Stanisław Moniuszko is regarded as Poland’s national composer. Although Chopin is maybe the internationally most renowned one, Moniuszko’s operas are closer to the country’s heart. He composed several opéras, the most famous ones being Halka and The Haunted Manor. Moniuszko style in the latter, first performed in Warsaw in 1865, includes echoes of Italian and French music (and a Meyerbeer citation), a mix of easily recognizable melodies and sensual atmospheres. The score is fully convincing but is qualitatively miles above the silly libretto. The opera includes a variety of musical forms including arias and several ensembles, and for a varied array of singers (coloratura soprano, a light tenor, a deep bass, etc) including Polish dances. This folkloric little grand-opera deserves to be better known also outside Poland.
The greatly acclaimed staging by Pountney is minimal but was praised for including popular Polish elements and symbols. Pountney puts the plot in the 20’s and 30’s, keeps the gaiety of the libretto, works with tableaux vivants which he frames in the style of paintings and which he moves on stage. The staging is very lighthearted, full of humour and colourful and the singers are all well directed.
Straznw dwor, The Haunted Manor, is a ensemble opera. Except for the soprano and the tenor, who both have long and difficult aria’s, the opera consists mainly of ensemble pieces or shorter arias. I especially admired the nice and full voice of Elżbieta Wróblewska as Jadwiga. I liked Edyta Piasecka as Hanna though maybe the characterization was a bit poor in dynamics. Arnold Rutkowski offered a beautifully sung Cisza dokoła, Aleksander Teliga as Skoluba was vocally very convincing in Ten zegar stary, while Adam Kruszewski has a somewhat strained voice but was much applauded in his famous polonaise Kto z mych dziewek serce której’.
Conductor-Grzegorz Nowak, Director-David Pountney, Set Designer-Leslie Travers, Costume Designer-Marie-Jeanne Lecca, Choreography-Emil Wesołowski, Lighting Designer-Fabrice Kebour, , Sword-Bearer-Adam Kruszewski, Hanna-Edyta Piasecka, Jadwiga-Elżbieta Wróblewska, Damazy-Mateusz Zajdel, Stefan-Arnold Rutkowski, Zbigniew-Wojtek Gierlach, Chmberlain’s Wife-Anna Lubańska, Skołuba-Aleksander Teliga, Maciej-Zenon Kowalski, Marta-Joanna Motulewicz, Grześ-Damian Wilma, Katarzyna Zimak, 12/05/19, pictures Krzysztof Bielinski from https://teatrwielki.pl/en/
Compared to previous years the opera programmes in Belgium for the 19/20 season are a bit disappointing in my view. If the Flemish Opera or the Liege Opera somehow balanced the Monnaie/Munt’s predilection for modern works, this isn’t always the case in the new programmes.
The Flemish Opera, winner of the 2019 Opera Award for best Opera Company, presents the season of the new artistic director Jan Vandenhouwe. More diverse than the Munt, though I don’t see the need for two Verdi operas in one season (Don Carlos and Macbeth), and Cosi fan tutte again!! Two further titles are disguised as opera but are really a potpourri of music by Verdi and Wagner (Platel’s Choeurs) and the scenes from Goethe’s Faust by Mendelssohn. What stands out is an Schrecker opera (Der Schmied von Gent), a schoolopera by Brecht/Weill (Der Jasager), the Sheharazade/heure espagnole dyptic by Ravel and a welcome Rusalka by Dvorak. Interesting enough 3 productions (Rusalka, Choeurs and the Ravel dyptic) are mentioned under “opera” as well as under “ballet”. This year also the Flemish Opera offers a modern-only programme for ballet (!!).
A wonderful little rarity by Ferdinando Paer was staged by the Teatro Regio in Torino; Paer is one of many transition composers between Mozart and Rossini, who wrote excellent music, today unfortunately rarely performed. His Agnese was first performed in 1809 and then all over Italy and Europe until the 1820’s. The plot revolves around Agnese who elopes with Ernesto, fact which drives her father into madness believing her dead. Hen Ernesto leaves Agnese she goes back to her father to ask for forgiveness (with her little daughter whom she gave birth to in the meantime). The plot has a happy ending with the father regaining his mind and Ernesto asking for forgiveness. Diego Fasolis kept the music exciting and crisp with an orchestra of the Regio at its best and beautifully played solos.
Another rarity was presented in Brussels, albeit in concert version, Robert le diable by Meyerbeer. I was very excited when I read about it as I think Meyerbeer composed wonderful music, melodic, dramatic, romantic. Less excited when I heard the names. Korchak (is he really up for the role?) Pidó (eye rolling) Auyanot (pouting with scepticism), Courjal (who?) Dral (who??). And who was the soprano again? But I must admit the performance was one of the best I’ve ever heard. Pidó conducted with incredible energy an orchestra that was in top shape, he also accompanied the singers very well. Korchak surprised me with a resounding voice, an admirable stamina, flexibility and extension he kept from beginning to the end. It was the first time I heard Courjal but I find his warm voice very pleasant. He certainly is very good in the part of Bertram, though maybe not very diabolic. Another very good singer I really admired was Julien Dran in the role of Raimbaut. His voice light and flexible, he sang an impressive top note in his duet with Raimbaut. Yolanda Auyanet was very dramatic and well suited to the role of Alice. The soprano was of course Lisette Oropesa, who i remember well from her adina in Pesaro and even better from her Marguerite in Paris’ Les Huguenot. I thought she was stunning. Simply stunning. The timbre might not be as warm, but all notes, from the low to the high and top ones, all are there. The coloratura comes with apparent easy, the character of Isabelle well interpreted with beautiful colours and musicality. A very moving interpretation. A shame it did not come in a scenic version.
Les pecheurs des perles was told in a sort of flashback: from an elderly home, Zurga and Nadir re-live the past and their love for Leila. The past is then visualized by a huge sea wave and three dancers. The stage rotated regularly from present to past and in some occasions the two merged, such as when the dancers representing Nadir and Leila, were actually cuddling on a table in the elderly home, surrounded by the seagulls. A very lovely and touching moment of magic realism. From all the voices it was Elena Tsallagova’s Leila who stood out while David Reiland delivered a direction underlining the languish aspect of the score throughout the opera, which was played without pause (a habit I support).
Liège showed us a production of Faust by Stefano Poda already performed in Turin. It’s a symbolic and philosophical vision. The stage is dominated by a giant ring, which turns and lifts and around which everybody moves. The effect is stunning, the idea brilliant, the content and position of the ring vary along the acts and it allows movement of singers and masses. The visual and light effects are beautiful and underline each scene efficiently, the costumes are very nice and adequate and the Walpurgis ballet was beautifully choreographed. Patrick Davin directs with beautiful colours a score that I find far to “nice” for the subject. The cast was very good with a wonderful interpretation and a generous voice by Ildebrando d’Arcangelo as Mephisto and a good Faust by Marc Laho. Anne Catherine Gillet, except for a few pushed high notes in act 5, charms with a beautiful fleshy timbre.
I saw a less convincing Gioconda, too. “Py Makes it a sinister tale”, they wrote about the director, or…”chooses for…black“. I’m not sure, however, the intentional choice is much in Py’s power. There are recurring themes and objects such as the all-black, the dog masks, the feeling of grim and oppressive. Sometimes this works well-where Py is indeed able to add more than a setting (Les Huguenots were excellent, Les dialogues des Carmelites impressive)-sometimes it doesn’t (Hamlet or this Gioconda). The continuous black was a bit monotonous, then nudity became a recurrent contrivance and trash came into the picture (having sex on a table, while holding a frying pan with a fish in it?) plus a group rape during the dance scene (ok we got it: sex and violence is a constant in this Py-world, wherever it is). I was bored halfway through the first part. Vocally the two casts weren’t exciting either. None of the two Gioconda’s were fully convincing, one because of the colourless interpretation, the other due a certain distance to the character. Of the two Laura’s I liked the warm voice of Szilvia Vörös in the second cast. Really credible were the Enzo and Barnaba of Stefano La Colla and France Vassallo. The latter vocally and scenically also very convincing. Carignani’s direction is dry and nervous with no space for sentimentality. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. Overall two unsatisfactory evenings.
Before Rossini’s last opera Guillaume Tell, a project came up which intended to re-use the music of Il Viaggio a Reims. This latter opera was written exclusively for the coronation of Charles X and was staged only a limited number of times. Le Comte Ory, the second last opera by Rossini, was staged with success from 1828 to the mid-19th century for approx. 400 times. Liege’s staging is a coproduction with the Opera Comique which had a set of very good singers. Antonino Siragusa, except for his dynamic poverty, has a luminous voice which he combines with a solar appearance, easy coloratura, excellent musicality and an instinctive acting. A pleasure to see and hear him. Jodie Devos has a beautiful voice, her timbre velvety and soft, her high and top notes clear, her embellishments delicate and light. The entrance cavatina was sung beautifully with the sensual voice matching the character’s melancholy. The cabaletta was not as sparkling though, partially due to the tempi, partially due to dubious variations. José Maria Lo Monaco makes for a good Isolier, and the two basses Laurent Kubla and Enrico Marabelli sing their respective arias with great taste.
The setting is not the one originally conceived (the time of the crusades), Podalydès puts it around the time of the opera’s composition, so that religious puritanism plays a bigger role. The stage design is simple with the interior of a church in Act 1 and the walls of the castle in Act 2. But there is basically very little action if not for the traditional singers’ movements. The (very) rare gags serve only their own purpose, there is no concept except for the temporally shifted setting. The opera works because the libretto is well written, but the staging is a but dull and clearly the singers don’t always know how to move. What to say about the musical direction of Jordi Bernacér. The tempi are extremely slow. So slow I rarely heard any opera directed (maybe Otello by Ferro in Naples, where I was equally bored). The effect is of a big long boring musical piece after another. The aria of the governor seemed endless. None of the pieces had any energy any vigour; the music sounded repetitive and tedious. This production didn’t do Rossini any justice, it’s nothing like Rossini should sound like.
Donizetti, as many other belcanto composers, is not very loved in Brussels, neither comic nor serious operas. Except for sporadic stagings of Elisir d’amore and Don Pasquale over the last 50 years (including the beautiful Kaaitheater staging with a viguros De Marchi and a young Diana Damrau), we have to go back to 1991 and 1982 for concert performances of La favorite and Anna Bolena, or 1979 for a duca d’Alba. Two additional but awful stagings of Lucia and Lucrezia but that’s about it since at least the 1840’s . But the beautiful dramatic operas such as Devereux, Maria Stuarda, Maria de Rohan, Pia etc are missing (unless we look into the 19th century). So even a comic opera is welcome.
The setting of this Don Pasquale is beautifully designed by Pelly and his team. It’s a section of a room rotating on stage in and around which everything evolves. In act II don Pasquale’s life is put upside down by the arrival of Norina, Pelly takes this literally and puts the house ….upside down. I liked the staging and the direction, which was much inspired by Feydeau. Unfortunately there is a lot of overacting, door slamming, stomping etc…far too much and all a bit unrefined, the opposite of donizetti ‘s music, and mostly visible in the overly aggressive Norina of Anne Catherine Gillet. Nonetheless I much enjoyed her beautifully warm timbre, her ease in singing the embellishments and her pronunciation. I would have liked to see also Ms De Niese but she was indisposed the night I went. Excellent are both Don Pasquales, a character which is exceptionally delivered by Pertusi and Spagnoli with much humanity. Pertusi is a wonderful singer with a beautiful round voice, excellent musicality who delivers a touching Don Pasquale with many vocal colours. Where I slightly prefer Pietro Spagnoli is in his spontaneity, in the depiction, often with a simple gesture, of the joys and troubles of the poor old fooled man (hilarious the way he lets himself melt on the armchair when he sees Norina). Impeccable in his delivery of a wide palette of emotions only through his speaking, the text is articulated in such a way that one can almost hear a comma, a parenthesis, a question mark. I much enjoyed Pogossiov and his lovely open baritone voice. Like a fish out of water Lionel Lhote with his aspirated t’s and double consonants where there weren’t. Dangerously leaned towards off key notes and with a short high register, both tenors are just acceptable though scenically credible. The Munt’s Orchestra, whose playing-together is very unclean, has a scholastic approach and plays with little nuances.
Semiramide comes back to La Fenice, for which it was composed in 1823. It was Rossini’s last opera for Italy. The setting by Ms Ligorio is quite interesting as it changes from a superficial all-golden all-beautiful in the first act to a dark and black in the second, when all mysteries are unveiled. The dark represents, I imagine, the bleak future and dark emotions of almost all characters starting from Idreno who sees his throne snatched away by Arsace, Azema who is forced by the tenor to love him, Arsace discovering the awful truth and Semiramide brought to justice. The dancers are unconnected but bring some movement to the otherwise static plot.
The title role is adequately sung by Jessica Pratt. In the second act she brings a wider pallet of colours to the part and her top register shines but I felt the first act was less emotional and the variations in the repeats were of dubious taste. Enea Scala has some dryness in the high register, I think Idreno is more suited to a tenore di grazia and his push in the upper register make him lack colours but the boldness he approaches the role with is stunning. Esposito is excellent as actor and singer though the character of Assur- I guess-allows him to pull only a limited amount of registers. Teresa Iervolino has a strange enthusiams to attack some notes from below instead of straight on, but except for this she was my overall favourite. Arsace allows for a whole range of emotions and I was touched throughout, the low range of her voice is warm and generous and her coloratura comes with enviable ease. Smaller roles are adequately cast and they all sing well, I especially enjoyed the clear voice of lovely Azema. Frizza directs.
Although Donizetti composed 2 small vocal pieces in 1817, Enrico di Borgogna was the first piece to be put on stage. The opera was written for the re-opening of the Teatro San Luca in Venice after extensive renovation works and was given its first performance the 14th November 1818. Very brief was the critic of the Gazzetta privilegiata di Venezia who wrote that the opera “Pleased but was not fully enjoyed” and wrote about the composer that he was “with good talents provided”. The critic of the Nuovo Osservatore Veneziano gave us a clearer picture: “a trio in the first act, a duet in the second was strongly applauded….. one would perhaps have applauded more, if the sudden indisposition of Signora Adelaide Catalani had not forced to omit her aria of the second act as well as two duets between her and Ms. Eckerlin.” He then went on describing “the merit of music after these bitter events” and said that the public “knew how to distinguish the merit of the composition from that of the execution. . ….. for which the audience wanted to greet Mr. Donizetti on stage with applause” Overall a very successful result for unknown “Donizelletti”’s (sic) first staged opera. The libretto, written by Bartolomeo Merelli (who would later commission Verdi’s first 3 operas) is dramaturgically very thin but this allows the director of the Bergamo production to avoid the historic setting: During the overture we are backstage of a theatre and see several chairs with the characters’ name (Enrico, Elisa, Guido…) with the name of the opera’s first performers (Fanny Eckerlin, Adelina Catalani etc….) It becomes clear we are at Enrico di Borgogna’s own rehearsal in 1818, and at the end of the overture we see the theatre on revolving for the singers to perform the opera within the opera. The effect is very pleasing especially as the singers, when acting within the performance, exaggerate their movements in an affected style. They all wear 18th century clothes and 18th century is also the theatre management-including the impresario going crazy in order to stage the opera without major incidents, and the stage machinery which hands over props, lowers painted backgrounds and moves sea waves. A beautiful example of metatheatre.
As the Teatro Donizetti is being renovated, the performances take place in the Teatro Sociale in Bergamo Alta. The theatre is not very big and this allows the singers to lighten their voice, look into depth for colors and details. All singers are very good including the smaller roles. Levy Sekgapane has a small voice but has an easy fling to the top and the quick embellishments are flawless specially in his 2nd act aria with choir. The buffo Luca Tittoto has a beautiful voice and sings both his arias with much verve and humor, his misogynistic aria was quite funny. The two ladies Ganassi and Bonitatibus sing very well, the voices are not forced and their act II duet is sung beautifully. Ganassi was quite amusing with the mix of theatrical over acting acting (when playing her own character’s first performer Catalani) and true feelings for Enrico (in the beautiful duet with Bonitatibus/Enrico/Eckerlin) The choir sings well, and the orchestra, which is excellently balanced with just 18 string players, is well directed under Alessandro de Marchi.
Il castello di Kenilworth (or Elisabetta al castello di Kenilworth in its revised title) was composed for the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples. For his first encounter with the royalties of romanticism (fashionable at the beginning of the 19th century and a subject dear to Donizetti, who would compose such jewels as Roberto Devereux, Maria Stuarda, and Anna Bolena) Donizetti shows dramatic intensity in many pieces such as the duets and the quartet of the second act. Donizetti, in a letter to his teacher and mentor Mayr, wrote after the first performance:
This year’s Bergamo production does the work full justice. It seemed to start as a two-chairs-and-a-table setting but the stage direction and the beautiful lighting compensated what turned out to be a well directed show with a interesting finale : Élisabeth, around which all intriguing revolved, sings her final aria while a golden grid detaches from the floor turning out to be the Queen’s own cage. Frizza doesn’t shine with fantasy but he accompanies well albeit with a little drag. The stars of the show are clearly the singers. Pratt as Elisabeth is more dramatic than usual. The role fits her like a glove, scenically and vocally she is excellent. Next to her Remigio is wonderful as actress as well as singer, hers is the showstopper in act II, an aria where she duets with harp and glassharmonica, an instrument Donizetti would later think of again for his Lucia di Lammermoor. Xabier Anduaga was equally excellent as Leicester. This very young tenor seems to be clear for stardom as he has a voice that is strong and expansive, his top notes bright and his coloratura clear nonetheless. Stefan Pop is a fine Warney.
Too rarely is this masterpiece performed. It has a considerable length (usually between 4 and 5 hours) but the plot is well constructed and the music has practically no drops in tension, Meyerbeer creating a vivid intuition of dramatic situations and varied orchestral colours. The production by Andreas Kriegenburg is visually very pleasing, the cube structure fills the stage but feels very sterile, the moving stage allows to see what happens in two different places at the same time, the costumes are also beautiful. But choreography wise it is a bit boring. In Kriegenburg’s production the singers are often motionless, which is the antithesis of grand opera with its dramatic plot and finales and its amount of characters including the masses, who play a huge role. Also, it is not clear why the action should play in 2064. Does he want to say this tragedy can happen anytime? Would this be the only reason? Mariotti conducts well. At least much better than in Berlin. And although i wished a more dramatic rendering of the gloomy and sinister atmospheres (and i also had hoped in some grandiloquence) I still enjoyed his interpretation. Pity for some of the cuts in music. Although Meyerbeer himself didn’t mind and even proposed some of them, as comparison I can say that for the same amount of time, Minkowsky in Brussels proposed an almost complete score).
Jaho as Valentine has a beautiful, luminous voice. In the higher register that is, but it sounds a bit empty the lower she goes and her low notes are insufficient for her duet with Marcel and the one with Raoul. Nicolas Testé misses the extreme low notes but sings overall very well. Yosep Kang has all my appreciation for having stepped in last minute. His voice has a nice timbre in the middle register, his French is good, and he fills the huge Bastille room, but the role is heavy and this is audible at the high notes where he pushes the voice to its limits. Excellent Lisette Oropesa (who also steps in last minute replacing Diana Damrau) but has no problems whatsoever, she runs up and down the pentagram with no problems, her voice equal over the whole range, she delivers a credible performance and gets a long and deserved applause after her 2nd act aria. I never quite understood why Karine Deshayes is so praised in her home country. I heard her in Rossini and was disappointed. Meyerbeer suits her much better. I also thought Florian Sempey was very good as Nevers. Overall this Huguentos were not as excellent as the Brussels production (I keep coming back to this one, but except for the ballet everything was perfect, from Minkowsky’s stylistically impeccable conducting, over Py’s dramatic direction to the second cast led by a superb John Osborne with Henriette Bonde-Hansen and Ingela Brimberg) but still a very enjoyable evening. And what a wonderful music!!
Kratzer’s Lucio Silla in Brussels let me cold, but I was looking forward to this new production of Les Contes d’Hoffmann. The setting is actually beautiful. It represents a section view of several rooms in a three-story building. The central and biggest room was Hoffman’s bedroom. All the other smaller rooms around it change from one act to the other. Nicklausse stays in the middle room almost for the entirety of the opera, and keeps singing from the middle room even when dialoguing with other characters. This was a bit irritating also because filling a whole opera by one’s presence convincingly was clearly difficult. In the Olympia-act the top room is a cage where young, eyeless girls are kept captive, sleeping on the floor. In a short gory scene one of the girls’ face (Olympia) is sliced open (in the kitchen) in order to insert her eyes. Dressed up, she is pushed in front of the guests. She is scared, and every now and again, during her Oiseux aria, she searches shelter in the arms of Cochenille, but Spalanzani keeps pushing her back in front of the audience like an animal in the circus. Whenever she sings the other captive girls wake up, stick their arms through the cages, as if hoping they might be saved. I must admit it was very impactful. The Giulietta act is more traditional with empty rooms in 18th/19th style and wallpaper. Giulietta and Hoffman actually never meet and they sing from different rooms. Giulietta and Dappertutto also rarely meet. In the scene where Dappertutto is supposed to question her while she is in her room they DO meet, together with Crespel, who’s interjections sound a bit absurd as he is not supposed to see his daughter (very silly the whole thing I thought). I actually hate these inconsistencies. In my opinion, you either re-interpret it completely, give it another, deeper meaning, or you leave it as it is. In this case Kratzer’s “being original” was so cringe-worthy in so many moments I felt like leaving.
Although the house is quite effective from a storytelling perspective, it has its limitations. First of all one cannot always see everything, only very centrally seated people can, otherwise the action is hidden due to the rooms being too small and deep. Secondly the acoustics is terrible. Once the singers turn their head slightly the sound and volume change. Vocally I thought the women were all wonderful. Jaho has an amazing beautiful, full bodied voice. Irene Robert’s Nicklaus was also very good though her voice got more brilliance in the higher register. Minasyan as Olympia had quite a beautiful timbre and was technically flawless. Christine Rice has a lush, luxurious voice which pairs excellently with the role of Giulietta. John Osborn is a singer I follow since I saw him Zurich’s Clari. He never disappointed me and also in Amsterdam his interpretation was spot on, his French excellent, his search for nuances impeccable. But I thought I missed expansion in his voice. The rooms’ acoustics again? I was not very impressed by Schrott, a bit distant character-wise and a bit too light for the evil characters but the comments from fellow listeners were overall favourable. Rizzi directs speedily and sometimes covers the voices, with only sporadic dramatic tension. .