical Verdi opera (harpsichord-accompanied recitative!), but unfortunately - in as much as they prove to be inappropriate for comic writing - there are also touches that are very much characteristic of the composer. In Verdi's hands neither prove helpful to the making the opera work, but a strong stage production and good singing at this very rare performance of Un giorno di regno at the Teatro Regio di Parma make this a fascinating experience even if it can't quite go as far as rescuing the reputation of Verdi's early failure.
There's not much one can do however about the fact that the comedy element of Un giorno di regno is really not that funny in the first place. Set in France, around 1733, the Chevalier Belfiore is staying at the Château of Baron Kelbar in the guise of Stanislas, King of Poland, while the real Stanislas secretly leaves the country to return to defend his throne. Belfiore wants to drop the disguise as soon as possible, since the baron is about marry his widowed niece, the Marquise del Poggio, to Count Ivrea. Belfiore is in love with the Marquise, but since he has disappeared to take on the role of Stanislas, she believes that he has abandoned her - although the king looks strangely familiar to her. To add further confusion to the romantic complications, the baron has planned for a double wedding to marry his daughter Giuletta to the Treasurer, La Rocca. Giuletta however is in love not with La Rocca, but with his nephew Edoardo, who loves her in return, but is poor and therefore an unsuitable match.
It's a standard comic set up of the romantic complications that arise from arranged marriage mismatches and secret or hidden identities of characters in disguise. The twist in Un giorno di regno, which could be translated as 'King for a Day', is that Belfiore realises that he can take advantage of the powers that he has been temporarily gifted with on the blessing of Stanislas, and has the ability to make some royal commands and appointments that will sort out the business between Giuletta and Edoardo. As for his own romantic situation, well, he can only hope that his "reign" will end in time for him to reveal his true identity and claim the hand of the Marquise.
It's not a plot that is entirely bereft of comic potential. Rossini had to make much out of thinner material than this, and Verdi seems to have at least learned that much from Rossini, scoring with vigorous arrangements that build in tempo towards explosive ensemble finales. Verdi however lacks Rossini's lightness of touch, and what would be an amiably riotous situation in a Rossini opera, rises into a rousing bombastic declamation in Verdi's hands. While it's fascinating to see just how Verdi develops those situations in his own distinctive way - particularly with a view to what comes later in the composer's career - they prove however to somewhat work against the comic potential. In one scene, for example, where the young love has been frustrated by the plans of others for personal and political gain, you can hear Verdi straining for the melancholy tragedy of Don Carlos or La Traviata, instead of playing up the comic element of the contrast between La Rocca drawing up military plans while the real "enemy", Edoardo, woos his intended Giuletta. The music is gorgeous and cleverly arranged, but it doesn't really establish the right kind of buffo tone that is required by the situation.
Neither really does the stage direction. The best thing you can say about Pier Luigi Pizzi's direction is that it is unobtrusive and doesn't draw attention to itself in any way that detracts from the musical drama. It's generically opera period in design and costumes, with columns, bookcases and tables that reflect the mansion locations and gardens, and it's well arranged as far as putting figures into the right places and keeping the dramatic action flowing without too much standing around going on. It doesn't however attempt to add anything to the comic situations that might enhance or even improve the weaknesses in Verdi's musical direction. The stage direction gets the balance right to the extent that it flows along wonderfully without it ever jarring in any way, taking you along with the flow, but it's not particularly adventurous and this opera could use an injection of a little more humour.
Fortunately, the singing is all-around terrific, giving as fine an account of the work as you could hope for. The younger singers come over best, Alessandra Maranelli's sweet sounding mezzo-soprano and Ivan Magri's strong but lyrical Edoardo working well together, finding a good balance between the Verdi sound and the Rossinian. The others however are just as good - Guido Loconsolo as Belfiore, Andrea Porta as Baron Kelbar, Anna Caterina Antonacci as the Marquise and Paolo Bordogna as La Rocca, all managing to bring a degree of character to their roles, singing well, working with each other and with the comic-timing of the piece.
Un giorno di regno is the second release in the 'Tutto Verdi' series from C-Major, a collection that is made up of performances of all Verdi's opera work recorded at the Teatro Regio di Parma. Some trailers for other works in the collection are included on the disc, as well as a visual introduction/synopsis for Un giorno di regno. The quality of the HD image and sound - in PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 - is marvellous. The Blu-ray is all-region, with subtitles in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.
