Two-Faced Puccini

Puccini’s Suor Angelica & Gianni Schicchi

Martina Arroyo Foundation’s Prelude to Performance

The Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College

July 7, 2017

Gianni Schicchi is Puccini at his deftest and best
Photo credit: Jen Joyce Davis

The Martina Arroyo Foundation this year brought us a pair of one-act operas from Puccini’s Trittico. Rather than opt for the more common pairing of Il Tabarro (the first in the trilogy) and Gianni Schicchi (the last of the three), the program included Suor Angelica, which is the one that is most frequently cut – a tradition dating back to its earliest revivals a century ago.

Angelica and her evil aunt
Photo credit: Jen Joyce Davis

It turns out that this tradition is not without reason, since we found Suor Angelica to be a real snore. It is the story of a mother whose extreme reaction to the news of the death of her child leads to suicide and finally the suggestion of religious redemption.

At its best it delivered a couple of moments of extreme beauty in which Puccini is at his most saccharine finest. At its worst it had a lot of pretty much useless fluff about nuns’ mundane activities in a convent courtyard. Not to mention the complete absence of a male voice to ground the whole work and mix things up a bit.

Soprano Michelle Johnson in the title role was competent but not outstanding. Too often it seemed like she was working too hard just to hit the notes. Too often she was simply drowned out by the orchestra. One of the few moments of real dramatic tension occurs during Angelica’s showdown with evil aunt, here depicted as a Goth princess by the uncompromising and stern Leah Marie de Gruyl.

Suor Angelica searches for her salvation
Photo credit: Jen Joyce Davis

How soon the dead are forgotten! The reading of the will
Photo credit: Jen Joyce Davis

When it came to Gianni Schicchi, however, we discovered a whole other side of the composer. Who knew Puccini could be so funny?

Despite famous arias like the immortal O mio babbino caro, this opera is essentially an ensemble piece. Based on a episode hinted at briefly in Dante’s Divine Comedy (Inferno, Canto XXX), Puccini’s fleshing out of the story comes across as something straight out of Boccaccio’s Decameron.

It's dog eat dog once the august patriarch has passed away
Photo credit: Jen Joyce Davis

Buoso Donati, of a noteworthy Florentine line, lies on his deathbed when the curtain rises. As long as the details of his last will and testament remains suspended, his nearest and dearest are short on grief and long on greed. A good deal of hand wringing ensues until they strike on a solution. Everybody wants the same piece of their ancestor’s pie: something to do with a prime plot of land and prized mule. In a move that is more Boccaccescan levity than Dantean solemnity, the outcome is laugh out-loud hilarious.

There were several stand-out performances in what was truly a group effort. And virtually every singer on stage had excellent Italian (essential to convey the hilarious lines of the libretto) and perfect comic timing. Steven Mo Hanan as Simone Donati, the next in line for the role of patriarch in the Donati clan, set the comic tone of the piece with his slightly clueless take on the character that never went completely over the top.

Anna Adrian Whiteway as Lauretta sang a naively ingenuous O mio babbino caro that virtually came out of nowhere. Amidst the rest of the comic mugging and other humorous shenanigans of the story, all of a sudden this incredibly recognizable and heartbreakingly beautiful tune catches you off guard.

Rinuccio has an idea and an agenda of his own
Photo credit: Jen Joyce Davis

Spencer Hamlin sang the role of Rinuccio, her beloved. He was youthfully boyish and bright in his affection for Lauretta as well as in his guileless introduction of the otherwise unwanted intervention of newcomer Gianni Schicchi, notorious trickster, into the family crisis.

And then there was the eponymous hero of the opera. Joshua DeVane leant his Gianni Schicchi a provincial air of an up-and-comer. The indictment of the nouveau riche in this respect falls right in line with both Boccaccio and Dante’s value system. The ways in which he is able to pull the wool over the eyes of everybody involved, from the notaio to Buoso’s heirs, when done right, as it was tonight, is a hysterical piece of comic theater. DeVane and company did it justice. Neither of us could suppress our laughter.

With Gianni Schicchi as their only hope!
Photo credit: Jen Joyce Davis

The comic timing is embedded in the score and fast paced story. Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi is funnier than anything I have ever experienced in the operatic canon. I haven’t had this much fun at the opera in a very long time, if ever. Just hope next time we see this gem of a Puccini it will be paired with Il Tabarro instead!

– Lui & Lei

 

All gather round to hear the moral of the tale
Photo credit: Jen Joyce Davis

Love Is Elsewhere

Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin

Metropolitan Opera

December 17, 2016

Love is elsewhere, until it isn't.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

From the very beginning, with its in medias res amorphous opening, the uncanny score of Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin throws you into a dream-like universe. Lush and atmospheric, the Finnish composer’s music suspends the listener over an indistinct watery expanse. Eschewing an overture or prelude of any kind, the first bars conjure a brine-laden formless and foggy seascape that only slowly comes into focus the way distance lies out over the ocean.

Susanna Mälkki conducted an exceedingly smooth reading of this uncanny score with the utmost polish. Interestingly, in recordings with other conductors the same score seems more flush with jolting surprises from jarring horns and more pronounced cacophony from the percussion. The mood created by Ms. Mälkki was more suggestive, more oneiric. It came off to my ear more of a dreamy Debussy dream (à la Pelleas et Melisande), with some of the quirkier Messiaen eccentricities that punctuate its aural landscape toned down and mellowed out.

Bands of light imitate the sea.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Director Robert Lepage’s luminous production provided a fitting counterpoint to the mellifluous score. Lepage and his team focused on the ineluctable and seemingly insuperable obstacles that separate us from one another in any relationship; the daunting gulf that so often divides two people and impedes connection. The staging at the Met was dominated by some two-dozen bands of light that represented the central figure of the sea in the story over which he suspended a mobile crane that could become a stairway with a platform on either end. The effect of the bands of light was hypnotic, particularly when they were made to fluctuate, rise and fall, imitating at one point the movements of a gentle yet unsettling storm at sea. But like many of this visionary director’s productions this one was kind of a one trick pony, which in this case was not entirely off base. It matched the spectral, minimalist nature of the music, and it heightened the dreaminess of certain moments in the story, especially when Rudel dreams and the idealized object of his affections (played by a dancer) materializes over the bands of light, diving through the waves in a dolphin-like fashion.

Also effective was the way the chorus was deployed. Strategically placed beneath the “water” toward the back of the stage, where they could only just barely be seen allowed them to lend their voices to the majestic and almost mystical heightening of the singers’ voices throughout the opera. It created a haunting and often imperceptible embellishment of the sound of the individual singers and an almost spiritual elevation of the emotions. Less compelling was the peek-a-boo choreographies they were made to do, poking their heads up over the “surface” of the water in certain nightmarish moments.

The chorus makes its presence known.
Photo credit: Sarah Krulwich

Based on a very brief romanticized account of the life of the Provençal troubadour Jaufré Rudel, the plot of L’Amour de Loin can be summarized as follows: a prince is bored with his womanizing life and decides to devote his energies to love more deeply; a pilgrim passing by tells him about this incredibly beautiful woman who lives across the sea in enemy territory; prince gets very excited about the idea and starts singing lovely poetry about the woman as the perfect idea of love; pilgrim tells the woman about all the fuss she’s created overseas and she’s not sure how to take it; prince decides to make the trip across the sea to finally meet the object of his desire but when he gets there he dies from the hardships of sea travel; woman finally sees the love and gets all combative about the whole ordeal.

A lyric lady of love breaks through to the other side.
Photo credit: Met Opera

This is an opera composed by a woman about a man looking at a woman who in turn finally gets her voice in the act of looking back at that man. Despite the seemingly traditional underpinnings of the romantic story itself, the triangulation of these various gazes, nevertheless, packs a radical punch.

Scores of lyric ladies have appeared over the millennia in the amorous and elegiac poetic tradition from Catullus, Propertius and Ovid to the troubadours, Dante and the centuries of Petrarchists who continue to write right down to our own time. In the history of this patriarchal literary trope, rarely are the female objects of these poets’ affections ever afforded the agency of speaking for themselves, seldom are they granted a voice of their own.

If you read the libretto divorced of the score and its staging, you come away with the impression that Clémence is quick to respond to her suitor’s advances in kind. But the way the end of both Act II and Act III were staged by LePage show that something slightly deeper may going on here.

Clémence steps down from her pedestal.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

The most powerful of these moments occurs at the end of Act III. Throwing a mini-conniption fit, Clémence steps down off the pedestal, on which even the director has placed her, thus breaking the illusion of the show, and stands between two of the bands of light, in the middle of the “water,” as though the make-believe were over and it was no longer “water.” She is indeed brazenly standing up and making herself heard as a living woman and not an idealization. She defiantly no longer wants to play the game of representation and fantasy anymore. If she has a say in the matter, she isn’t going to allow herself to be loved in an idealistic way by someone who has never even met her. In this take, Clémence transcends her status as passive object of desire. For a fleeting moment in the story, she’s not going to humor a distant love like this. She is a human being just like he is and thus wants a love that is human.

In the role of the lover from afar, Jaufré Rudel, was bass-baritone, Eric Owens, from whose booming imperious voice I expected more. He left me feeling a little lukewarm. Other singers that I have heard in this role have imbued the character with a slightly more irascible, angrier reaching quality that makes the desire of the poor bereft troubadour soar a little more. Owens sounded more resigned in the chesty depths of his longing, coming across as a lover who is more languidly lethargic than energetic in his desire.

The messenger scene.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Beset not only by the obstacle of the sea, the two lovers in this opera, which is set in the eleventh century against the backdrop of a holy war, are positioned on opposite sides of enemy lines. The figure of the Pilgrim, here sung by mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford, is deployed as a conduit for the lyricism of the troubadour to pass from one character to the next. The flights of poetic inspiration with which the opera opens belong to Jaufré. He sends his lyrical spirit along via the Pilgrim who has been charged with the task of embodying those inspired verses for his beloved which then in turn inspire her to embark on flights of lyric fancy of her own.

Like Sancho Panza in an analogous messenger scene in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, the Pilgrim rather humorously forgets most of the content of the poetic missive from Jaufré to Clémence. He manages to transmit nothing more than the gist of the message after garbling the end of the song he was sent to sing on behalf of his master. It is a light-hearted moment in an otherwise rather stolid evening at the opera. Fortunately Mumford didn’t ham it up but rather she played the humor with subtlety and tact. She pushed the ethereal sound of her instrument throughout. And equally used her mezzo to soar on amorous pinions in ways that Eric Owens’ instrument simply did not, at least the evening that we heard him. Interestingly, the Pilgrim’s arias are the only portions of the opera that sound like they belong to the era the plot is set in, with a style reminiscent of medieval madrigals.

Don't shoot the messenger
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Soprano Susanna Phillips, in the role of Clémence, was simply stunning. She embodied the tricky tempos and other idiosyncrasies of the score beautifully and she nailed all the soaring high notes that gave angelic wings to her unattainable beauty. Phillips made the show, as both the empowered woman with a say in things and the impressionable young pushover that this character’s duality encompasses. Because, of course, by the end she does indeed eventually embody the cardinal virtue suggested by her symbolic name.

The poet sets out to cross the sea.
Photo credit: Sarah Krulwich

Once Jaufré musters the wherewithal to cross the sea, the journey takes its toll on him. He arrives only to collapse at the feet of his beloved and rather anticlimactically dies in her arms. There is nothing particularly moving about this sudden and almost mechanical turn of events. Instead, the climax is saved for Clémence’s response to what she is forced to endure. Seeing that God has struck down a man so good and so sincere in his love, she lashes out in frustration at the injustice underlying God’s moral universe.

The lovers briefly meet across the chasm.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

The outcome of this brief but profound long-distance romance leads her to take up another call to arms. This time Clémence turns to another “lover,” one who rather ambiguously is either God himself or the deified spirit of her lost lover. To remedy one distant love she turns to another even more impossibly distant love. Depending on how you take this spiritual turn in the story, the end of the opera either undermines or reinforces the notion that there is something about true love is always only ever elsewhere.

And this is where L’Amour de Loin, while it may be set in the middle ages, is the product of a more modern and intellectual, almost aseptic, sensibility. This is not an opera that unleashes emotions or visceral reactions of any sort. The dramatic tension is somehow there, yet it does not explode in any traditional way. There is a lot of exploration of ideas about love, but the story as told by the music never gets to your heart.

– Lui & Lei

Tenors Battle Over Desdemona

Otello, ossia il moro di Venezia
Gioachino Rossini
Libretto by Francesco Maria Berio di Salsa
July 7, 2015
Teatro alla Scala, Milan, Italy

Desdemona and the battling tenors
Photo credit: Matthias Baus

Lui: Milan’s Teatro alla Scala commissioned Jürgen Flimm’s new production of Rossini’s Otello as part of the city’s many offerings to visitors in connection with the Expo 2015 world’s fair. Maybe not the most obvious choice as it’s all too easy to think that Rossini’s opere serie have been surpassed in one way or another despite the Renaissance of interest in Rossini buffo, but his Otello, nevertheless, has much to recommend it.

The victor returns.
Photo credit: Matthias Baus

Lei: I was impressed by the complexity and sheer enjoyability of this Otello all while noting Rossini’s “recycling” habits: the overture here is almost identical to the one in Il Turco in Italia, and several arias (including showcase pieces such as Che ascolto? and Tra tante smanie e tante) are very similar to bits that he will go on to recycle in Cenerentola and La Donna del Lago – I may even be missing some additional references here as I am not familiar with the entire universe of Rossini’s myriad works. The composer popped out operas at a very fast pace, still I cannot help but smile at one famous Donizetti comment referring to his colleague as “awfully lazy.”

Why so much indecision?
Photo credit: Matthias Baus

Lui: Rossini’s Otello differs from the more popular Shakespearean version of the story on many counts, the most relevant one being the more central role of the characters of Rodrigo and Desdemona’s father Elmiro. Here Otello’s jealousy is triggered by his belief that Desdemona is betraying him with Rodrigo, chosen by Elmiro as his daughter’s husband (unbeknownst to him, she already secretly married the Moorish general). Also, as in La Donna del Lago, Desdemona is the object of desire of three men (Otello, Rodrigo and Iago), which is a very welcome occasion for having a tenor bel canto feast. These details aside though, the main themes and dramatic impact of the work remain the same, particularly in the chilling finale with Desdemona’s murder and Otello’s desperate suicide after he is told that it was all Iago’s fault and Elmiro and Rodrigo would be happy if he married Desdemona.

Good night, my love.
Photo credit: Matthias Baus

Lei: I was surprised by how radically different the three acts of the opera are, both dramatically and musically. I found Act I to be a bit flat as it set the stage for the different themes, with the action picking up collectively in Act II (Rodrigo’s pleading with Desdemona, her confession to already being wed to Otello, Iago’s scheming and the furious confrontation between Otello and Rodrigo). The drama explodes and peaks more intimately between Desdemona and Otello in Act III (her lyric despair, his murderous jealousy and ensuing desperate suicide).

Lui: The first act in particular feels perhaps the most methodical. Rossini’s treatment of the libretto feels at times formulaic in the dueling duets between the tenors, each taking turns repeating the same lines or slight variations thereof. But it turns out that this was all just exposition because in Act II the fireworks really begin, with the Otello-Iago duet, L’ira d’avverso fato (that by the way was picked up by Verdi in Rigoletto’s Vendetta), and the Otello-Rodrigo face off, Ah vieni, nel tuo sangue. The third act is indeed more subtle and focused on individual feelings and tensions between Otello and Desdemona.

The casualties are counted.
Photo credit: Matthias Baus

Lei: There’s something quite irresistible about extraordinary tenors outsinging one another, when done right one simply cannot get enough of it – it’s exhilarating and addictive. Rossini knew that and used the dueling tenors trick in Otello and in later works as La Donna del Lago, Ermione and Armida. Interestingly, these Rossinian works marked the switch for male leading roles from the more sexually ambiguous castrato and contralto musico to tenors, made possible by the Compagnia del San Carlo in Naples available to Rossini at the time. These duets are truly a feast for the ears if great tenors are available, which seems to be one of the reasons why many of these serious operas are so rarely performed (when compared to the buffas). Otello calls for three challenging tenor roles (the title character, Rodrigo and Iago) and tonight we were lucky to have singers who were up to the task.

The tenors duke it out for Desdemona.
Photo credit: Matthias Baus

The world class cast was overall very strong, with exciting peaks. Juan Diego Florez as Rodrigo was his usual sensational self, delivering bright, exciting fireworks but also highly lyric and moving moments (Ah come mai non senti / pietà dei miei tormenti). His performance left me wanting for more, too bad that the Rodrigo role does not have more lines. Gregory Kunde’s Otello was impressive, particularly for a tenor in his sixties. His is a baritonal tenor, with a beautiful timbre, manly and agile. The duets between Florez and Kunde were among the most exciting operatic moments I’ve witnessed all year.

Iago spars with Rodrigo.
Photo credit: Matthias Baus

Tenor Edgardo Rocha as Iago was pretty strong both vocally and as a stage presence, holding his ground next to Florez and Kunde. He was always convincingly evil to the core. Bass Roberto Tavaglini as Elmiro exhibited his powerful instrument that filled the space more than anybody else, with fluid phrasing and strong almost violent expressivity as Desdemona’s despotic father. Mezzo Annalisa Stoppa was also pretty impressive in the secondary role of Emilia, with a powerful and expressive instrument.

Soprano Olga Peretyatko as Desdemona had beautiful stage presence and displayed great acting chops. Vocally, she delivered a solid and accurate performance though not particularly exhilarating on the emotional level. Her articulation at times reminded me a lot of Netrebko’s dark chesty undertones, must be a Russian singer thing. Peretyatko carried the show as the emotional focus and core of all men involved, however, singing-wise the fellas were way more impressive, except maybe for her rendition of the Canzone del Salice (the famous Willow song) in Act III, when time stopped as Desdemona heart-wrenchingly sang from a gondola with the accompanying harpist slowly floating by in the background as though passing like two ships in the night on one of Venice’s many canals.

The ravishing Olga Peretyatko in her feathers.
Photo credit: Matthias Baus

Lui: Upon our first intimate glimpse of Desdemona in Act I, she is seen on the beach brushing up on her Arabic and studying the teachings of an oversized copy of the Koran with her lady-in-waiting, Emilia. It is presented as the story of a double assimilation: Otello’s Venetian social integration and Desdemona’s religious and cultural conversion. Her intentions initially seem to be good; her convictions seem strong. But none of that seems to last very long, at least not in this singer’s take on it. She is suddenly blowing like one of Dante’s lustful souls in the wind of an infernal storm. Repentant over Rodrigo’s and her father’s every last whim when in the subsequent scene she falls into their ambush that is framed in this production as a covert wedding.

Flimm's stark Otello on the "shore."
Photo credit: Matthias Baus

Lei: Jürgen Flimm’s production moves the action to the Lido, the Venetian seashore: the stage floor is surrounded by white curtains and covered in sand and rows of white Fermob chairs lined up or scattered around in different formations depending on the scene. The costumes were a hodgepodge of different eras: from nineteenth-century black and white formal wear with top hats, to black tunics with Elizabethan ruffled stiff collars and Renaissance-like armor making an appearance in the duel scenes.

Like a feather in a storm of men.
Photo credit: Matthias Baus

Lui: Desdemona stood out among Elizabethan-looking ladies, as she was dressed in an elegant gown covered in feathers. I wondered about the symbolism of her pronounced costume. It seems that they derived her characterization from source material of the lines that are quoted in the libretto from Canto V of Dante’s Inferno: Nessun maggior dolore / che ricordarsi del tempo felice / nella miseria. And in fact like the shade of poor Francesca, this Desdemona is blown around from one man to the next between her father, Iago, Rodrigo and Otello. She is like a plaything tossed about in capriciously in the wind of these men’s whims. Which is perhaps what the loggionista was referring to when he called this Desdemona “scemaaaaa!” For a character that is usually perceived as innocent, pure and good to a fault, an interpretation that casts her as so fickle would seem to go against her most prominent traits. Her heart bleeds for everybody and she seems to go along with what every man expects of her. It’s no wonder that Otello might misinterpret her faithfulness. She is putty in everyone’s hands. To some extent the libretto leaves room for this interpretation (the famous Dante quote, her willingness to abide by the mistakes of her father, etc.). But it goes against the essence of Desdemona’s fundamental goodness. She does not come off as the portrait of consummate conviction that she usually is, but rather as a plaything of all the men. And the loggionisti in our section weren’t having it! “Listen to the score! Study the music!” they shouted.

Desdemona aflutter in the wind.
Photo credit: Matthias Baus

Lei: Flimm’s production did not always make complete sense to me (why is he moving the finale to a futuristic looking take on NYC’s Park Avenue South with 1950s-looking billboards and characters sporting modern day clothes?) but all in all it was generally eye pleasing. At no point did it detract from the action and always allowed the drama to unfold powerfully, which is sufficient production-wise, particularly with such a great cast.

The harrowing tragedy of intolerance.
Photo credit: Matthias Baus

Lui: For a Milan that was in the throes of an immigration crisis when we arrived just a few weeks earlier, Rossini’s Otello was a timely offering, not least of all considering its opening scene which has no analog in its Shakespearean source material. Namely the scene in which Otello asks for the reward of citizenship in exchange for his heroic deeds against the Turks on behalf of his adopted patria, Venice. Of course, the story that ensues is one of close-minded intolerance and the systematic rejection and exclusion of the newly named figlio d’Adria, which everyone knows ends in tragic hoodwinking and the deaths of the two most innocent and well-meaning characters in the whole story. What kind of message is La Scala sending here in presenting such a poignant tragedy of intolerance? Simultaneous to the gesture of acceptance from his adopted fatherland, Otello is at one and the same time rejected and excluded from the very community that has just accepted him. The conspiracy descends upon him from the highest echelon of the city, Desdemona’s father, and seconded by the slimy Iago, who here is given explicit motivation as one of Desdemona’s previously spurned lovers, and Rodrigo, here her father’s favorite suitor for the hand of his daughter.

Desdemona sings the Willow Song.
Photo credit: Matthias Baus

Lei: We had tickets in the nosebleed Galleria section and experienced first hand the ferocity of (some of) the Milanese public. Folks sitting next to us shouted furiously stuff like “Regista studia la musica!!,” or, “Questa Desdemona è scemaaa!!,” or else, “Il direttore è noioso!!,” to then launch themselves at intermission into animated soliloquies on how the opera should have been staged or sung, with an obsessive folly in their eyes that was highly entertaining to watch (if a bit scary). These people take opera not only seriously but also very personally. The booing is also a particularly La Scala phenomenon, unleashing hooligan-like shouting matches of boos and “bravi.” This time soprano Olga Peretyatko got a few boos (that only seemed to exacerbate the “brava” shouts from the majority of the public), while conductor Muhai Tang was not so lucky and was pretty much crucified by a vast portion of the audience shouting all sort of insults. The public was unanimous though in its uber-enthusiastic appreciation of tenors Juan Diego Florez and Gregory Kunde. No doubt opera still stirs wild passions (more or less justified) at La Scala, which is a great thing, still my heart goes out to all artists who dare perform in this theater.

– Lui & Lei