Gioachino Rossini - L'Italiana in Algeri
Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro - 2013
José Ramón Encinar, Davide Livermore, Anna Goryachova, Yijie Shi, Alex Esposito, Mariangela Sicillia, Raffaella Lupinacci, Davide Luciano, Mario Cassi
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
Their productions might not be to everyone's taste, but every year the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro consistently show that they have the composer's best interests at heart and, better than anyone else, they really understand how to get great neglected works by Rossini across to a modern audience. Director Davide Livermore has come up with several innovative productions for the festival over the years, including a Hollywood silent movie epic for Ciro in Babilonia and a backstage haunting of the ghosts of Demetrio e Polibio. As the groovy 60s Austin Powers styled the cover of the DVD for his 2013 L'Italiana in Algeri indicates, the approach taken here is again playful and imaginative but also completely faithful to the intentions and the spirit of the work.
Livermore's argument for this approach is that a work like L'Italiana in Algeri was never meant to be treated with po-faced classical opera seriousness, but was meant to raise huge laughs from its audience. There's no attempt in this opera to make any serious points about social and cultural differences, or even culinary tastes (Pappataci!) - it's just a broad farce, albeit one with a gifted composer at the helm. Livermore's point of reference for translating the work to a modern context - exactly 200 years after the work was first performed - is found in the films of Blake Edwards. (The Austin Powers movies are also clearly an influence, but they themselves are heavily indebted to Blake Edwards' Pink Panther movies). In theory this is a brilliant concept, in practice, it's not as much fun as it really ought to be.
Livermore's concept is definitely appropriate in its tone and workable in the context of the opera. It sees Lindoro as a secret-agent super-spy on a special mission, who is inadvertently caught by the henchmen of the nasty foreign evil-villain Mustafà and, perhaps unaware of his secret identity, is put into the Bey's service as one of his underlings. Just before he is captured however, Lindoro Powers manages to send off an SOS to his super-sexy sixties-styled sidekick Isabella, who comes to Algeria to his rescue. Arriving there (in a more modern fashion than on a shipwrecked ship, although a downed flight is a little bit of a sensitive issue at the moment), she finds herself embroiled in Mustafà's power games as he attempts to offload his wife Elvira in favour of this groovy chick who has just arrived from Italy. She's going to need to play clever to get out of this one without causing a major international incident.
The idea is a great one, and there's a lot to enjoy in the fun production, but the execution unfortunately doesn't entirely live up to the promise. Davide Livermore is a good opera director, but it seems he's not such a good comedy director. He's no Blake Edwards and he doesn't have a Peter Sellers or even a Mike Myers to work with here and everyone just seems to be trying just too hard to have fun. The opening sequence during the overture is much too busy, using intentionally cheap-looking cut-outs for opening-credits with 60s Batman TV-series sound-effects (Crash! Pow! Aaaaggh!).
Having set the scene, it would be enough to let the comic situation of L'Italiana in Algeri play out mostly for itself with all the terrific 60s and 70s styles and haircuts and all the psychedelic effects and colouration, but Livermore insists on trying to make it even funnier. Mustafà/Dr Evil's inability to make an entrance without accidentally firing a gun and killing a hapless henchman becomes a little tiring after a while. A pointless gag with Lindoro being dangled over a swimming-pool of sharks is a good Bond spoof, but it's more typical of how much visual effort and elaboration is put into making a gag look cheap, but in a way that is disproportionate to how funny it actually is. The stage is often cluttered, with too much going on and too many people mugging in an effort to be funny.
It's still a colourful and an entertaining production, just never quite as funny as it thinks it is (although you could probably say the same about L'Italiana in Algeri). The performance itself is likewise good, but not outstanding. The singing is fine and musically the performance is in safe hands with José Ramón Encinar conducting, but the work is missing a spark somewhere. The singing is all good, with Yijie Shi a capable Lindoro, Anna Goryachova a sassy Isabella wearing jaw-dropping outfits and Alex Esposito a spirited Mustafà with a tendency to overact, but no-one here has a personality big enough to really bring the roles to life.
The quality of the Blu-ray is good, showing off the bold colours of the production well enough, but it doesn't look quite as pinpoint sharp this time. The audio too I found a little bit low in volume, but the sound is well-recorded and all the detail is there, particularly if listened to on headphones. There's a ten-minute extra feature on the making of the production, and a cast gallery. The disc is all-region, BD50, with subtitles in English, French, German and Korean.
Gioachino Rossini - L'Italiana in Algeri
Opéra National de Paris, 2014
Riccardo Frizza, Andrei Serban, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, Antonino Siragusa, Varduhi Abrahamyan, Tassis Christoyannis, Jaël Azzaretti, Anna Pennisi, Nahuel Di Pierro
Palais Garnier, Paris - 7 April 2014
Taking nothing away from Rossini as a composer or the undoubted qualities that are to be found in many of his works, but expectations are never likely to be very high for yet another production of L'Italiana in Algeri. It's not the most sophisticated of works, it doesn't have a particularly great libretto or originality in its situation, and there's only so much mileage in the humour. Dashed off with customary speed to a tight deadline moreover, Rossini simply reused music from other works - which in itself isn't uncommon for this composer, but in this case the music was often written for works in a completely different context that would appear to make it unsuited for use in an opera buffa. On the other hand, a production of L'Italiana in Algeri can make for a very entertaining night at the opera, if it's done right.
The very least you can say about Andrei Serban's production of L'Italiana in Algeri for the Paris Opera however is that it's entertaining. It might not make a lot of sense, it's inconsistent and somewhat nonsensical in its concept and design, but in that respect it suits the nature of the work itself. It helps however if you have a strong cast that is capable of injecting some life and additional humour into the work, and it's hard to find any serious fault with the performances in this 2014 revival of the Paris production at the Palais Garnier. In some respects it might feel a bit routine and calculated, but again, that's something that's largely inherent within the opera itself. It's not exactly a work that is going to open itself up to radical reinterpretation.
That doesn't mean however that the work can't benefit from a distinctive touch, and in Serban's case, grotesque exaggeration and a sense of randomness is the name of the game. Right from the start we are treated to a grand chorus of eunuchs in fat suits, who go as far as to exhibit their credentials (or lack of them in this case) as they bend over at the start of Act II. Bathing beauties in bikinis splash around in glass tubs (without water) and are sort of anointed for no apparent reason by flamingos borne on the top of the heads of female servants. There's a huge rose that appears to be a representation of the sun, or possibly love or the heat of desire. The ship that brings Isabella to Turkey and lies shipwrecked at the bottom of the sea looks rather like the Titanic, while Isabella is promptly captured and put in a cage by a man in a gorilla suit. There appears to be no rhyme or reason for any of these choices.
Period realism then evidently isn't a consideration, and nor should it be, it seems, as long as it looks good and at least gives the right impression. It's probably fair to say that the impression of comic exaggeration that Serban settles for is one which he considers as being in the nature of the work itself, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that judgement. L'Italiana in Algeri is a silly comedy, but also an entertaining one, and the director pitches this production firmly in that style. So if you want to give the impression of the Bey Mustafa as being a bit of a tyrant who is full of himself and used to getting his own way, that impression is clearly evident in his dress and demeanour. All gold and guns, looking like a north African or middle-Eastern despot; he's the king of bling in a shiny suit.
As similar sense of exaggeration - or obviousness - is applied elsewhere as the Italianisms set in, with Mustafa's men all dressed like Mafia dons in pin-striped suits with wide shoulders, waving pistols and gesticulating into mobile phones. A bit random, a bit obvious, but it gets the right impression across. The 'pappataci' scene is no place for subtlety evidently, and Serban's production consequently goes all out for cliché, with a dancing bottle of wine, a floppy pizza and a couch representing the attributes of the Italian male that Mustafa wishes to bear as a badge of honour. As over-emphasised as this is, it's fine. The stage is filled with colour and it illustrates the absurdity of the situation and the libretto. It's not to be taken seriously.
The stage direction is also mostly fine, if often quite outlandish with the gorilla wandering around, but it suits the content. In particular, Isabella's playing of the three males on a Dali lip-couch is neatly choreographed and amusingly played, the Pappataci scene works well and certainly raises a smile, while the ensemble finale of Act I achieves exactly the right kind of impact. In fact, Serban is at his best when he has to orchestrate chorus and ensemble singing, always making the scenes interesting. Solo scenes and arias tend to be a little more hit and miss, and that's usually where the random elements are slipped in. There's not a lot else you can do with personality or motivation in the direction of these characters.
It more down to the cast to bring some personality to their roles and Rossini at least gives each of them plenty of opportunity to make an impression. Ildebrando D'Arcangelo has plenty of swagger and arrogance as Mustafa and sang reasonably well, but it did seem a little routine. Antonino Siragusa stepped in to replace the advertised Kenneth Tarver as Lindoro and while it's not necessary to have an actual Italian singer in the role (evidently since Juan Diego Flórez is still currently the best Rossinian tenor in this kind of comic role), it certainly benefited from Siragusa having precisely the right kind of voice and delivery for the role. By no means perfect - there are few who can master the demands of roles like this - it was nonetheless played and sung with considerable aplomb. I also enjoyed the comic side of Tassis Christoyannis' performance, and his singing of the role was faultless.
Varduhi Abrahamyan however rightly dominated proceedings as Isabella. She looked the part and sang it well, lacking perhaps only a little bit of feistiness that might have given the performance an extra edge. The same could be said about the orchestra under the direction of Riccardo Frizza. It was a little too 'nice' and could have used a little more of an injection of energy, but the playing was superb and it was a fine interpretation. Despite the rushed nature of its composition, there is - as always with Rossini - much elegance in the musical writing and arrangements of L'Italiana in Algeri and that was certainly evident here. Not the most exciting production of L'Italiana in Algeri then in Paris, a little too 'respectful' and routine, but certainly entertaining.
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.
