Gomes - Lo Schiavo (Cagliari, 2019)

Antônio Carlos Gomes - Lo Schiavo

Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, 2019

John Neschling, Davide Garattini Raimondi, Svetla Vassileva, Massimiliano Pisapia, Andrea Borghini, Elisa Balbo, Daniele Terenzi, Dongho Kim, Marco Puggioni, Francesco Musinu, Michelangelo Romero

Dynamic - Blu-ray

Some opera subjects don't need adaptation, revisionist reinterpretation and modernisation: some subjects remain equally powerful in any context and traditionally in opera they relate to war, power, love, injustice and freedom. Few treatments of those subjects however deal with those all of those issues in such a way that is immediately abhorrent and emotive to any right thinking individual as when it's tied up in the issue of slavery.

Surprisingly then it's not a subject that has not really been confronted directly in opera, but as a composer of Brazilian origin working at a time when there were places where slavery still hadn't been completely eradicated, it's clearly a subject that was very real for Antônio Carlos Gomes. Viewed from a distance, the 19th century opera treatment of Lo Schiavo (The Slave) is perhaps not particularly innovative for its dramatic treatment of the subject and - forced to set the work in the 16th century rather than closer to his own time - it doesn't appear to tackle the subject any more head-on than Verdi's Aida, but the opera raises an important issue and has merit alone for that.

In reality it has considerable merit elsewhere and deserves to be remembered for more than its subject. Moving to Milan after composing a number of operas in Portuguese, the São Paulo composer Gomes is one of those forgotten composers who were striving in a post-Verdi world to take Italian opera in a new direction. On the evidence of Lo Schiavo, judging by its dramatic orchestration and wonderful melodic flow, Gomes might not have been any more successful than many other Italian composers from this period between Verdi and the verismo composers who failed to make a distinctive mark, but his work clearly deserves to be better known.

In terms of the terrible nature of slavery, Gomes's opera and the Cagliari production make its abuses clear from the outset. The native Brazilian slaves on the estate of Portuguese landowner Count Rodrigo are whipped by their overseer Gianfèra and some are seen in the production hanged. The Count also wants to arrange a marriage between two of the slaves Iberè and Ilàra without their consent. It's being arranged as a way of breaking up an undesirable affair between Ilàra and his son Américo, who the would rather - for the sake of business as well as propriety - marry the French Countess of Boissy.

The Countess has a more enlightened attitude towards human rights, declaring that she will free all her slaves. It's an attitude that is praised by everyone - well, nearly all - but even the Countess's generosity of spirit is challenged when she discovers - Amneris-like - that it is a slave who is a rival for her intended Américo. Along with stirrings of rebellion against past and present injustices, with Américo a soldier being sent out against his better human nature by his father to put down rebellion, the love triangle situation does put one very much in mind of a similar treatment of these themes in Aida.

While Verdi's intentions for Aida - and even earlier with Nabucco - were perhaps fired by anti-war and anti-religious sentiments, along with his own experience of the people of a nation struggling for freedom against an oppressive regime, Antônio Carlos Gomez does however succeed to some extent in bringing the idea of liberty from enslavement down to more basic human and individual level. Partly that is indeed down to the idea of slavery itself being so abhorrent, but those sentiments are reflected in the music which if not as detailed and sophisticated as late Verdi, is nonetheless capable of packing an emotional punch. The Countess's and chorus's delivery of 'Inno della libertà' on the freeing of the slaves can measure up to the Hebrew slaves chorus of Nabucco.

While the dramatic situations do mix up those humanitarian concerns with romantic passions, it does still carry across the fact that some matters are just intrinsically right and wrong, particularly matters of the human heart which of course has no master. It even hints at other areas that where there is no freedom and where there is inequality there is injustice and enslavement. Lo Schiavo even makes reference to slavery being the condition of a woman's place in marriage. The Countess of Boissy notes that "To be attractive is our main concern" and her only duty is to entrance a man to be her husband. Even the rebellious Iberè acts like a tyrant husband laying down the law to Ilàra, even though their marriage is a sham.

None of these issues are given any kind of contemporary spin in the Cagliari production. Director Davide Garattini Raimondi and set designer Tiziano Santi place the plantation in a jungle setting with vines and creepers, the slaves - authentically or otherwise I don't know - curiously adorned in headwear with fronds of greenery and grass skirts. The plantation is contrasted well with the French gardens of the Countess of Boissy in Act II, and the whole production is beautifully lit and coloured in a way that reflects the drama and the tenor of the score. In terms of music and its presentation, the Cagliari production with John Neschling at the helm really shows the quality of the piece. There's not a dull moment with plenty of variety in the musical numbers and situations to continually impress.

It impresses very much also in the singing performances. Gomes gives each of the principals a good range of emotions to express and challenges of technique and stamina to contribute individual expression to the roles. Elisa Balbo as the Countess gets perhaps the stand-out piece in 'Inno della libertà' and certainly delivers on it. Baritone Andrea Borghini is superb as Iberè, Svetlana Vassileva manages to capture the spiritual side of Ilàra as well as the joy, despair and anger that comes from her human experience as a female slave. Massimiliano Pisapia is a classic Italian tenor perfect for the role of Américo, well capable of handling the challenges Gomes places on this role.

This 2019 Teatro Lirico di Cagliari production of Antônio Carlos Gomes's Lo Schiavo is evidently a world premiere recording for the Dynamic DVD and Blu-ray. The HD image on the Blu-ray is image is clear and warmly toned, capturing the colourful production and the lighting tones well. There are two lossless audio mixes that when given volume exhibit fine dynamic range and detail, and both are resonant and punchy. The Blu-ray is region-free with subtitles in Italian, English, French, German, Japanese and Korean. A short feature on the disc only covers a reception for this landmark production, but there is more  detail on Gomes and Lo Schiavo in the booklet, along with a synopsis in English and Italian.

Links: Teatro Lirico di Cagliari

Puccini - Madama Butterfly

Giacomo Puccini - Madama Butterfly

Sferisterio Opera Festival Macerata, 2009

Daniele Callegari, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Raffaella Angeletti, Massimiliano Pisapia, Annunziata Vestri, Claudio Sgura, Thomas Morris, Enrico Cossutta, Enrico Iori, Nino Batatunashvili

Unitel Classica - C-Major

I know it’s one of the most performed and most popular crowd-pleasers in the opera repertoire, I’ve heard it and seen it performed any number of times (usually in a fairly traditional staging), I know that, derived from a piece of popular theatre by David Belasco, it’s emotionally manipulative, racially stereotypical, riddled with cliché with little cultural authenticity or ethnic realism – but I still won’t hear a bad word said about Madama Butterfly. Even in its most unadventurous and traditional of stagings Madama Butterfly just works. You might not buy the story for a second, but Puccini’s score makes you want to believe it is real, and he does so convincingly.

I won’t have anything bad said about Puccini either. Easy listening it may be, and unchallenging to some, but familiarity hasn’t made his work any less impressive for me, but rather every listening, every new production of his operas, reveals something new about the structure, the composition of his works, his ability to build a scene and hit you exactly the right way at exactly the right moment for maximum impact – and not necessarily in a deliberately calculated or manipulative way, but truthfully, with every sentiment perfectly balanced and weighted. Even now, with the availability on CD and DVD of a much wider range of composers and rare compositions, Puccini’s brilliance never wanes, but rather, one can see how he is the culmination of a long line of a tradition of Italian opera, who is able to draw from the lyricism of bel canto and combine it with the melodrama of Verdi, but also, in his later works, show an influence or awareness of Wagner in his approach to dramatic structuring. Puccini is undoubtedly one of the masters.

So perfect an opera is Madama Butterfly moreover, that it doesn’t need any modern revisionism or high concept staging. It already works on multiple levels – like all Puccini’s work – and if you want it to see it as a straightforward clash between Japanese and American culture that inevitably results in tragedy, then that’s more than enough for it to work successfully. There are other clashes, divisions and incompatibilities brought out in the opera – from the division of imperialism and isolation, destiny or self-determination, modernity versus tradition to simply the clash of ideals between men and women in respect of what each of them hope to gain from a relationship. All these ideas exist in Madama Butterfly, and some of them can be tweaked for emphasis in individual productions, but they are all there to be drawn out by the listener in even the most basic of stagings.

Directed by Pier Luigi Pizzi, this production for the Sferisterio Opera Festival in Macerata in 2009 isn’t exactly basic, but it is fairly traditional, aiming for a stylised Japanese setting with silk kimonos, bamboo and paper houses on wooden struts and a cherry tree in bloom. Puccini’s Madama Butterfly can bear such idealism, since in many respects, there is an unrealistic idealism in the minds of the two main protagonists, the American sailor B.F. Pinkerton and the young 15 year-old Japanese bride he has bought, Cio-Cio-Can, known as Butterfly – both however clearly have different ideas about what they expect to gain out of this arrangement. This production makes use of the interlude music after the Humming Song to introduce a dreamlike ballet sequence that depicts this idealised version of the relationship, perhaps in Butterfly’s mind as she sleeps awaiting the return of Pinkerton, and it’s a nice touch that works very well with this idea.

The other notable thing about this production is the open-air performance at the arena which is not traditionally theatre shaped. The long wings to the side of the stage however are well used for processional marches, as well as giving a greater sense of isolation of Cio-Cio-San from the world outside. The walls behind the stage however do add to the reverb on the voices, but not in any overly detrimental way. It does tend to lend a stridency to the singing of Raffaella Angeletti who can certainly hold the high notes as Butterfly, but doesn’t have the delicacy that is required in other passages. She does however deliver where she needs to. Massimiliano Pisapia is a robust and traditional Pinkerton, alternating between confidence and cowardice, between being arrogant and being loving. I liked the tone of his voice here throughout. Claudio Sgura’s Sharpless demonstrates good clear diction, but the microphone or the mixing gives his voice too much reverb, and both his voice and Angeletti’s can occasionally be a little piercing in places. Overall however, the singing is good and this is a fine production of Madama Butterfly, presented on a fine Blu-ray with a strong picture and – allowing for the slight extra reverb of the open-air location – good sound-mixes in PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1.