Past Production Reviews
12"...Xavier Prado marque par la vigueur d’une voix bien posée."
The reign of Charles X of France turned out to be short and decidedly inglorious. But his accession to the throne in 1824 was an occasion to splash the cash, including the commissioning of Rossini to write Il viaggio a Reims in celebration. No expense was spared: there’s a cast of 18 soloists, ten of whom have demanding parts requiring top class Rossinian singing. Il viaggio a Reims © Studio Amati Bacciardi Il viaggio a Reims © Studio Amati Bacciardi The conceit of Il viaggio is that a collection of travellers from various countries pitch up at the uber-posh spa hotel The Golden Lily on their way to Reims for Charles’ coronation (spoiler: they never get there). The wafer-thin plot is less an opera than an operatic sketch show, a device to allow the greatest voices of the day (Giuditta Pasta, Nicolas Levasseur and more) to come on stage and strut their stuff. It also gives Rossini the chance to engage in some playful caricature of each of the nationalities as well as several celebrities of the day, making the whole thing into a kind of operatic Mock the Week. All this makes ll viaggio a Reims a perfect academy piece, and last night saw the first of a pair of live streams from the Rossini Opera Festival showcasing past and present artists from the Accademia Rossiniana “Alberto Zedda”. Emilio Sagi’s staging is simple, effective, attractively lit and predominantly white. Everything happens on a brilliant white boardwalk equipped with white loungers, the guests are in a white spa robes, the management and staff in the kind of white uniforms that make them look like identical clones of every spa attendant you’ve ever seen. It adds bags of atmosphere, at the expense of a certain difficulty in remembering who’s who, putting more demands on each singer to mark the individuality of their voice. Francisco Brito (Belfiore), Lara Lagni (Corinna) © Studio Amati Bacciardi Francisco Brito (Belfiore), Lara Lagni (Corinna) © Studio Amati Bacciardi For Rossinian singing, we’re looking for perfect intonation, carefully weighted decoration and vibrato and elegant, nuanced phrasing. The singing from this young cast was exceptionally high, making light of the technical challenges. So I’m going to apologise now to anyone whom I don’t name-check: there simply isn’t room for all of you and I’m going to have to pick, rather arbitrarily, some of my favourites. Top of my list is Francisco Brito as Belfiore, the “gay and elegant cavalier who pays court to all the women”. Brito’s tenor had strength to burn, the richness of dark chocolate, his movement around stage and his acting of the stock Latin lover radiated self-confidence. Brito is highly watchable as well as sounding great – a real talent to watch. Michela Guarrera (Madama Cortese) © Studio Amati Bacciardi Michela Guarrera (Madama Cortese) © Studio Amati Bacciardi The female voice I most enjoyed was Michela Guarrera as Madame Cortese, the Tyrolean owner of the hotel. Rossini’s writing for soprano must feel like a bit of an obstacle course, and while all the sopranos last night were successful in negotiating the tricky coloratura, Guarrera did so with a particularly beguiling sweetness at the top of her range, undamaged by any of the octave leaps or other difficulties. The appointed task in this opera is to nail your entrance aria – you’re not going to get many more chances to impress – and Guarrera gave us a “Di vaghi raggi adorno” to remember. Conducted by Alessandro Cadario, the Orchestra Sinfonica G. Rossini gave us a spirited account of the music, with individuals (sadly unnamed in the programme) taking their chances to shine. The harp prelude to the poetess Corinna’s strophic “Arpa gentil” was played quite beautifully, and Lara Lagni sang the aria fervently. Corinna is the biggest role – the one taken by Giuditta Pasta – and Lagni gave us a strong performance with a delightful duet with Brito and a strongly performed ending (although her intonation was slightly off in the early bars, reminding us of quite how hard it is to hit perfection in this music). Il viaggio a Reims finale © Studio Amati Bacciardi Il viaggio a Reims finale © Studio Amati Bacciardi Nutsa Zakaidze gave us the strongest mezzo voice in her singing of the Polish widow Marchesa Melibea, Alan Starovoitov took his chance as the first of male voices to make his mark with an attractive and forceful bass. Another lovely voice was Lorenzo Grante as the Baron di Trombonok, who also did a fine job of playing emcee to the closing festivities, in which we get a popular song from each country. These include the Deutschlandlied and God Save the King: unsurprisingly, the Marseillaise doesn’t feature in an entertainment crafted in honour of a counter-revolutionary monarch. But perhaps what sums the piece up best is “A tal colpo inaspettato”, in which the whole cast sings a cappella in complex, multipart counterpoint. That was a perfect demonstration of the vocal talent on show. If this is the group of young people to whom the future of Rossinian singing has been entrusted, we’re in good hands.
The San Carlo was the world’s most important theater at that time. Its legendary caffe waiter turned opera impresario Domenico Barbaja had not only the famous mezzo-soprano Isabella Colbran (his mistress, later Rossini’s wife) on his roster but also three splendid baritenori [literally baritone tenors] — the baritenore, the contraltino and the tenore di grazia represent the Italian high tenor voices of the time. Plus the San Carlo possessed a sizable stable of dancers, an accomplished orchestra with excellent solo players, and, not least, a stage endowed with the latest in technical innovations!
In the case of Armida, perhaps bemusingly for non-Italians, it was not Luca Ronconi who was booed for his risibly tacky production, nor Carlo Rizzi for his conducting, which, though energetic and driven, was seldom subtle and often brutal. Instead, it was Spanish soprano Carmen Romeu, who gave a reasonable account of the murderously difficult title role. Romeu looks good and hits most of the notes, even if she has moments of approximate intonation and, in this most limiting production, does not ooze charisma. It is not her fault that Renée Fleming was the last soprano to tackle this role in Pesaro. Nor that Callas made it famous.
La serata potrebbe avere come titolo – usando una frase cara a Papa Francesco – “le voci della fine del mondo“. Infatti, fra i diciannove protagonisti, tre sono cilene. Una più bella dell’altra. Due sono femminili: Javiera Saavedra, soprano cileno, ha dato la sua voce alla scena “Di mia vita infelice” e alla cavatina di Amenaide “No, che il morir non è” daTancredi. Dopo gli studi nell’Universidad de Chile, in Santiago (2013-2018), ha proseguito sotto la guida di Inga Balabanova e nel 2019, dopo avere vinto l’anno precedente per la quinta volta consecutiva la borsa di studio d’onore data dalla Fondazione Amigos del Teatro Municipal de Santiago, si è aggiudicata il secondo premio del Concorso Internazionale Città di Pesaro. Quindi ha respirato già l’aria della città di Rossini, ma anche quella di Bologna, dove ha studiato nella scuola d’Opera del Teatro Comunale. Qualità e studi ne fanno una cantante già pronta, elegante, raffinata. (…) La scelta dei tre cileni è l’ennesima conferma delle qualità di Ernesto Palacio, il sovrintendente del ROF che porta all’Accademia cantanti di grandi potenzialità future, ma già pronti per il presente.
Uno spettacolo che conferma l’alto profilo della rassegna proprio perché interroga questi testi, da intendersi nell’accezione più ampia del termine, fornendone risposte non univoche. La chiave di volta è senz’altro costituita dalla direzione attenta, calibratissima, lungamente meditata di Giacomo Sagripanti, che parte proprio dalla definizione di ‘oratorio’, scelta in occasione della creazione parigina dell’opera nel corso della Settimana Santa: filiazione, certo, di quella napoletana come ‘azione tragico-sacra’, ma secondo una prospettiva ancora più ampia. Nelle mani del direttore abruzzese, alla guida dell’Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI di straordinaria compattezza e fluidità, Moïse diventa un bassorilievo marmoreo punteggiato dai momenti ‘sublimi’ – per impiegare la terminologia impiegata da Ilaria Narici – in cui figura l’intervento del soprannaturale.
The Rossini Opera Festival had planned a new production of Moïse et Pharaon for its 2020 edition, which was disrupted by the pandemic. Instead, it opens this year’s festival. Director Pier Luigi Pizzi had a whole year to rethink his staging, which has ended up changing considerably. Scenes are minimalistic and elegant, in pure Pizzi style, Massimo Gasparon's lighting playing a big role in shaping the images. Costumes are colour coded: the Egyptians in blue and purple; the Jews in white and Earth tones. Videos on the back of the stage gave life to the most spectacular events: the plagues of Egypt, the destruction of the great pyramid, and the parting of the Red Sea.
La direzione musicale è affidata al giovane direttore d’orchestra Luca Ballabio, alla testa di un’ottima Orchestra Rossini di Pesaro, che mostra di padroneggiare la difficile partitura rossiniana con sonorità piene, omogeneità tra i settori e ricchezze dinamiche. Luca Ballabio è un talento direttoriale e lo dimostra non solo per la padronanza nella coordinazione della complessità del tutto ma anche per una sua lettura profonda della partitura che si declina in una ricchezza polisemica del fraseggio, delle dinamiche e delle agogiche; inoltre il giovane direttore possiede il senso e la tenuta logica dello stacco dei tempi sempre in linea con una lettura rossiniana che valorizza al contempo un côté meditativo e un altro più dionisiaco senza perdere la centralità del rapporto con la scena. Con queste premesse ci sono tutte le carte in regola per entrare nel novero dei talentuosi giovani direttori d’orchestra, nella speranza che possa affrontare presto altri titoli di Rossini.
Catalan baritone Jan Antem made much of Alvaro’s number, rather than a bravura showpiece, he found a light and shade to it that I found particularly interesting.
L'esecuzione [...] è affidata alla bacchetta di Ferdinando Sulla - allievo di Fabio Luisi e revisore della Messa per la futura edizione critica Ricordi - alla guida della Filarmonica Gioacchino Rossini: concertazione accurata, consapevole, elastica nei tempi, variata nelle dinamiche ed attenta al tessuto strumentale [...].
[...] Stasera il “Miserere” e la “Messa di Milano” con Ferdinando Sulla, direttore della nuova generazione, preparatissimo, appassionato e con il giusto equilibrio fra determinazione e umiltà - qualità rare da trovare tutte insieme. [...]
[...] sang a very successful “Sento da mille furie” in the second act, an aria where he could display coloratura, legato, very high notes, in a great performance.
