Rossini’s Two Faces

Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri (1813)

Metropolitan Opera

October 15, 2016

The bey has eyes for any and every dame
Photo credit: Met Opera

Going into Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri, I was ready for some pure escapist entertainment. It is, after all, Rossini in all of his early opera buffa glory. What I didn't brace myself for was the absolute timeliness of the piece. In it, an ultra wealthy man abuses his power and status to grope and fondle any woman he wishes. The plot was all too close to the scene unfolding on the national political stage.

The production takes us back to the good old days with Ponnelle
Photo credit: Met Opera

But it was still an unplug-and-have-fun kind of evening, nevertheless. Just let the music and vocal acrobatics wash over you. Silly, yes, but so pleasurable. Like a bubbly, exotic cocktail you can’t get enough of. The Met’s long-standing easy-breezy production dates back to the more traditional (but no less boisterous) days of the great Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. It is minimal enough in its period detail to provide many fluid changes of scene, but the elephantine stage felt too big for the charming scale of the mad-capped action.

Ildar steals the show with his sultanesque shenanigans
Photo credit: Met Opera

The outstanding Russian baritone Ildar Abdrazakov as the bey Mustafà stole the show – not only was he hilarious, but he sounded great too. He literally chewed the scenery to shreds with his zany take on the crazy sultan, right down to his feverish finale as a new recruit to the ranks of the illustrious Pappataci. I've never seen such an energetic performance on stage at the Met. He was straight out of a cartoon and clearly having a lot of fun playing the self-absorbed, sex-driven, capricious, exuberant bey.

Lindoro holds fast to his romantic ties
Photo credit: Met Opera

Tenor René Barbera filled his role as the pining lover Lindoro with warmth and grace (which was particularly appreciated after hearing the tenor in Tell). His Languir per una bella caught me off guard as it often does – the tender hearted nucleus of the first act that it is. So nice.

Soprano Marianna Pizzolato was vocally solid too, though she seemed to be missing that certain sparkle and maybe came off bit too matronly, though in many regards she is the one figure who actually grounds the piece. The other three male leads are merely satellites in orbit around her gravitational pull. So the matronly may not be entirely misguided.

The matronly gravitational center of the piece exerts her pull
Photo credit: Met Opera

You could not help but smile and often just burst into bellyful laughs. Billed as Rossini’s first big breakout piece, L’italiana is truly irresistible bel canto. I rather prefer Il turco in Italia – with its more dynamic, less schematic plot – but come on, really, who can resist Rossini when he’s at his opera buffa best?

It's back to the beloved patria for these wayward souls
Photo credit: Met Opera 

* * *

Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (1829)

Metropolitan Opera

October 21, 2016

Time for a very dramatic change of pace, but this is still Rossini
Photo credit: Met Opera

Less than a week later and we found ourselves back at the Met for another helping of Rossini's genius. After seeing his first big hit, it was time to see the last opera he would ever compose, the august and profoundly dramatic, Guillaume Tell. You really couldn't conjure a starker opposition. These two operas are really like night and day.

The Met’s new production by Pierre Audi was neither here nor there. Guillaume Tell is a timeless story about a marginalized people rising up against oppression but the costumes were all over the place and made it distracting to really get into the emotions of this story that is so full of hope. Guillaume looked like Obi Wan Kenobi from the initial Star Wars franchise and together with the abstract sets it seemed like maybe they were going for a sparse modern Druid à la Norma kind of thing, in Ikea-looking raw lumber framed houses. But then some bits were futuristic. Costumes ran the gamut from Shakespearean wench to nineteenth-century garden-party dandy to dominatrix to Nazi officer. Then all of a sudden the world was divided into those who wear linen and those who wear black leather. The whole thing was hard to pin down. With visual touches that were added as mere symbols like the hull of the boat that recalls the shape of the bow that Tell will use to save the day. All in all, the production did very little for me.

The new production is all Star Wars meets Ikea
Photo credit: Met Opera

In the title role, Canadian bass-baritone Gerard Finley came out a little cold for me. He didn't have the forceful muscularity that I look for in his duet Ou vais tu in the first act. His accompaniment should give Arnauld a basso ostinato ground that is deep and full against which the young lover can dance his fanciful ear-candy melody. It is one of my favorite duets in the opera, not least of all because it bears certain similarities with a number from Rossini’s earlier Otello, which I rank as one of the greatest overlooked gems at the top of his oeuvre. But by Act III, Finley had warmed up. His Sois immobile (to his son, right before aiming at the famous apple) was extremely moving.

The lovers meet across enemy lines
Photo credit: Met Opera

Soprano Marina Rebekah as Mathilda was out of this world. She is bright and agile and strikes a commanding stage presence. Tenor Bryan Hymel may have been proficient technically but he has a high-pitched sound that I found grating and annoying. I cringed when he opened his mouth for most of the evening. It sounded like he had a frog stuck in his throat. Maybe it wasn't his night, though he seemed to be quite warmly received by the rest of the audience. He really wasn't doing it for me.

It's all linen versus leather, all of a sudden
Photo credit: Met Opera

Rossini’s use of the chorus is utterly striking. In the first half of the opera the chorus is all hippie happy in their celebration of their provincial lifestyle as an open-air mountain loving people. The joy is palpable in those first movements, which is what makes it extra poignant that Rossini’s third act ballet takes the form of an exhibition of dominatrixes and domination. The female cronies of the Habsburg tyrant lash and whip the poor peasants forcing them to party till they drop. The palpable choral joy of the previous acts gets pushed to exhaustion, crisis and collapse. Many people sitting in our section thought it was too long, overly extravagant, done to death. But that is exactly the point. Rossini very effectively does the poor oppressed peasants to death.

Tell puts young love in its revolutionary place
Photo credit: Met Opera

As the great bel canto composer’s swan song, Guillaume Tell is grandiose, complex, deep. It's hard to believe that less than two decades later Tell could come from the same pen that produced L’italiana in Algeri. Little Gioachino is all grown up. There are just so many more layers at play here. Melody and vocal acrobatics are not just virtuosic ends in themselves but are actually used to express emotions and to tell a compelling story of profound socio-political importance. Its pervasive nationalistic sentiment provides another link to a brief jingoistic interlude toward the end of L’italiana in Algeri. The same spirit will go on to pervade the works of the later Verdi as well. In fact, Rossini’s use of the chorus as a true character of the opera made me think of some of the innovations Verdi brings to his haunting and unique Giovanna D’Arco.

Sois immobile! In other words: Be still!
Photo credit: Met Opera

And of course the Tell overture is such a blockbuster and so much fun and electrifying, that I could just not sit still. So much so that when it was pouring rain after the show, we had to forego our usual stroll home and took the subway instead. On the platform, the resident sax player was bringing down the post-show house by playing bits from that very same overture, which was more joyous fun. I was still shaking it to the endlessly recycled melodies of Rossini’s immortal genius.

All in all, the opera was very long but it was nevertheless pretty action packed so it never felt weighed down. Actually, the first act kind of sets the stage and after that there was a whole slew of plot developments that kept me on the edge of my seat. So much going on in the narrative, so many musical ideas and so much dramatic tension. It is a very enjoyable opera. I only wish the production delivered on its new Met production promise.

– Lei & Lui

The last will be first.
Photo credit: Met Opera

The apple of daddy's eye
Photo credit: Met Opera

Evil is really, really evil in this one
Photo credit: Met Opera

When Rossini Meets Fellini

Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia

Juilliard Opera

November 21, 2014

Il Turco in Italia at Julliard

From the very overture of Juilliard’s Il Turco in Italia we are introduced to Prosdocimo, a handsome and sleek author going through a creative crisis, chewing up and scattering to the wind handwritten notes and tormentedly pulling out his hair. When the curtain rises, a bright and peaceful Italian spa (terme) is unveiled, with a disparate cast of characters (nuns, priests, fancy bourgeoisie, doctors and nurses) leisurely strolling through the white marble backdrop and palm gardens and drinking water from crystal mugs. The look is late 1950s down to the last detail. Prosdocimo stands out, now donning a pair of dark sunglasses and looking more annoyed and lost as ever, making it very clear that director John Giampietro had a genius Fellini’s 8 ½-inspired take on Rossini’s Turco. Our operatic Prosdocimo as the cinematic Guido works brilliantly and effortlessly, since the original libretto already uses this character in a very meta-theatrical way as the alter ego of the composer/librettist who is stuck on his newest dramma giocoso (Ho da fare un dramma buffo / e non trovo l’argomento!) and functions throughout the opera as narrator punctuating key plot points with hilarious commentary.

Geronio complains to Prosdocimo
Photo credit: Ruby Washington/NYTimes

From the get-go Prosdocimo tells the public that he cannot find the right plot idea, some are too sappy, others are too flat (Questo ha troppo sentimento, / quello insipido mi par). This character was played by the amazing Polish baritone Szymon Komasa, who proved to be not only a strong expressive singer, with a manly smooth tone and power to match, but also an extraordinary actor with charismatic stage presence. Mr. Komasa embodied Prosdocimo with intense energy, portraying him as the puppet-master who pushes the rest of the cast to serve his plot points and enthusiastically becomes more and more pleased with himself for how the opera is playing out. Whenever Mr. Komasa was on stage, even if not singing, he was always doing something character specific, now taking notes, now coaching and coaxing some other singers on the side, now intently observing how his ideas play out.

Geronio gets his aura read by the "gypsies"
Photo credit: Ken Howard

It is Prosdocimo who introduces (and comments on) the rest of the cast to the public: there’s a group of gypsies (in this production immigrant spa-workers) among whom the beautiful and sweet Zaida sings of her lost love. Next is Fiorilla, a spitfire of a coquettish liberal wife bored after six years of marriage and flirting left and right, to the despair of her jealous older husband Geronio. At this point the author rejoices at the great opportunities offered by a dumb husband and a capricious wife (Un marito-scimunito! / Una sposa-capricciosa! / No: di meglio non si dà). The plot thickens with the arrival of Selim, a sexy and exotic Turkish prince who immediately attracts (and is attracted by) Fiorilla but also happens to be Zaida’s long lost lover. The love triangles and vignettes that gush out of this setting are extremely juicy – think of the confrontation between Geronio and Selim, where the Turkish prince tries to convince the cuckold Italian husband to go the Turkish way, where husbands simply sell off annoying wives (to which Geronio responds that in Italy it’s customary for the husband to punch the wife-buyer in the nose):

SELIM

D’un bell’uso di Turchia

forse avrai novella intesa:

della moglie che gli pesa

il marito è venditor.

GERONIO

Sarà l’uso molto buono,

ma in Italia è più bell’uso:

il marito rompe il muso

quasi sempre al comprator.

Or else consider the cat fight between Zaida and Fiorilla and the Act I finale with the two women in a bitter rivalry for the favors of Selim and calling each other all sorts of names (pettegola, civetta, frasca, sciocca, impertinente). This was one of the most hilarious scenes of the evening, when all characters try to placate the women, except for Prosdocimo who is delighted by the fight and actually incites them to hit harder (Seguitate...via...bravissime… / qua...là...bene; in questo modo… / azzuffatevi, stringetevi, / graffi...morsi...me la godo…), in this production he even teaches each of them complementary boxing moves to enhance the drama.

Fiorilla plays hard to get
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Why on earth Il Turco in Italia is not part of standard repertoire is beyond me. I personally found it way more entertaining than Il barbiere di Siviglia. Plot-wise it’s racy and not very politically correct with a stereotypical polygamous Turk on one end and a wife claiming to be on the prowl for a thousand lovers on the other, but hey all the more fun. There are no dead moments as the story moves quickly with many coups de théâtre, one after the other. Despite the unpolitical correctness of much of the opera, the finale is, however, a happy one that adds a touch of a morale to the story, as Prosdocimo puts it: “poi finir con un poco di morale.” The denouement is, in fact, ultimately highly conservative. The love that is written in the stars is reconstituted between Selim and the gypsy Zaida, and the husband wins back his wife and marital bliss wins the day.

The philanderers consort
Photo credit: Ruby Washington/NYTimes

The contrast between the duets between the two potential lovers competing for the Turk’s heart are indicative of the types of love explored in the story. The sentiment of the “Io mi voglio divertir” duet that initiates the romance between Fiorilla and Selim is light hearted and selfish. All either of them want to do is have fun. That Selim ends up settling for the deeper long lost love he once had with Zaida in the duet, “Per la fuga è tutto lesto,” is paralleled to the eventual breaking down of headstrong and selfish Fiorilla whose husband has to break her of her philandering flirtatious ways in order to bring her back into the marital fold. Call it: the taming of the slut.

Fiorilla is free as a bird
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Korean soprano Hyesang Park as Fiorilla was terrific. Her role entails the most challenging and spectacular singing of the opera and Ms. Park displayed vocal agility, sheer power and sensational acting as the flirty yet ultimately repentant wife. Ms. Park’s Italian was excellent and she distilled the most coquettish tone even in recitatif when saying things like “lo zucchero e’ bastante?” (is the sugar enough? – for Selim’s coffee). She was a lot of fun to watch and impressive to hear, delivering a range that went from comic to tragic, though the comic flirty bits were the best parts, such as when she punches her husband for being a jealous bore and tells him she’ll punish him by getting a thousand lovers and by fooling around night and day (Per punirvi aver vogl’io / Mille amanti ognor d’intorno, / Far la pazza notte e giorno, / Divertirmi in libertà!), all while blowing kisses to the spa pool boys. In the scene of her deepest darkest cave in Act II, when Geronio threatens to leave her and she realizes that as a divorcée she would lose her honor, Ms. Park poured her heart out and then completely collapsed. Still on the ground after a long and well-deserved round of applause, she raised her head and bounced back belting out her next lines. The force of her re-attack here was arresting and the power of her voice, after such a long aria, was extraordinary, particularly coming from such a petite frame.

Bass-baritone Michael Sumuel was also impressive as Selim. He seemed to be the most experienced singer on stage (among other things, he sang Masetto in Lyric Opera of Chigago’s season opening Don Giovanni) and it showed.  His was the most extensive role after Fiorilla’s and he rose to the challenge singing with expressiveness, agility and great comic tempo. Selim’s duets with Fiorilla were probably the most enjoyable bel canto singing of the evening. Mezzo Kara Sainz as Zaida was pure romantic sweetness and rendered her reunion duet with her long lost love Selim particularly touching and heart wrenching. Bass Daniel Miroslaw as Geronio delivered a solid performance, with great stage presence and the right amount of slapstick fun.

Maestra Speranza Scappucci

This, our first outing at Julliard Opera, was a revelation. With the youthful, energetic and gracious Speranza Scappucci at the helm, the whole show ran like precision clockwork. It was not only impressive but also utterly entertaining and pure Rossinian exuberance. The prestigious school really showed that it is worth its salt. I’ll take another dose of these healing waters anytime.

- Lui & Lei