Rossini - William Tell (London, 2015)

Giacomo Rossini - Guillaume Tell

Royal Opera House, 2015

Antonio Pappano, Damiano Michieletto, Gerald Finley, John Osborn, Malin Byström, Alexander Vinogradov, Sofia Fomina, Enkelejda Shkosa, Nicolas Courjal, Eric Halfvarson, Michael Colvin, Samuel Dale Johnson, Enea Scala

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

The Royal Opera House production of William Tell caused a bit of an uproar over some explicit content that some thought had no place in Rossini's opera, specifically a scene depicting the rape of a young village woman by Gesler's soldiers. As is often the case, it appears that one scene has come in for undue attention, taken out of context of the production as a whole. While it is uncomfortably long it's meant to make the audience feel uncomfortable, and if so Damiano Michieletto succeeds in getting across the reality of military oppression and war crimes, which is surely what the legend of William Tell and Rossini's opera is all about. Or is it?

Well, there's an argument to be made on both sides. For a start, Michieletto is not recounting the legend of William Tell and the Swiss rebellion against the oppressive Austrian Habsburg regime in the 14th century, but rather updates it to a more modern setting that looks more like it takes place in one of the Balkan states, the Ukraine or Crimea. It's not just that the director wants to de-romanticise the William Tell legend, since it's apparent to anyone who listens closely to the score that Rossini by no means romanticises the subject of military oppression and genocide. All Michieletto is doing is bringing the underlying reality of that to the stage rather than hide it behind costume drama theatrics.

There's a case to be made however that Rossini's music - in that controversial scene certainly - doesn't depict that kind of brutal realism. And even if it has been toned down a little for this video recording, do we really want to see it acted out in this way on the stage? We wouldn't watch it if it was on the news and surely acting out a rape scene on the stage and choreographing it to Rossini's music risks cheapening the horror of the reality. Well, that's why we have directors to make decisions about how far to go in the visual staging of an opera and Damiano Michieletto takes sensitivities on both sides into account in the Royal Opera House production.

Rossini's music might indeed suggest more of mythological hero of the kind that Jemmy reads about in his comic books, while playing with his toy soldiers, as we see during the famous four-part overture that Rossini devises for the opera - an overture that is unlike any of his previous dashed-out-in-minutes-just-before-the-opening-night overtures for his earlier operas. The overture captures the sense of human suffering and endurance, buoyed by a sense of unquenchable spirit for heroic resistance, and finally acceptance of the human reality and the cost that must be paid for it. It's all there in Rossini's overture, it's expanded on (considerably) over the long opera, and all that is there in Michieletto's production as well.

The romantic image of the 14th century folk legend and what he stands for is there in Jemmy's imagination; a figure who steps off the comic book page in this production and gives the strength and inspiration of the ideal to those living with the reality. The Robin Hood-like figure tries to rouse the people of the little village of Bürglen with his arrow, but the despairing villagers are clearly too terrified having suffered at the hands of the brutal Austrian governor of the region, Gesler. William Tell, all too aware of the bitter reality that they have to live with on a daily basis, is himself is disgusted at his son's nonsense, and is reluctant to take up the quiver presented to him by the ghostly figure of legend.

But take it up he does. He first attempts passive resistance (refusing to bow before Gesler's hat) and appeasement (shooting the apple from his son's head), before realising that other more direct and violent means are necessary. It's not acceptable to just heroically storm in there and Rossini's opera, based on Friedrich Schiller's play, incorporates a variety of real human responses, not just through Tell and his family, but also the suffering endured by Arnold Melchtal through the murder of his father, and the compromised position he is in with regards to his post in the Austrian army and his relationship with Mathilde. Family, above all is what is important, and it's complicated. There's also a sense of the community as a family and it is in the realisation of the greater good being served for the sake of this family that the path to action becomes clearer.

Michieletto's production takes all of this into account, placing great emphasis on the family connections and the depth of feeling that Rossini's score gives them in the opera. He contrasts this - in sharp lighting with long shadows - with the devastation that had been done, the landscape a wasteland with uprooted trees featuring prominently. Nature has been defiled. At the same time, it's important that the turning point that is reached is one that justifies Tell's actions. The horror of Tell having to shoot an apple off the head of his own son is vividly depicted in the opera, but the folk legend is unlikely to have the same impact for a modern audience used to seeing worse horrors on the TV every night, and if Michieletto deems it necessary to elaborate on a scene that is discreetly alluded to in the libretto in order to make the work function dramatically, well, that's his job.

Obviously not everyone will agree with the means employed, but regardless of the merits of the production designs and the concept employed, the musical and singing performances make a convincing case for the brilliance of Rossini's masterpiece. The Royal Opera House orchestra under Antonio Pappano put in an outstanding performance, forceful, lyrical and dynamic, never over-playing or over-emphasising Rossini score into grand opera mannerisms, but remaining sensitive to the pace and varied moods of the piece. It's often dazzling, particularly with the uncompressed high quality audio mixing on the Blu-ray disc.

The casting too is of the highest order for what is undoubtedly an extremely challenging and a long work to sing for all its principals. I'm not sure why I never get terribly excited about Gerald Finley in a leading role, but perhaps it's because there are just never any airs or showiness attached to his performances. That doesn't mean that he is ever merely filling a role functionally; his William Tell here is faultlessly controlled and expressive in singing, his acting performance completely within character. John Osborn is one of the most underrated Rossini tenors out there, and one of the few who can really do justice to a role as challenging as Arnold. He's quite brilliant here. I've been hard on Malin Byström in the past, but she amply demonstrates how good she can be here and is simply extraordinary as Mathilde. Keeping the emphasis essentially on the family theme, Sofia Fomina presents a lively, spirited Jemmy and Enkelejda Shkosa a touching Hedwige. Nicolas Courjal is a force to be reckoned with, as you would expect Gesler to be. The chorus also play their important role in the opera exceptionally well.

Links: Royal Opera House

Rossini - L'Italiana in Algeri

Gioachino Rossini - L'Italiana in Algeri

Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Liège, 2013

Bruno Campanella, Emilio Sagi, Enkelejda Shkosa, Carlo Lepore, Daniele Zanfardino, Mario Cassi, Liesbeth Devos, Julie Bailly, Laurent Kubla

Grand Théâtre de Liège, 9 February 2013 - ARTE Live Web

The Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège have a good track record with Rossini and bel canto work, particularly on works that have a more comic edge.  One of Rossini's big melodramas or opera seria works would present a greater challenge and require some big guns to do it justice, but as they demonstrated most recently with the little known early Rossini opera L'Equivoco Stravagante, with a little bit of resource and imagination, there can be considerable colour and entertainment to be drawn out of the lighter Rossini dramma giocoso works.  The requirements for L'Italiana in Algeri lie somewhere in-between.  It's a popular comedy, but like Il Barbiere di Sevilla it also requires a good balance between strong singers, comic timing and a sense of style or panache to really make it work.  Liège do pretty well on all fronts in their latest production.

Director Emilio Sagi puts the emphasis of the production on style, and there's good reason for that.  Much of the comedy of L'Italiana in Algeri (An Italian Girl in Algiers) relies upon the premise of the exoticism and glamour of its Eastern setting, in the palace of Mustafà, the Bey of Algiers, with his seraglio of wives, slaves and eunuchs.  The Bey however is tired of his wife Elvira and wants Haly, the captain of his corsairs, to procure an Italian wife for him, so the opera also has to present the idea of Italian style and women as being just as exotically attractive as a North African harem.  You can of course make even that idea alone funny - and there's lots of spaghetti eating here to play with that in the Pappataci scene - but the idea of Italian exoticism works best if you set it, as Emilio Sagi does here, in the glamorous age of the Dolce Vita of the 1960s.

The production achieves this impressively with the simplest of means.  Enrique Bordolini's sets provide a few pointed Byzantine arches to give a flavour of an Eastern palace, working with the colouration of Eduardo Bravo's lighting and Renata Schussheim's costume designs to make this a most attractive production that works perfectly with the playful tone of Rossini's writing for L'Italiana in Algeri.  There's solid work from Bruno Campanella in the pit that is similarly well-attuned to the content.  This is consequently a sophisticated Rossini production that emphasises how well the composer could bring his musical resources, his sense of structure and timing to bear to play out a series of entertaining and sometimes silly comic situations.  It is not as raucously funny as it might be - some of the recitative is cut, reducing the effectiveness of the situation between Lindoro and Elvira - but the direction and the tone established in Sagi's production is consistent and entertaining.

With only a few minor reservations, the casting is also excellent and certainly as good as it ought to be for this opera.  Liège get the right balance of freshness from their regular Italian opera regulars for the secondary roles (solid performances from Julie Bailly, Liesbeth Devos and Laurent Kubla as Zulma, Elvira and Haly) and combine it with experienced singers in the more challenging main roles.  Not so much Daniele Zanfardino - last seen in Liège's production of Rossini's L'Equivoco Stravagante - as Lindoro, but he has the right timbre of voice for a Rossini tenor, if not quite the strength or range.  That's not so much of an issue here, and he copes well with the demands of the role.

Much more critical to establishing the tone of the dramma giocoso is the range and the interplay between Isabella and the Bey, and the Royal Opéra de Wallonie had two excellent singers in these roles.  Carlo Lepore's singing is beautifully grave and musical, his bass working well alongside the other singers, round out in the duets and ensembles.  In acting terms, his handling of Mustafa's comic potential was also perfect, suitably commanding, faintly ridiculous and comically lecherous.  He needs however a feisty Isabella to be a bit more spirited than the comparatively weak Elvira that he wants to get rid of, but she also has to be demanding enough to knock him into place, and that's exactly what you got with Albanian mezzo-soprano Enkelejda Shkosa.

That's about all you want from L'Italiana in Algeri - a sense of style, a little bit of exoticism, a bit of unstrained comedy and some good singing that doesn't stand out or draw attention just for the sake of ornamentation.  The latest Liège production to be broadcast via Internet Streaming, L'Italiana in Algeri can be enjoyed for free for the next few months on the ARTE Live Web site.

Puccini - Madama Butterfly

Giacomo Puccini - Madama Butterfly

L’Opéra National de Paris, Opéra Bastille

Maurizio Benini, Robert Wilson, Micaela Carosi, Enkelejda Shkosa, Anna Wall, James Valenti, Anthony Michaels-Moore, Carlo Bosi, Vladimir Kapshuk, Scott Wilde

L’Opéra National de Paris, 4th February 2011

What is the colour of Madama Butterfly? You could see it in crude terms of the national flags of the two nations involved in the opera, the red, white and blue of the Stars and Stripes in a clash with Japan’s the Rising Sun (or indeed, more likely in this particular case, with the pink of chrysanthemums). Such a superficial reading of Madama Butterfly, based on David Belasco’s play, a sentimental tearjerker, could perhaps be justified, Puccini’s score even explicitly evoking the American flag in its Star Spangled Banner refrain and attempting to incorporate Japanese music into the score. If you close your eyes however, listen to the emotional core of the music – a much more delicate and sensitive affair than you might at first think – you might visualise the tone of Madama Butterfly as pale green. Or pale green through to deep blue, with an infinite variety of shades in between, illuminated perhaps at various points with flashes of violent red.

Robert Wilson is the master of conveying the emotional tone of an opera in terms of colour and his reading of Madama Butterfly is convincing on this account. No matter that just about every Robert Wilson production works in shades of blue, green and grey – perhaps those are the colours of opera itself. Nonetheless, even operating within such a limited palette as just a personal signature still provides plenty of scope for the director (although I personally found it very restrictive in his production of Aida for the Royal Opera House a few years ago), and it’s particularly effective in this 1993 production revived for the Paris Opera’s 2010-11 season. In terms of staging and props, the production is unexpectedly minimal – ultra-minimal even, perhaps even more sparse than usual for a Robert Wilson production. "Tutti i fiore" there are certainly not in preparation for the return of Pinkerton at the end of Act 2, and is this a dagger I see before me at the conclusion? No, it’s a mimed one.

Aside from his work for Philip Glass, I’m not used to seeing Robert Wilson’s stage productions in anything other than a mythological or generic antiquity setting, which allows plenty of room for personal touches. Madama Butterfly however is a comparatively modern opera, or one at least in a recognisable period and specific cultural setting, but that’s unimportant as far as Robert Wilson is concerned. Everyone is still dressed in togas and tunics, albeit with an almost science-fictional Oriental touch. Overall however, it’s an approach that works well for this opera, stripping it down, the action rarely extending beyond formalised gestures and hand movements that suit if not imitate Japanese social interaction, effectively undercutting the heart-tugging sentimentality of the traditional kitsch faux-Japanese setting. It also makes use of space effectively – there’s no marriage of worlds here – they sit apart, each with their own ideals and needs, and never the twain shall meet.

Toning down the staging is one thing, toning down the music or the singing in Puccini would however be fatal, and consequently the Orchestra of the Opéra de Paris plough on marvellously, not regardless of the staging, but mindful of the simplicity and the subtlety contained within Puccini’s arrangements, as well as the bombast. James Valenti however didn’t find that balance in his Pinkerton. He has a pleasantly toned voice, but it was much too gentle for this role, and he failed to cut an imposing figure as the American imperialist, even ducking some of the higher notes. He certainly didn’t please some sections of the Paris audience at the performance I attended. Micaela Carosi (introduced in the recent Paris Opera production of Andrea Chénier) was announced as being unwell, but took to the stage nonetheless and performed marvellously. She was everything you could want of a Cio-Cio San (barring ethnicity) and, despite her illness, completely mastered a difficult singing role made all the more complicated by the very specific movements, poses and gestures required for this particular production.

Ultimately, Madama Butterfly is any colour you want it to be, but it fits in rather well with Robert Wilson’s uniquely personal palette and stylisations, not detracting from the power of the opera in the way that his work did for Aida, but giving the characters and their emotional lives space, enhancing and supporting the emotional tone in a manner that draws out its subtleties without over-emphasising, vulgarising or sentimentalising the opera’s crowd-pleasing qualities.