Saverio Mercadante - Didone Abbandonata
Innsbruck Festival of Early Music, 2018
Alessandro De Marchi, Jürgen Flimm, Viktorija Miškūnaitė, Katrin Wundsam, Emilie Renard, Carlo Vincenzo Allemano, Diego Godoy, Pietro Di Bianco
Naxos - Blu-ray
The idea of a 19th century composer working with a very old Pietro Metastasio text set by many baroque composers is an intriguing one. A composer like Verdi however was keen put some distance between the indulgences of a bel canto era which was still indebted to its 18th century past, beyond even Rossini, the most progressive composer of that era. Somewhere in there however, largely overlooked and unjustly neglected is Saverio Mercadante, and yet it is in Mercadante and particularly in a work like Didone Abbandonata, that you can definitely see the building of the bridge that Verdi was later able to cross to take Italian opera decisively into the new century.
That connection between Verdi and Mercadante might be more evident in a later work like Il Bravo, seen recently at Wexford Festival Opera (one of the few champions of Mercadante in the opera world), but Didone Abbandonata from 1823 opens up a whole new way of viewing his place in Italian opera. Taken up by the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music with a care towards historically-informed period instruments and performance - which means tuning down from the 20th century standard - this production aims to give the work an authenticity of sound that has done much in the past to present Handel and other baroque works in a new light.
So to return to that initial thought - how would early 19th century opera working with a Metastasio libretto sound? Well in fairness it sounds a lot like Donizetti; constrained to a certain extent by a structure dictated by Metastasio's libretto towards a standard cavatina, aria and recitative arrangement. Mercadante never lets that get in the way of creativity however, the libretto reworked by Andrea Leone Tottola, finding lovely settings for cavatinas, duets, trios and choruses that place his own stamp on the work. That character is more evident here since the period instruments unquestionably give prominence and space for the voice to be much more expressive.
In Didone Abbandonata, the focus in the cavatinas and duets is on expression rather than ornamentation and there's rather unusually only one brief aria in the whole first half of the opera and it's Araspe, a secondary character, who sings it. In Act II likewise the few brief arias are little more than minor adornments. It's perhaps a bit much then to expect Mercadante to be able to provide a profound examination of human feelings and situations when tied to 18th century operatic mannerisms, improbable twists and lack of naturalism in situations, but dispensing with the longeurs of the da capo, Mercadante drives everything purposefully towards showpiece rondos and the finales at the end of each of the two acts.
Fundamentally, Didone Abbandonata relies - as it did with Purcell in Dido and Aeneas and as it would also with Berlioz in Les Troyens à Carthage - on the human tragedy of a woman's deep love, hopes and fidelity all dashed by a lover's desertion. It's not so much that Dido feels betrayed by Aeneas choosing the duty over love - she's not the first woman and won't be the last one in opera to suffer that fate - as much as it does touch on a deeper psychological experience (one that Dmitri Tcherniakov alluded to a little heavy-handedly in his recent Paris production of Berlioz's Les Troyens) where human sentiments are crushed by a rush towards fate, the will of the gods or whatever you want to call the hand of history.
Mercadante does his bit to create that essential tragedy, but there remains the challenge of finding a suitable stage representation that suits the subject and the musical treatment. Director Jürgen Flimm attempts a kind of half-way house between early 18th century in the military costumes and modern in some of the props - a cement mixer, a fridge, guns, bullet-proof vests - on a rotating stage with a concrete bunker at one corner. There's little that points to the ancient legend, Aeneas even appearing to be preparing for his departure in a canoe with some travelling cases, but yet there is a classical feel to the situation, not striving for naturalism or realism as much as attuning the drama to the varied tones of the work that Mercadante applies.
Some of this is consequently of doubtful character - Flimm for example has Iarbas carry out his sacking of Carthage like he's playing a jazz-hands music-hall song and dance routine - but again the desired impact is very definitely achieved. Iarbas - very well sung by Carlo Vincenzo Allemano, even if the dancing around leaves him a little breathless - does have a greater role to play in this version of Virgil's Aeneid. Flimm's depiction of the wholesale slaughter enacted by Iarbas rampaging through the smoking ruins of Carthage at the conclusion and even involved in the death of Dido, does capture a sense of the complete loss and devastation of the Queen of Carthage's world, abandoned not just by Aeneas, but by everyone. There's nothing left but death.
Whether Mercadante's music has the necessary strength to carry that alone it's hard to say, but Alessandro De Marchi's conducting of the Academia Montis Regalis is authoritative and attuned to the situations and overall pace and rhythm. His interview in the enclosed booklet is highly informative on how a complete edition of the score was assembled and how the authentic early 19th century sound contributes to the character of the work. The singing is also impressive throughout, with a superb performance in particular from mezzo-soprano Katrin Wundsam in the trouser role of Aeneas, demonstrating impeccable control over the complete range with dramatic swoops from high to low. Her Act II rondò is just stunning.
Recorded live at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music in 2018, Didone Abbandonata comes across well on the Naxos BD50 Blu-ray disc. The HD image is initially quite dark with high contrast due to the lighting, but the clarity is more evident in Act II. The DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 and PCM 2.0 soundtracks provide two very different listening experiences. The surround giving more space to the instruments, the stereo giving much more presence to the singing. There are no extras on the disc, but good contextual information and a synopsis in the enclosed booklet. The BD is all-region compatible and there are subtitles in German, English, French, Japanese and Korean.
Links: Innsbruck Festival of Early Music
André Campra - Les Fêtes Vénitiennes
Opéra Comique, 2015
William Christie, Robert Carsen, Emmanuelle de Negri, Élodie Fonnard, Rachel Redmond, Emilie Renard, Cyril Auvity, Reinoud Van Mechelen, Marcel Beekman, Marc Mauillon, François Lis, Sean Clayton, Geoffroy Buffière
Culturebox - 30 January 2015
So far, André Campra's operas haven't received as much attention as the two French royal court appointed composers on either side of his career, Lully and Rameau. As the person responsible to a large degree for the revival of interest in many of the great forgotten French works those two composers, with academically informed performances on period instruments, it's great to see how William Christie and Les Arts Florissants' interpretation of Campra's most famous and emblematic work compares. Having also directed a number of stage productions of Lully and Rameau for Christie to terrific effect (Armide, Les Boréades, Platée), Robert Carsen's production of Les Fêtes Vénitiennes for the Opéra Comique in Paris combines with Christie's interpretation to present the work in as spectacular and entertaining a way as you might expect.
Lully's beautiful tragédies-lyriques might have been a hard act to follow, but at least as far as Les Fêtes Vénitiennes goes, Campra manages to retain what is good about Lully's work - principally the splendour and the rhythmic pulse of the dance music - without the longeurs that go along with it. There's a Prologue here invoking the Gods that leads to conflict among mortals, but none of the lengthy praises to the Sun God, Louis XIV, that open Lully's tragédies-lyriques. And instead of one long mythological subject drawn out and interspersed at every opportunity with dances and choral pieces, Campra hits upon a more accessible format that would later become known as the opéra-ballet.
It's a format that if it is recognisable at all now, it will be because of Rameau's similarly frivolous portmanteau entertainment of Prologue and Entrées, Les Indes Galantes. The style was perhaps hit upon accidentally by Campra during the first performances of Les Fêtes Vénitiennes in 1710, the work evolving as it was performed, with some new episodes added and old ones dropped, according to their popularity with audiences. The intent is clearly that this is all in the name of entertainment and spectacle, and Les Fêtes Vénitiennes is as lively and entertaining as they come.
In keeping with the spirit of the work, it would be a mistake to over-extend the piece by showing as many of the Entrées as possible, but rather it's more important to try to retain the variety and concision of the original. From the 4 Prologues and 9 Entrées available then, Christie selects one Prologue ('The Triumph of Folly over Reason') and 3 of the Entrées ('The Ball or the Dance Master', 'The Serenades and the Gamblers' and 'The Opera or the Singing Master'). There's a certain amount of cross-over between the four parts - and, of course Carsen and Christie focus on the 'theatrical' theme - but really the only real connection linking the different interchangeable parts of the works is that they all fit within the rather open concept of being based around the celebrations of the Carnival in Venice.
The Prologue opens with a group of modern-day tourists visiting St Mark's Square and being taken with the colourful pageantry of the Carnival, abandoning Reason to the Folly of the festivities, much to the displeasure of the religious orders. This allows the work to then fall back on a stylised imagining (no more authentic I imagine than Campra's original vision) of the exaggerated colour, exotic locations and all the pleasure-seeking and romance associated with Les Fêtes Vénitiennes. In Le Bal, a wealthy prince wants to test the constancy of a young Venetian woman he is in love with, exchanging positions with his Dance Master to see if she truly loves him or is only interested in wealth and position. Les Sérénades features two women, Isabella and Lucile, both of them competing for the love of Léandre, who is really in love with another beauty, Irène. L'Opéra also deals with love affairs, where a group of opera singers love-lives become enmeshed in the opera they are singing.
Most of the Entrées are played out in a fairly straightforward manner here, albeit in highly-stylised sets and wearing boldly-coloured and extravagant costumes. There are a few characteristic twists - Fortune for example dressed (or semi-undressed) as a walking Casino - but they all remain in the spirit of the work and within the context of the Venetian setting. There's some recognition that L'Opéra ou le maître à chanter, with its opera-within-an-opera setting, is a kind of baroque Ariadne auf Naxos and perhaps some parody of Lully's operas is implied, so we get all kinds of theatrical tricks, even dancing sheep. In the main however, the idea is simply to get as much of the entertaining variety that makes the work a delight to watch, with frequent dances, colourful costumes, clever stage craft, choruses, duets and arias.
Some of the pieces take a little longer to get going, the final L'Opéra Entrée in particular requiring quite a bit of recitative to set up its plot, but in terms of the variety of the selections and their individual make-up, their purpose is clear, their balance of singing, ballet dancing and spectacle all seeking to entertain. Carsen provides the context for that marvellously, but the real test of the work is in the musical performances and the singing, and the production doesn't let us down on those points. William Christie and Les Arts Florissants bring all the inherent vibrancy out of the work and it's simply marvellous to hear on period instruments, Campra's arrangements, particularly the ballet sections, having a popular folk-dance character that sounds closer to Cavalli than the rather more stately regal rhythms of Lully and Rameau.
The singing is also outstanding, many of these singers well-schooled in the Arts Florissants style, with much experience in the music of this period. Some of the familiar names playing multiple roles, as is often the case in such works, are Marc Mauillon, baritone François Lis as Léandre and Emmanuelle de Negri as Reason, Lucile and Lucie, all of them wonderful. Élodie Fonnard also makes a terrific impression in the eye-catching role of Fortune as well as playing Iphise in L'Opéra, and Reinoud Van Mechelen wonderful light lyrical tenor shines out in the countertenor roles of Thémir and Zéphir. With so much talent packed into such variety of scenes and situations, there's never a dull moment here.
Links: Culturebox, L'Opéra Comique
