By ANDREW POWELL
Published: January 23, 2014
BOLOGNA — This accepting and slightly chaotic city, famous for mortadella, lies south of Munich on the road to Rome. Here Mozart studied, Rossini grew up, Verdi premiered Don Carlo for his compatriots and a Wagner opera, Lohengrin, was staged in Italy for the first time.
Here too Parsifal had its first legitimate performance outside Bayreuth — at 3 p.m. on Jan. 1, 1914 — without bending the rules, adjusting the clock or relying on unilateral court permission. Determined to honor the centenary of this particular feat, Teatro Comunale di Bologna braved national cutbacks in subsidy to schedule six performances of the Bühnen-Weih-Festspiel this month in its 1,034-seat, 250-year-old house (pictured). It contracted a thoughtful 2011 Romeo Castellucci staging from Brussels, assembled a mostly worthy cast and, as early as November reportedly, put its musicians into rehearsals under Roberto Abbado.
On the second night of the run (Jan. 16), a Wagnerian body of sound emerged promptly from the pit, dispelling qualms that the orchestra — known for its central role at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro — might not rise to the occasion. (Actually the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale offers a hefty concert season, held at Bologna’s Teatro Auditorium Manzoni, which is, like Heinz Hall, a converted movie house, but smaller and with good acoustics. Musical America blogger James Conlon leads a Jan. 30 program showcasing Shostakovich’s arduous Babi Yar Symphony.) Though there were blemishes, notably in the Act I Transformation, this Parsifal provided a plush four hours orchestrally. The winds intoned with precision, the strings shone or shimmered as required, exchanges were attentive and collegial. Abbado swept the music along in voluptuous waves, binding phrases together and tirelessly gesturing. It was a far cry from presentation of this score as slabs of aural concrete, or worse, operatic Bruckner.
Someone deserves credit for casting young Gábor Bretz in the senior duties of Gurnemanz. Here is a voice to sit back and enjoy all by itself: opulent, secure, relaxed, smoothly produced from bottom to top — and Bretz sang with enough poise to carry Act I mirth-free while costumed like Papageno. It was tempting to wonder what he might bring to, say, Winterreise. Anna Larsson remains an artist associated with concert repertory, but her Kundry worked strikingly in this production. From the low center of her voice — more alto than mezzo — she built smooth lines upward, projecting powerfully at the top while lending her courier and temptress an apt aura of timelessness. Castellucci does not throw his characters around the stage, and wild Kundry is no exception, but he does endow her with a six-foot living snake, to be held in one hand as she appeals to Parsifal. The snake duly writhed. Larsson modeled composure.
Overparted in the title role, tenor Andrew Richards sang guardedly much of the time and could not always be heard. But there were no ugly notes, even at moments when he was forced to force. His impact, in any case, was impaired by a staging that presents Parsifal as neither fool nor hero. Detlef Roth and Lucio Gallo both suffered a beat in the voice, as Amfortas and Klingsor, roles they performed together six years ago in Rome. Relatively young, Roth brought honeyed tone and crystalline German, but Wehvolles Erbe, dem ich verfallen shook in all the wrong ways. Gallo came across best during loud passages. The production substitutes balletic mimes for the six singing Blumenmädchen, who toil in the wings and thus avoid the bondage and torment enacted in view. A rapt, intensely lyrical (and tidy) Komm! Komm! Holder Knabe epitomized Abbado’s view of the score. Other roles were variably taken. The adult and children’s choruses contributed energetically but were out of sight some of the time and rather muffled.
Trained at Bologna’s Academy of Fine Arts, Castellucci built a reputation in legitimate theater before turning, with this Parsifal, to the bigger-budget world of opera. Unlike many régisseurs from the spoken side, he can follow at least the spirit of a musical score, even to the point of letting a character simply stand and sing. His Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie commission drew acclaim when it was new (and filmed). Taking as cue the forested first scene in the Land of the Grail and exploiting this opera’s abstractness, it converts the action into a plea against deforestation and pollution — a noble move, except that the open-ended threat to our environment precludes catharsis in the opera. Parsifal’s enlightenment, then, results merely in his joining the cause; the Grail serves as metaphor (its light is a white curtain); Good Friday could be any day of the year; and, needless to report, there is no white dove. The interpretation climaxes in Act III as the activist crowd plods forward on a huge whirring treadmill during the sublime Karfreitags-Zauber interlude.
All that said, Castellucci’s fresh approach exudes a certain calm resolve and compels attention, aided by impressive lighting effects. This performance added the benefit of fine musicianship. In a month that has cost Bologna its eminent citizen Claudio Abbado and, dismayingly, its 10-year-old award-winning Orchestra Mozart, the achievement with the Wagner is soothing balsam.
Photo © Teatro Comunale di Bologna
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Muti Taps the Liturgy
Tuesday, January 8th, 2013By ANDREW POWELL
Published: January 8, 2013
RAVENNA — Sacred music has lent gravitas to Riccardo Muti’s career since the 1960s. Settings of the Ordinary and the burial service by Bach, Mozart, Cherubini, Schubert, Berlioz, Brahms and Verdi have drawn his attention and received, more often than not, a disciplined performance.
No, this is not the repertory that leaps to mind when discussing the maestro from Molfetta. The operas of Verdi come first, and peer names like Arturo Toscanini, Herbert von Karajan and Claudio Abbado are soon raised. Muti the Verdian enjoys high standing — so high that he will be valued long after his own burial service for a trove of Verdi readings wider than Abbado’s, more eloquent than Karajan’s and better sung than Toscanini’s. (In context, it is worth hoping that his new biography of the composer will offer greater insight than his patchy 2010 autobiography.)
But music for the church points to the heart of this artist more directly than any opera. Where Abbado sees himself as a gardener, Muti’s alter ego is equipped as historian. Muti studies and diligently performs Mass settings — and antiphons, canticles, hymns and oratorios — out of a perceptive sense of their place in history, in a composer’s output, in the genesis of compositional technique and thought.
The effort is somewhat thankless. Sacred scores, particularly whole services, lack sway in a secular society and often lack musical balance too because of the characteristics of the liturgical sections. Many are front-loaded by a euphoric Gloria. Most end soberly, Haydn’s Paukenmesse being an exception to prove the rule. An established conductor who is not a choral conductor needs no Mass setting to boost his reputation, impress authenticists, sell tickets or oblige a record company. Yet Muti has forged ahead, Pimen-like, documenting scores others have not deigned to read. In one championing example, he has chronicled in sound no fewer than seven services by Cherubini.
In 2012–13 three sacred-music projects occupy him. Last August with the Vienna Philharmonic he persuasively reasserted his advocacy of Berlioz’s flamboyant, long-mislaid Messe solennelle, which he sees as a tribute to Cherubini, and this April in Chicago he revisits Bach’s B-Minor Mass.
Three weeks ago in Munich came Schubert’s A-Flat service, a non-commission from 1822 (D678). The songsmith struggled with its form. He did not follow early polyphonic precedent in imposing thematic unity; did not enjoy Bach’s or Haydn’s flair for satisfying church provisos while enhancing structure; did not write his own rules as would Berlioz and Verdi. Five handsome musico-liturgical sections were the result. A serene Kyrie and a radiant Agnus Dei, each with inventive, contrasting subsections. A protracted and prodigious, finally portentous, Gloria. A Credo that covers its narrative ground with storyteller fluency. A pastel-pretty Sanctus sequence. Call them Mass movements in search of containment.
Undeterred by the implicit challenge, Muti for his Dec. 20 concert with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra chose an 1826 revision that caps the Gloria with a bulky fugue, for Cum Sancto Spiritu. He made no attempt to harness Schubert’s ideas: sectional detachment and stylistic incongruities spoke for themselves, often elegantly.
Vocal and instrumental forces cooperated under tight reign, temporal more than dynamic. The BR Chor sang with customary refinement, applying Teutonic conventions in the Latin text. Ruth Ziesak and Michele Pertusi reprised the parts they took when Muti led this music in Milan’s Basilica di San Marco ten years ago. Still fresh of voice and keen to give notes their full value, the soprano found her form promptly after a grainy opening to the Christe eleison. Pertusi, in the modest bass part, blended neatly with his colleagues. Alisa Kolosova contributed an opulent alto, Saimir Pirgu an articulate, secure tenor; he participates in all three of the conductor’s Mass projects in 2012–13. On the Herkulessaal program’s first half, Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony received a mundane traversal except in its agitated fourth movement, where taut rhythms left a lingering impression. The orchestra played attentively in both works.
Tepid applause followed the Mass, a contrast to the cheers that had erupted in Salzburg after the Berlioz work. Was this foreseen? Disappointing? In Italy they say Muti is addicted to applause. More likely is that audience reaction is beside the point for him: he simply wants clean execution, and he received it in Munich. Muti: “ … non siamo degli intrattenitori. La nostra professione è di un impegno maggiore … .” Pimen turns another page.
Toscanini and Karajan, those fellow Verdians, are not remembered for works destined to fall flat in concert. Both built careers on small sacred repertories: some half-dozen Mass settings each, beyond the not-quite-liturgical requiems of Brahms and Verdi. Beethoven’s hyper-developed and intimidating Missa solemnis had pride of place. Karajan revered the Bach as well (29 performances) and occasionally turned to Mozart’s Great C-Minor Mass and Requiem.
Abbado has, like Muti, taken up two Mass settings by Schubert: the tuneful early G-Major, which Muti performed in Milan twelve years ago, and the resourceful, variegated E-Flat Mass, the composer’s last. This work he paired with Mozart’s Waisenhausmesse (1768) in a jolly two-service concert in Salzburg six months ago. Both conductors have performed the two mature Mozart works and the Brahms and Verdi, but curiously neither man has tried a Mass setting by Haydn or Beethoven, casual research suggests.
To be sure, sacred music is not the mainstay of Muti’s career. His commitments to the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and to Italy’s young-professional Orchestra Cherubini pull the emphasis elsewhere. But the passion for historical context that drives his Mass projects also shapes his priorities in symphonic repertory and opera. Instilled surely during formative years in Naples, it accounts for starkly independent programming choices and probably explains his famously firm way with the details of a score: the chronicler demands accuracy as well as loyalty to the composer. A tempo, però!
By happenstance this post is being drafted a few yards from the home of Muti and the tomb of Dante. They lie in opposite directions.
Photo © Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici e Paesaggistici
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Tags:Alisa Kolosova, Arturo Toscanini, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, BR Chor, Cherubini, Claudio Abbado, Commentary, Giuseppe Verdi, Herbert von Karajan, Michele Pertusi, München, Munich, Orchestra Cherubini, Ravenna, Recensione, Review, Riccardo Muti, Rome Opera, Ruth Ziesak, Saimir Pirgu, Schubert, Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
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