Gioachino Rossini - Aureliano in Palmira
Rossini Opera Festival, 2013
Will Crutchfield, Mario Martone, Michael Spyres, Jessica Pratt, Lena Belkina, Raffaella Lupinacci, Dempsey Rivera, Sergio Vitale, Dimitri Pkhaladze, Raffaele Costantini
Arthaus Musik - Blu-ray
Perhaps the most notable thing about Aureliano in Palmira (apart from the ancient Syrian town of Palmyra making headlines in the news at the moment) is that it was the first serious opera performed at the newly opened La Scala in Milan in 1813. What is also of musical interest is that the work catches Rossini in an intermediate period, paying homage or drawing inspiration from the 18th century opera seria, but really making strides to set the standard for a style of Italian opera that would predominate for most of the 19th century and achieve completeness in the works of Giuseppe Verdi. The opera itself, one of the last rarities to be revived at the Rossini Opera Festival, is however unfortunately rather less inspiring nowadays.
Dramatically, Aureliano in Palmira is a very dry affair. The libretto, replete with da capo arias, is unfashionably Metastasian in form, and it's not all that different in plot or treatment from Rossini's 1817 Adelaide di Borgogna. It's the familiar story of a romantic entanglement in a time of war, Aureliano the conquering power of Rome, demanding that Zenobia the strong female leader of Palmyra yield also to his romantic advances otherwise he will kill her imprisoned lover, Arbace. Rather than be dispirited by the shame and humiliation inflicted upon their ruler by the Roman aggressor, the people of Syria rally behind Zenobia and Arbace in their quest for freedom.
With its theme of a people oppressed, the opera even opening with a chorus lament, there are clear comparisons that can be drawn with Verdi's Nabucco. And even though the arias are often opera seria in style and delivery, they are dramatically attuned to the plot, developing into duets and inevitably into choruses. All of these look towards the cavatina and cabaletto structures of the bel canto and High Romantic Italian numbers opera style, and it's unquestionably fascinating to see their development here in this Rossini rarity. It's an area that has been under-explored at the Rossini Opera Festival, where the emphasis has been more on rediscovering the early comedies and doing justice to the grand operas of Mosè in Egitto and Guillaume Tell.
Aureliano in Palmira evidently doesn't hold the same kind of allure, but what this production has going for it is the team that made the revival of another 'special interest' Rossini opera such a marvel. Will Crutchfield, Jessica Pratt and Michael Spyres all contributed to making Ciro in Babilonia (1812) something much greater than it might otherwise have been, and they are also what makes this production of Aureliano in Palmira worthwhile. You could say the same about any Rossini opera, but it's a work that really needs a strong, understanding and sympathetic treatment, to say nothing of the highest musical standards.
Unfortunately, what Ciro in Babilonia also benefited from and which Aureliano in Palmira lacks is an engaging visual hook. Davide Livermore's 'silent movie' production might have seemed arbitrary, but it perfected suited the old-fashioned nature of Ciro and found a good context that would bring out the qualities of the work. Film director Mario Martone's production doesn't make any such wild leaps or modernisations in its setting (certainly nothing on the scale of Graham Vick's Bin Laden in Mosè in Egitto). It respects the Syrian/Roman period in the costumes and in the delivery, only occasionally using shifting and sliding screens to suggest distance/discord between the characters.
The most unusual element of the staging is the placement of a fortepiano on the stage itself which, along with a cello player, provide the recitativo accompaniment. That's partly down to space restrictions in the pit, but there's some effort made - not entirely successfully - to integrate it and the otherwise dry recitative into the staging itself. There are a few walk-ons in and around the audience to try and make the staging a bit more active and engaging, and the director tries to rewrite the forced happy ending with an account of the real historical facts, but none of these devices really serve to make Aureliano in Palmira any more dramatic or help drag it out of its rather predictable conventionality that borders on tedium.
Will Crutchfield had the unenviable task of creating a new critical edition of a work that had to be largely reconstructed on a best guess basis from various sources. To his credit he doesn't attempt to 'soup up' this Rossini with an expanded orchestra or a slick modern reading of the score. It's played with a period-sized orchestra and an authentic feel and drive for the opera seria roots of the work, as well as for its dramatic content. The overture it shares with Il Barbiere di Sevilla given a slightly different tone and meaning in the process. It also means we get more of the generic Rossini here in the playing and conventional rhythms, where it's left to the voices to carry much of the melody and the more sophisticated colouring.
As noted earlier then, the real delight of this production is in the casting of Michael Spyres and Jessica Pratt as Aureliano and Zenobia. As well as commanding great presence, Jessica Pratt's high note coloratura is impressive in range and expression. Her voice is less robust in the more dramatic register, but she doesn't have a lot to work other than the generic in those passages anyway. Michael Spyres is tremendous. The clarity of diction, the resonance in his voice and the lyrical force of that distinct beautiful timbre is well suited to the role and really makes it come to life. Lena Belkina has to contend with playing the castrato role of Arsace as a mezzo-soprano. She does as well as can be expected but is clearly challenged and, focussed on delivery, her performance lacks a dramatic edge.
The production is well presented on Blu-ray disc. Image and sound are both outstanding, the image perhaps slightly softer than usual on account of the low stage lighting. There's a 'making of' feature on the disc that discusses the history of the work and the efforts made to bring it back to the stage at Pesaro. The DVD is a BD50, all-region compatible, with subtitles in Italian, English, German, French, Korean and Japanese.
Vincenzo Bellini - I Capuleti e i Montecchi
Teatro La Fenice, Venice, 2015
Omer Meir Wellber, Arnaud Bernard, Jessica Pratt, Sonia Ganassi, Shalva Mukeria, Rubén Amoretti, Luca Dall’Amico
Culturebox Internet Streaming - 18 January 2015
The greatest love story ever written, Bellini's version of 'Romeo and Juliet' is perhaps not the greatest opera ever written, but it was the composer's first great success and is a work that can be seen as clearly leading the way towards La Sonnambula, Norma and I Puritani. As is often the case with the less well-regarded works of bel canto, I Capuleti e i Montecchi can however be transformed into something greater with the right production and the right leading lady. The new production in Venice, bringing the work back to where it was first performed in 1830, is perhaps nothing special, but it's good enough to support a terrific performance from one of the greatest bel canto singers in the world at the moment, the young Australian soprano Jessica Pratt.
There are considerable differences between 'Romeo and Juliet' and I Capuleti e i Montecchi, and most of them can be put down to librettist Felice Romani working not from Shakespeare's original drama but an 1818 Italian version of the drama written by Luigi Scevola, which he had already been adapted for Nicola Vaccai's 1825 opera Giulietta e Romeo. Much is inevitably cut for concision, losing many of the secondary characters and situations, and even a few of the big ones. Before the opera starts, Romeo has already inadvertently killed Juliet's brother in a conflict between the rival families of the Capuleti and the Montecchi, and even the families have been drawn back to their original political divisions of Ghibellines and Guelphs.
None of this is any kind of a hindrance to the essence of the central romantic drama between Romeo and Giulietta, although there are evidently differences in the development of their relationship and in how the tragic events unfold. The rivalry that makes their love impossible is still there between the opposing families or political factions, and that provides opportunities for plenty of tense, dramatic choral pieces. It would help the opera if Romeo and Giulietta can have a few good duets and arias to air their troubles, and those are well catered for in Bellini's fine settings of Romani's libretto. It all culminates in a dramatic scene where Giulietta 'dies' just as she is about to be married against her will to Tebaldo, but there are also opportunities for Romeo and Giulietta to see each other die in a way that can be reflected in emotional outbursts of singing to add even greater emphasis to the tragedy.
Arnaud Bernard's production for La Fenice responds well to the situations and gives the performers the right context to deliver on Bellini's settings, but it doesn't really have anything significant to add to the work. As a co-production with Athens and Verona, it undoubtedly has to work for each venue and can't be too adventurous (not that Verona can't be adventurous if there's still spectacle involved as in their La Fura dels Baus Aida), but really, this I Capuleti e i Montecchi is to all intents and purposes a period production. It uses the now familiar framework of paintings in a gallery coming to life, but unlike say Alvis Hermanis' Il Trovatore, which can be seen to be about storytelling and history, it doesn't seem to have any real conceptual purpose.
Visually however, it looks well and suits the basic dramatic purposes the work. At the start, on the rise of a curtain, the Capuleti come alive and surge out of a large painting that has been stored in the basement or workshop of a museum. If you see it as nothing more than La Fenice bringing an old master out of the archives and Bellini's music still being capable of invigorating it with life, then it makes its point, albeit not a particularly original one. In the main, other than one or two modern gallery art restorers and transportation staff moving things around, and a few freeze-frames of the action settling back into picture poses, the production gets away with just being a period costume drama.
What is perhaps more important as far as direction goes, is that it allows all the drama and romance to work within this concept and it gives the necessary space for Romeo and Juliet to do their stuff. If that's means that their final moments take place on a workshop table in a museum basement rather than on a bier in a period Veronese location then it's really of little consequence. It works just as well because Romeo and Juliet are singing like their very lives depend on it. And in essence, that's the strength of I Capuleti e i Montecchi. It was written to be brought to life by a great soprano and a great mezzo-soprano, which means that it was written, as far as we're concerned, for Jessica Pratt and Sonia Ganassi. And, forsooth, if they don't indeed make it their own...
Jessica Pratt is, quite simply, phenomenal. And that's not the first time I've said that about one of her performances. She excels as a lyric soprano in bel canto roles, and if she doesn't quite have the force for more dramatic roles, she can nonetheless translate the coloratura of a Rossini, Bellini or a Donizetti heroine into a thoroughly dramatic performance. And not just in the high-end coloratura, but with great technical ability and control, she demonstrates that just as much can be expressed with intensity in softer, more intimate scenes. Pratt is a convincing actress too, looking the part in her flowing locks and plunging gowns, even if the demands of this role hardly extend beyond traditional romantic opera heroine swoons and gestures.
Sonia Ganassi doesn't quite have the same glamour in the mezzo-soprano trouser role of Romeo, but she has a vital part to play and proves to be more than capable for the vocal and dramatic challenges of the role, and gives an impressive performance, working well with Jessica Pratt. Those are the roles that really matter here, but there were good performances also from Luca Dall’Amico as Lorenzo (Friar Laurence), Shalva Mukeria as Tebaldo and Rubén Amoretti as Giulietta's father Capellio. Omer Meir Wellber conducted the orchestra of La Fenice with a good balance between the lyrical content and the dramatic edge to Bellini's music.
Links: Culturebox, Teatro La Fenice
Giacomo Meyerbeer - L'Africaine
Teatro La Fenice, Venice - 2013
Emmanuel Villaume, Leo Muscato, Jessica Pratt, Veronica Simeoni, Gregory Kunde, Emanuele Giannino, Angelo Veccia, Luca dall’Amico, Davide Ruberti, Mattia Denti, Ruben Amoretti, Anna Bordignon
Medici Live Internet Streaming - November 2013
Just when it looked like no-one had the resources, the singers or the sheer nerve to take on another grand Meyerbeer opera and succeed in putting it across with any measure of success, along come La Fenice with L'Africaine. First performed posthumously in 1865, a year after Meyerbeer's death, La Fenice selected L'Africaine to mark that 150th anniversary, and it proves to be a good choice. Meyerbeer's final opera is a fascinating work that is not quite as richly elaborate in melodies and set-pieces as some of his more famous grand operas (Les Huguenots, Robert le Diable), but it retains the glamour in a number of key scenes even as it shows some influence of a more modern style elsewhere. By and large, with only some minor reservations, La Fenice mirror that approach in their new production and in the process prove that a Meyerbeer opera can still work on the modern stage on its own terms.
Although it has a title that makes little sense to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of geography - the African woman of the title actually comes from India or from an Indian island - the chief attraction of L'Africaine for audiences of the day was the foreign exoticism of its setting. For modern audiences, if the work is known at all, it's for how Meyerbeer expresses that exoticism in the opera's most famous aria, 'O Paradis', sung by Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama on his arrival at the New World of his dreams. That revelation in Act IV doesn't come as easily as it seems and there are various trials and tribulations in the first three acts that make it all worthwhile, if not unexpectedly somewhat conventionally drawn out.
Inevitably this is mainly to incorporate romantic complications. Although she has been engaged to marry Don Pédro, Inès is in love with Vasco de Gama. Awaiting his return from sea, the news arrives that her beloved has died in a shipwreck, but this proves untrue. Vasco de Gama is actually the sole survivor of the crew, and has brought news of a new world out there somewhere. If given a ship, he promises the council an empire, "new climates, rich treasures, prosperity". As proof that this new land exists, he shows the council two examples of an unknown race of copper-skinned people, Sélika and Nélusko, who have been bought as slaves in Africa. As there is nothing written of such a land and the slaves refuse to divulge where their land lies, the council reject Vasco's claims and he is rather harshly anathemised and thrown into prison.
Languishing in his cell, poor Vasco de Gama also has woman trouble to contend with. Unknown to him, Sélika, who is actually the Queen of her island kingdom, is in love with the Portuguese sailor and furious when he mentions the name Inès in his sleep. For her part, Inès is jealous of the beautiful woman that de Gama has brought back with him, even though he denies that there could possibly be anything between them and even offers her Sélika and Nélusko as slaves. That obviously doesn't go down well with Sélika either. Of more pressing concern however is rescuing her beloved from prison, and the only way Inès can do that is by agreeing to marry Don Pédro.
Strange as it might seem since they rejected Vasco de Gama's claims, the ruling council have decided to let Don Pédro lead an expedition instead. Even stranger, the released Vasco de Gama has managed to get a ship, follows them and boards Don Pédro's ship only for it to be attacked by Indian pirates, the ship burnt and all the crew killed. The only survivors are Inès, her maid and Vasco de Gama, who has been found in chains in the depths of the captured ship. A prisoner still, Vasco de Gama is nonetheless enraptured with the discovery of the land of his dreams. His delight is short-lived however, as the Brahman priest commands that a foreigner cannot be allowed to live. Now crowned Queen again, Sélika, much to Nélusko's anger, saves him by claiming that she and the explorer are married. Discovering for the first time that she loves him de Gama rejoices in their union, but only until he discovers that his beloved Inès is not dead. Rejected again, Sélika inhales the poison of the Manchineel tree and is joined in death by her ever faithful Nélusko.
Already ahead of the fashionable French love for exoticism that would be expressed later in Delibes' similarly themed Lakmé, (although it can even be seen as far back as Rameau's Les Indes Galantes), Meyerbeer's L'Africaine revels in the colour, the richness of melody and the drama suggested by the romance and the danger of the Asian setting. Surprisingly however, although it is a 5-Act grand opera, there is little of the extravagance of melody, airs and ballets in set-piece numbers that usually characterise the genre of which Meyerbeer was the master. All those elements are in place of course but to a lesser degree here, with only one Grand Air, a short ballet in Act IV and a couple of set-piece spectacles - one of the boarding of the ship and the other of splendour of the New World paradise. Showing perhaps some Wagnerian or Germanic influence, there is more through composition in this Meyerbeer work, less stop-starting for arias, and some cutting back on repetition.
Emmanuel Villaume presents a thoughtful account of the score here with the orchestra of La Fenice. Running to three-and-a-quarter hours there are evidently trims applied, but as they are mostly towards the end of the work they seem to be made out of consideration for the performers rather than really moving the drama forward. There's nothing substantial missing from the first three acts. The first ensemble of Act II is cut, but the all-important closing ensemble is there. Act III opens with the sailor's prayer, but that seems more logical than opening the act at sea with a female chorus. There are a greater number of the small trims in Act IV and there's a major cut in the removal of the confrontation between Inès and Sélika at the start of Act V, but in both cases it tightens the focus of the drama on the highlights of these acts.
Leo Muscato's stage direction and basic period setting strips the presentation for La Fenice back even further in a way that emphasises the dramatic element of the work without necessarily losing any of its musical colour. Those key scenes could certainly be a little more colourfully decorated - the New World Paradise shown for example as merely warm diffused light and some lightly floating blossom leaves, but reducing the excess works well enough in this case when you have the aria 'Pays merveilleux... O Paradis' to say all that needs to be said, particularly when it's given a fine rendition, as it is here by Gregory Kunde singing Vasco de Gama.
It's in this kind of casting then that La Fenice truly proves that it is possible to successfully stage a Meyerbeer opera. Clearly, despite weaknesses seen in this area in other productions, there actually are good Meyerbeer singers out there, and their lineage would seem to come from the more heavy dramatic Rossini operas. Gregory Kunde is certainly one of them. He handles the principal tenor role marvellously, with a strong, confident delivery and he has the stamina to maintain it right through to his Act IV Grand Aria. He makes his exit at this stage, but Sélika has to carry right through all five Acts while keeping enough in reserve to almost single-handedly deliver the whole of Act V, and Veronica Simeoni keeps the dramatic intensity there throughout. She seems to flag slightly with some pitch inconsistency at the start of Act IV, but only briefly, rallying through to a beautiful duet with Kunde and managing to bring about that essential conclusion with all the necessary feeling and impact.
The challenges of having the right type of voice to sing Meyerbeer are evident in the casting of Jessica Pratt for Inès. Pratt is a coloratura singer of immense range and ability, well-suited and even greatly impressive in those intense Rossini bel canto roles, but the dramatic force of Inès is a different challenge altogether. It's a relatively small role, cut back even further here, but the strain shows on the Australian soprano. She plays the part with considerable personality however and comes into the role well after a slightly shaky opening. The baritone roles of Nélusko and Don Pédro are handed well by Angelo Veccia and Luca dall’Amico.
La Fenice's 2013 production of Meyerbeer's L'Africaine can be viewed free for a limited period via internet streaming on the Medici web site. The work is performed in the original French without subtitles.
Rossini - Ciro in Babilonia
Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, 2012
Will Crutchfield, Davide Livermore, Ewa Podleś, Jessica Pratt, Michael Spyres, Robert McPherson, Carmen Romen, Mirco Palazzi, Raffaeli Constantini
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
Dressing Rossini's Ciro in Babilonia up as a silent movie sounds like a bit of an arbitrary or frivolous choice, but there's no denying that Davide Livermore's production does at least inject some life into Rossini's otherwise stodgy Biblical drama. I was going to say "inject some colour" into the work, but since the colour scheme here is primarily black-and-white, that doesn't seem appropriate, particularly when all the colour the work needs is already there in the detail of Rossini's writing for the singers, and that hasn't been neglected here either. Singing and staging combined in this way, the impact achieved for this particular Rossini work - one that would unlikely ever be considered as one of the composer's greats - is simply tremendous. This is another coup for the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro.
More than just being a random concept however, there's some method and perhaps even some playful commentary behind David Livermore's silent cinema concept. The director previously styled Rossini's earliest work Demetrio e Polibio as a backstage recreation of the ghosts of the opera's first performance - which, considering that it had remained in obscurity for centuries since its first performances, was a clever and meaningful touch. By setting Rossini's first religious drama for the Lenten festival in Ferrara in 1812 as a silent Cecil B. De Mille Biblical epic, Livermore is also in a way looking back to a past and making a commentary about the nature of art and performance, and silent cinema perhaps has more in common with opera than you might think.
Ciro in Babilonia is, it has to be said, a terribly old-fashioned work and not one that is likely to stand up well to modernisation. It's not Mosè in Egitto (or indeed Moïse et Pharaon), and it's unlikely to be able to sustain a radical exploration of its concepts by a director like Graham Vick. There's an acknowledgement however here that the work - like silent cinema - has nonetheless a certain charm and a quality in its unique means of expression. The dialogue is far from naturalistic, the treatment of the Biblical story is hardly historically accurate but, like the old-fashioned gestures and expressions of silent-movie actors, the declarations and old-style operatic mannerisms are similarly a now dated means of expression used to reach out and communicate deeper sentiments to an audience. Without resorting to irony then, Davide Livermore's silent movie concept - complete with projections, tramline scratches and even with fortepiano continuo - works on that level.
Delivered on commission, presumably rattled out at speed in the composer's customary manner, Ciro in Babilonia might not seem like a work that is likely to reveal any new depths or facets, but the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro once again prove that even the most minor Rossini works have considerable qualities and individual merits. Ciro in Babilonia doesn't have the gravity of later Rossini in attention to musical expression and characterisation, the all-purpose melodies used here apparently with little consideration for tone of mood and situation and somewhat at odds with the inflated pronouncements of the Biblical declamations, but there is nonetheless a degree of thoughtfulness and sophistication in the writing and in the construction of the work itself. Directing from the fortepiano, Will Crutchfield leads an fine account of the work that shows that the opera indeed has qualities worth examining.
The production then plays fully to the strengths of the subject as well as the nature of Rossini's vibrant and melodic score. The silent movie concept is very clever in the way that it allows the old-fashioned nature of the opera to actually "work". I can't imagine any other way that this could be done that would be half as effective. It's entertaining, it's involving, it's highly entertaining and simply just marvellous to watch. If this were indeed a movie, there'd have to be an Oscar award just for the Costume Design and Make-up alone. The stage concept can however only take this so far, and unless there are real merits in the work itself, it's not going to be enough to hold you for the full three hours. The Pesaro team (and Caramoor from where this production originated) recognise however that the true worth of Ciro in Babilonia lies in the singing performances, and accordingly they bring together a remarkable cast here that individually and collectively deliver one of the most astonishing performances seen at the festival in recent years.
Evidently Rossini tailored his writing to suit specific singers, but more than just to show off their range, the composer clearly took advantage of their abilities to place it in the service of the drama. We can never know how such works sounded in their original performances, but on the very rare occasion when you have singers of sufficient ability, stature and character who understand the nature of bel canto, you get a glimpse of the true quality of a Rossini opera. The cast in this production are, quite frankly, just phenomenal. The role of Ciro, for example, requires the full richness of sound and the range of tessitura that only a true contralto can achieve, and you only realise that when you hear Ewa Podleś sing the role. Her first scene in Act I, 'Ahi! Come il mio dolore, come calmar potrò?' is astonishing in its delivery, performance and technique, but it's the combination of that contralto voice with the other singers that gives the work real depth and range - and Rossini even provides an unaccompanied trio at the end of the prison scene in Act II to show this off.
Ciro is however by no means the only challenging role in the opera, and this production benefits from - and actually needs - exceptionally strong performers in the other roles. Jessica Pratt impressed in the Pesaro production of Adelaide di Borgogna (even if the work itself and the production were a little bit lacking), and she's even more impressive here as Amira. It's a spellbinding performance of extraordinary technical virtuosity, but more than that it's also fully in service of the drama and the nature of the production. Michael Spyres also plays up the silent movie villain role of Baldassare, but has a gorgeous lyrical deep rich tenor that navigates the demands of the role consistently and with wonderful expression. Robert McPherson's Arbace is more in the style of the light Italian lyrical tenor and just glides along here beautifully in a way that perfectly complements the other voices. Mirco Palazzi's solid, deep and resonant bass has been noted before and his Zambri here is just another element that contributes wonderfully to the quality of the production as a whole.
Released on Blu-ray by Opus Arte, the presentation is impeccable. This is what High Definition was made for. The image is clear, detailed and perfectly toned, and the whole performance is well filmed, with quite a lot of tight close-ups. The quality of the PCM and 5.0 Surround audio tracks also contributes to an appreciation of the performance and indeed the music itself. Other than a Cast Gallery there are no extra features on the disc. The enclosed booklet however gives information on the work and the production and also has a full synopsis of the opera. The BD is all-region, full-HD, BD50, with subtitles in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean.
Gioachino Rossini - Adelaide di Borgogna
Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, 2011
Dmitri Jurowski, Pier' Alli, Daniela Barcellona, Jessica Pratt, Bogdan Mihai, Nicola Ilivieri, Jeanette Fischer, Francesca Pierpaoli, Clemente Antonio Dalotti
Arthaus Musik
Composed in 1817 for Rome between the writing of Armida and Mosè in Egitto for Naples, Adelaide di Borgogna has all the signs of being a commission hastily filled by the composer to a classic template of war, revolution and romance, with a historical background of Italian significance. It's the kind of subject that Verdi would later make his own and, without underestimating the importance of the Rossini influence, often do it with considerably more character than it is done here in Adelaide di Borgogna. It's not the composer's greatest work then, but being Rossini it's not entirely without merit either, and the right kind of singing and staging could certainly bring out its qualities. Recorded at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro in 2011, director Pier' Alli and conductor Dmitri Jurowski certainly make the best of the work and are assisted with some fine singing performances, but overall the work still remains problematic.
The main problem with Adelaide di Borgogna is that proves to be a difficult opera to stage dramatically. There's a solid historical foundation to the work, which is based around the year 951 on the campaigns of the German Emperor Otto the Great, even if it has all the usual operatic mannerisms, coincidences and twists that we have become familiar with in historical romances. The opera opens with the defeat of Adelaide (Adelheid, Queen of Burgundy), besieged in Canossa on Lake Guarda (the geography is a bit imprecise), by Berengario on the pretence that she is responsible for the murder of her husband Lothario (King Lothar). Bergengario wishes to use the situation to his advantage and gain access to the throne by having his son Adelberto marry Adelaide.
Berengario however fears the intervention of Ottone and his German army who have been making progress over the Alps on the invitation of Iroldo, the governor of Canossa, and tries to head off a confrontation by asking Ottone to come and judge the situation for himself. Ottone however falls in love with Adelaide the moment they meet and proposes marriage to bring resolution to the conflict. The people are delighted, singing choruses of praise and joy, but Berengario and Adelberto use the moment to launch their strike against the Emperor and make their claim for the rule of Italy.
There's not much wrong with the set-up of Adelaide di Borgogna then, the strong historical situation with its Italian patriotic sentiments and the various romantic entanglements giving Rossini plenty of material to work with. The principal pleasure of the work then is indeed in listening to Rossini's spirited musical arrangements for the piece, and the performance of it here under Dmitri Jurowski is simply wonderful. Regardless of whether the music is the most expressive - sometimes it's fairly conventional, repetitive and monotonous - Jurowski varies the pace and seems to pitch the tone perfectly for demands of each scene. You could hardly ask for a more sympathetic account, and it makes all the difference. Dramatically however - particularly in Act II, which consists of a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between Adelberto and Ottone gaining a hold over the battle for Canossa and Adelaide with almost all of the action taking place off-stage - the work is still a little creaky and it also needs some theatrical assistance to bring it across.
Pier' Alli's production is also a little creaky in places and a little baffling in others, but it does manage to enliven the proceedings somewhat. The approach to the sets and costume design is classically traditional for the most part, with some ravishing gold and green colour schemes. To give it a little extra dimension however, Alli uses back projections of filmed sequences and some 3-D modelling, with an emphasis (I'm not sure why) on water and rain. Although there are one or two questionable touches - soldiers in raincoats duelling with umbrellas - the visuals are striking enough to give some dramatic focus to the work and help it get through some of the duller or less inspired sections of the work. Even if they don't entirely succeed, the musical performance and the staging do their best to bring this work to life. So too do the singers, and rather more impressively.
As Adelaide, Jessica Pratt gives a strong performance of a tricky role in terms of its dramatic and singing demands, and she manages to bring the role to life with some degree of character. The drama might revolve around Adelaide, but Ottone is another critical role and it's in safe hands with Daniela Barcellona. If there are any minor weaknesses in delivery of one or two notes, it's entirely down to the demands of live performance, as otherwise they are most impressive individually and in how the voices blend and complement each other. The Adelaide/Ottone Act I duet 'Mi dai corone e vita' is just marvellous. Similarly, Bogdan Mihai and Nicola Ilivieri are good fits for the roles of Adelberto and Berengario and work well within the whole ensemble. This is demonstrated most notably in the quartet at the end of Act I, which is typically well-organised in Rossini's management and orchestration of the rising drama. Even if it never entirely comes together convincingly as a whole, it's such moments that make Adelaide di Borgogna well worth viewing as an enjoyable minor Rossini opera.
Arthaus give us another nice Blu-ray package for this 2011 Rossini Opera Festival production. On a BD50 disc, the image is fine and detailed, with the usual fine PCM stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 tracks. There is a wonderful rich, fullness of sound in this production from a relatively small orchestra that comes across well and gives the production an extra musical boost. There is a 17-minute Making Of feature on the disc, which has interviews with Jurowski and Alli, with emphasis on the unique elements of this production of the work. The disc is all-region compatible, and subtitles are in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish and Korean.
