Posts Tagged ‘Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna’

Voix and Cav

Tuesday, April 25th, 2017

Anna Caterina Antonacci at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: April 25, 2017

BOLOGNA — Teatro Comunale’s busy direttore musicale Michele Mariotti, 38, ventured his 33rd and 34th operas* this month with a foray in verismo, the terse tribulations of Cavalleria rusticana, and, incongruously, La voix humaine, a vehicle for the Bologna-schooled soprano, former mezzo, Anna Caterina Antonacci. He chose big voices in Mascagni’s melodramma in un atto (1889) — Carmen Topciu a smooth-toned Santuzza at the April 9 opening, Marco Berti a steely Turiddu, Gezim Myshketa an engaging, richly projected Alfio — and took a broad, detailed view of the score, tracing its melodies grandly and milking its dark sonorities. His orchestra provided luxuriant support, but it was the ardent and incisive singing of Andrea Faidutti’s Coro del Teatro Comunale di Bologna that left the firmest musical impression. Antonacci communicated handsomely through the notes as Elle in Poulenc’s tragédie lyrique en un acte (1958), before the break, without always correctly projecting Cocteau’s vowels. Mariotti proved a restrained collaborator here. None of the musicians were helped by Sicilian stage director Emma Dante, whose unspectacular concepts limited both operas. The Poulenc she placed in a nuthouse, with Elle on an unconnected receiver, thus forcing the elegant Antonacci to enliven not Cocteau’s suspenseful telephone call but what amounted to a 40-minute tantrum. Six mimes, two of them nurses with needles, buoyed the effort. The Mascagni she set against a black background, relying on corny props and costumes to summon vital notions of Sicily while she made points about men’s abuse of women. Crucifixes (a trademark of hers) and sad-sacred imagery suggested her confusion of Easter Day with Good Friday.

“Trovo bellissimi i mimi. Elle ha tentato il suicidio per la disperazione di essere stata abbandonata ed è ricoverata in clinica e da li fa una telefonata virtuale all’ ex-amante. Infatti il telefono non è collegato.” — Angela Schiavina

[*ROSSINI: Il barbiere di Siviglia (2005, Salerno); L’italiana in Algeri (2007, Bologna); La gazza ladra (2009, Bologna); Sigismondo (2010, Pesaro); La Cenerentola (2011, Bologna); Matilde di Shabran (2012, Pesaro); La donna del lago (2013, London); Guillaume Tell (2013, Pesaro); Semiramide (2017, Munich); DONIZETTI: Don Gregorio (2006, Wexford); Don Pasquale (2009, Torino); Lucia di Lammermoor (June 2017, Bologna); PUCCINI: Gianni Schicchi (2006, Fano); ZANINELLI: Snow White (2006, Firenze); VERDI: Simon Boccanegra (2007, Bologna); Nabucco (2008, Reggio Emilia); Rigoletto (2008, Lima); La traviata (2009, Macerata); Il trovatore (2011, Busseto); Un ballo in maschera (2015, Bologna); Attila (2016, Bologna); I due Foscari (2016, Milan); La forza del destino (Sept. 2017, Amsterdam); BELLINI: I puritani (2008, Mahón); Norma (2012, Torino); BIZET: Carmen (2010, Bologna); MOZART: Idomeneo (2010, Bologna); Le nozze di Figaro (2012, Bologna); Così fan tutte (2014, Bologna); Die Zauberflöte (2015, Bologna); DALLAPICCOLA: Il prigioniero (2011, Modena); FERRERO: Risorgimento! (2011, Modena); MASSENET: Werther (2016, Bologna); MEYERBEER: Les Huguenots (2016, Berlin); MASCAGNI: Cavalleria rusticana (2017, Bologna); and POULENC: La voix humaine (2017, Bologna).]

Photo © Rocco Casaluci

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Friday, March 25th, 2016

Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Attila, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Michele Mariotti

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: March 25, 2016

BOLOGNA — Two years ago all was bleak in music circles here. Orchestra Mozart had folded. Claudio Abbado died. Teatro Comunale lumbered toward a fiscal guillotine mandated by the government. Now, the sun is back, much of it radiating from the reorganized opera house where Nicola Sani holds sway as sovrintendente. Certain theater functions have been outsourced, yet Sani retains his unions’ visible cooperation. The nation, the region and the comune (900 years old this year) underwrite his artistic program, as do private firms, starting with Bologna-born Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A., which parks a silver specimen in the foyer (called Foyer Respighi after the native composer, not Foyer Lamborghini). House income and expenses are perusable online. Tickets are affordable. An intermission glass of water (in a glass) costs 50 euro cents, the fresh torta di mele two euros. Not surprisingly Teatro Comunale is constantly full, its cheerful buzz spilling out onto Piazza Verdi and into the adjacent student-frequented cafés; any student can attend, and everyone knows it. Opera crowds, young and old, dress with a kind of sloppy elegance, as if perfect colors and fabrics chose themselves, but the listening is attentive — which is just as well because Sani offers two aces: direttore musicale Michele Mariotti, probably the most “complete” young Italian conductor around, and maestro del coro Andrea Faidutti, builder of an outstanding, musically alert team. For this season’s Attila (heard and seen Jan. 30 and 31) and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (Feb. 7) both were busy.

Newly staged by Daniele Abbado and co-produced with Teatro Massimo di Palermo and Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, the Verdi unfolded amid gloomy gray panels depicting nothing much, its action scheme stand-and-sing. Two quartets of principal singers enabled seven performances here in nine days, the first one (Jan. 23) televised by RAI. On Jan. 30, Stefanna Kybalova sang an agile, powerful Odabella; Giuseppe Gipali phrased Foresto’s music handsomely, though his voice went to the sides, not forward; and Gezim Myshketa intoned incisively as Ezio. Riccardo Zanellato’s obsessive invader sounded remarkably smooth and warm, with plenty of capacity; acting is not his strong suit. The next night the cast of the prima returned, except that Ildebrando d’Arcangelo’s dramatically vivid, but in the long lines unsteady, Attila did not make it past the Prologue. Jumping in, Zanellato this time moved and sang a little more wildly in his portrayal, without loss of vocal opulence. Maria José Siri’s Odabella had expressive power and a degree of magnetism, while Fabio Sartori’s awkward, rotund Foresto dealt only in f, ff and fff. The Jan. 31 Ezio proved especially fine, singing with imagination and reserves of power; Simone Piazzola is the name. Mariotti presided over a somewhat undersized string section, so that the score’s cantabile qualities were impaired. (Attila is at least his fourth Verdi opera, after Simon Boccanegra, Rigoletto and Nabucco, and this month he adds I due Foscari in Milan.) But his reading had conviction and sweep, and on both evenings he and the orchestra — more than any cast member — drew the loudest, longest applause.

If anything, Mariotti had more to say about Beethoven’s symphony. Conducting with a concern for lyricism that never softened the rhetoric, he drew virtuosic work from the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale strings and, as in Schubert and Mendelssohn last year, picked out just the right details to create a beautiful and cogent interpretation. Upshot: rhythmic applause, foot-stomping, smiles all round. At 68 minutes with brief pauses, Mariotti’s Nona was neither fast nor slow but merely the sum of apparently artlessly judged tempos. The first movement’s turbulent exchanges emerged in plain relief despite intermittent problems in the winds. The conductor sprang the Scherzo’s rhythms emphatically, playing up contrasts and accentuating colors. He ennobled the third movement on pastoral, not grandiose, terms, drawing attention to collateral ideas. Through the last movement, he kept a steady momentum without slighting the episodic drama or exaggerating one dimension at the expense of another. Faidutti’s choristers projected forcefully into the comfortable 1,034-seat house, but their work also had precision and plenty of shading, in discernible German. Vocal soloists Carmela Remigio, Veronica Simeoni, Michael Schade and Michele Pertusi neatly complemented their colleagues.

Photos © Rocco Casaluci (Attila), Michele Lapini (Beethoven concert), Teatro Comunale di Bologna (Piazza Verdi)

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Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

Bryan Hymel in 2014 hits ‘Asile héréditaire … Amis, amis, secondez ma vengeance’ right out of Munich’s ballpark

By ANDREW POWELL
Published: September 23, 2015

MUNICH — Post is under revision.

Still image from video © Bayerische Staatsoper

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Thursday, January 23rd, 2014

Teatro Comunale di Bologna

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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