Lise Davidsen at la Scala

 

Lise Davidsen successfully made her La Scala debut last night in a concert with her as the featured soloist.  These days Lise starts everything at the top.  The above film shows the orchestra on the floor with the audience in the boxes above. Riccardo Chailly conducted.  I remember him primarily as the conductor of Cecilia Bartoli's La Cenerentola recording.

Program
Giuseppe Verdi	From Macbeth  "Patria oppressa"  [chorus]
Henry Purcell	From Dido and Aeneas  "When I am laid in earth" with Lise
Richard Wagner	From Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg  Vorspiel (Prelude)
Richard Strauss	From Ariadne auf Naxos  "Es gibt ein Reich, wo alles rein ist" with Lise
Giuseppe Verdi	From La forza del destino Sinfonia "Pace, pace mio Dio"  with Lise
Richard Wagner	From Tannhäuser Ouvertüre "Dich, Teure halle"  with Lise
Giuseppe Verdi	From Nabucco  "Va’, pensiero" [chorus]

Only "When I am laid in earth" was something I had not heard Lise sing before.  It was good but unspectacular compared to the other things.  She wore black in the first half and looked radiant.  These songs are basically all tragic, so black was ok.  For the second half she wore a beautiful pastel outfit which brightened the mood.  Her hair is enhanced with an extension down to her waist. 

The two pieces in German are Lise's signature pieces, both of which I love dearly in her voice.  The most spectacularly sung of all was the Verdi "Pace, pace mio Dio".  It would not do for her to omit the Italian language.  All of her languages were beautiful.

I was intrigued by the interplay between Chailly and Davidsen.  He seemed to be looking to her for expressive cues.  This is something singers long for.  I felt it allowed Lise to feel secure and give her utmost.  As a result she made the greatest impression in the great Italian aria "Pace, pace mio Dio."  They were a magical pair.  This is La Scala after all.

I found this to be one of the most intense and spectacular vocal concerts I've ever seen.  The audience stood up a lot.  It's out there.

Tosca at La Scala

Conductor - Riccardo Chailly,
Director - Davide Livermore

Anna Netrebko - Tosca
Francesco Meli  - Cavaradossi
Luca Salsi - Scarpia

This production of Tosca for the opening of La Scala is constantly in motion.  All the required elements are in place when required, but after they swiftly disappear.  Why is this necessary? 

Anna's Tosca may not be the best sung ever heard, but no one plays the diva to her level.  She knows how to flaunt her goods as possibly no other Tosca before her.  She is aided by the blocking:  after she has given a flower to the madonna, she later takes it back.  So it's the thought that counts?

The second act takes place in the Palazzo Farnese which in real life is decorated with elaborate wall paintings.  Instead of paintings, we have live people standing in boxes above the stage.  This seems exhausting.  If you were in the house, you might have missed this, but the cameras show mouths moving and so forth.  And when our girl is saying "mori" to Scarpia, she is choking him to death.  Three stabs were not enough.  She seems to regret it, though.

Luca Salsi as Scarpia is rather more friendly than I have seen.  I will assume that Netrebko did not complain.  He makes a wonderful, very slimy Scarpia.

Meli is ok.  He doesn't usually rise above ok.  He's cute.  There are a lot of gimmicks in this production.  In the end Tosca "goes to god" by floating upwards.  I'm not sure the gimmicks enhance the overall emotion.  I seem to always enjoy Netrebko.  I think it is her natural intensity.

P.S.  I forgot to mention that this was the original, longer version of Tosca, also called the critical edition. In fact here is a reference to the critical edition from Ricordi.  This comes with a picture of Netrebko.

Andrea Chénier from La Scala

Conductor: Riccardo Chailly
Staging: Mario Martone

Andrea Chénier: Yusif Eyvazov
Maddalena di Coigny: Anna Netrebko
Carlo Gérard: Luca Salsi
La mulatta Bersi: Annalisa Stroppa
La Contessa di Coigny: Mariana Pentcheva
Madelon: Judit Kutasi
Roucher: Gabriele Sagona

Giordano's Andrea Chénier is an opera about the French revolution.  The only other one I can think of is Dialogues of the Carmelites which sees the terror from a somewhat different perspective.  It is curious that no opera sees the revolution from the side of the revolutionaries.

This is a wonderful traditional staging from La Scala Milano.  In the first scene the staging is very clear with the revolutionaries' faces appearing through the windows. As I work my way through the scenes, they are all well done and easy to follow.  Not too much detail, not too little.  This is lovely, with well handled chorus, and all the elements of an excellent traditional staging.

"Viva la morte insiem."  Long live death together.  Sort of a self cancelling phrase.  I have been listening to German versions of Italian operas for so long I have forgotten what the Italian version sounds like.  Yusif is actually more highly regarded in Italy.  His steely tone cuts right through the orchestra when necessary.  He and Netrebko are gradually merging into each other.  Will we like the result?

I love this opera and have very much enjoyed its recent popularity.  I realize it will soon disappear, but that's no reason not to love it now.  The poet falls in love and stays behind in France to protect his love.  As a result, he is executed.  It is an opera about love. Maddalena tells us that an angel has kissed her.  This is the exterminating angel.  He has marked her for death.

Chailly knows his Italian repertoire and gives us a stylistically excellent reading. Lovely.  This is the one.

Netrebko in Giovanna d'Arco at La Scala

Teatro alla Scala Verdi's Giovana d’Arco opens with Anna Netrebko.

Conductor :  Riccardo Chailly
Production :  Moshe Leiser, Patrice Caurier

Giovanna:  Anna Netrebko (soprano)
Carlo VII:  Francesco Meli  (tenor)
Giacomo, Giovanna's father:  Devid Cecconi (baritone)
Talbot, English officer:  Dmitry Beloselskiy (bass)

It is interesting to see what composers and playwrights have made of Joan of Arc, known since 1920 as Saint Joan.

The Maid of Orléans play by Friedrich Schiller (1801)
Verdi's Giovanna d’Arco (1845)
Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans (1881)
Saint Joan play by George Bernard Shaw (1924)
Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher by Arthur Honegger (1935)

These are the ones I can think of.  Two are operas, one is an oratorio and two are plays.  Bernard Shaw's play is long and wordy and concerns itself only with Joan's trial where it is endlessly debated whether she is saint or sinner.

Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher (Joan of Arc at the stake) is a giant flash back while she burns.  The play by Schiller is the basis for at least one of the operas and maybe a bit of the other.

Joan of Arc was a real person.  She grew up in a small village of French loyalists, surrounded by Burgundians who were affiliated with the English who then ruled large parts of France.  (She lived in the time of the Burgundian music school.  Their political affiliation with the English explains this English sounding music.)  All of her fame came during her teens.  She was visited by visions of saints who told her to save France.  As only a teenager could manage, she simply went off and did this.  She must have been incredibly charismatic and sure of herself.  She didn't carry arms into battle but instead waved a banner, inspiring the French army to its greatest triumphs in the war with the English.  She led them to Rheims where her king was crowned in the place where all French kings were crowned.  She was injured and eventually captured by the enemy.  I think it's probably not known what they argued about at her trial.  At 19 she was burned at the stake.

Did she actually see visions from heaven?  In 1920 the answer was yes.

War is not very easy to enact on the opera stage, I guess.  So one of our Joan of Arc operas adds a romance.  Ambiguity of purpose would not have served our charismatic teenager.  Her achievements would have required fanaticism.

Anna Netrebko is interviewed between the acts of Verdi's Giovana d’Arco and points out what a ridiculous plot it has.  "Nonsense," is the exact word.  For instance, her father, who does not come up in the story, is a significant figure here.  He whines and complains.  Come home where you belong.  Prove you are still a virgin.  The energy of the drama concerns itself with Joan's departure from social norms for women.  Who cares?

So in this production we have a Joan of Arc who would like to save France but her father keeps her imprisoned in her room.  So she imagines that she has saved France instead.  Why not?  It makes as much sense as the libretto.  I love Meli in his all gold outfit, like a statue with a gold horse.  I also love Netrebko in her gold armor.  In France it is Joan who appears on statues on a gold horse.

You would want this opera for the Netrebko, for Meli and for the good early Verdi music.  Netrebko carried it off, as usual.  I liked the part where she cuts off her own hair.  Jesus appears with his cross which he gives to Joan.  I imagine the real Joan to be more like Katniss.

If you don't mind the German titles, try here.
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Pronouncing Riccardo Chailly

So not French at all.

Pronouncing Chailly

Here is the question according to Answers.com: Q: Why is Riccardo Chailly's name pronounced 'Shaa-yi' instead of 'Kai-li' as should be in his native Italy?

In my tour group they said 'Tchai-li' while I had been saying 'Kai-yi.'  We were all completely off.  Here is their answer:


A:  "Shah-yee" is the French pronunciation of Riccardo Chailly's name.  Specifically, the pronunciation depends upon the country and the preferences of the speaker. It emphasizes what the speaker seeks to focus upon. The pronunciation therefore will be "SHAH-yee" if the speaker wishes to honor the surname's origins. It will be "KEYEL-lee" if the speaker wishes to honor the conductor's birthplace.

DrB:  Of course this isn't what we want to know at all.  The only way to know how to pronounce this Italian gentleman's name is to ask him.  Wikipedia is going with the French version which is certainly how you would pronounce the French towns named this.

Il Viaggio a Reims

This production of Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims is the appropriate pairing for L'amour de loin. In one the whole stage is covered with a 6 inch layer of water. In the other the water forms into a swimming lane at the back of the stage and a heated pool downstage. On the right of the stage is a massage table. There is also a portable bath tub that plays a crucial part. I don't know what Rossini thought was going on here, but in this production we are at a spa. At the beginning the conductor enters in a bathrobe which he takes off to step down into the imaginary swimming pool that is the orchestra pit.

This production is from Barcelona in 2003, with Mariola Cantarero, Elena de la Merced, María Bayo, Paula Rasmussen, Josef Bros, Kenneth Tarver, et al. Typical Rossini buffa music is the excuse for all this silliness. There is coloratura singing for every type of voice, some of it quite good.

When the opera begins, everyone has already arrived at the spa and made themselves at home. We don't see that they have all come as established pairs, but we do see a lot of flirting going on. These people are all away from home and very horny. There is quarrelling and making up. They're supposed to be on the way to a coronation but get stuck here instead. That's all we have for a plot. A lot of people seem to be striving to prove that plot is just not necessary.

One character thinks she has lost her hat and sings a glorious celebratory aria when it is found. There is a party. There are Victorian swimming suits. "God Save the Queen" is sung. The whole thing descends into a discussion of irrelevant modern politics. How did this happen?

It's true, I used to listen to Chailly's La Cenerentola for hours on end, to the point where I could sing along, but that doesn't seem to spread out onto all possible Rossini buffa music. I am constantly learning new things in this immersion into opera. I am learning about the difference between Rossini buffa and Rossini seria, for instance. I think my next opera film should be Semiramide.

Historical Footnote

Information I came on by accident says that Il Viaggio a Reims was written in 1825 and is also called L'albergo del giglio d'oro, since the whole thing takes place in a hotel.

According to Wikipedia "[Charles X] was crowned King of France in 1824 in the cathedral at Reims and reigned until the French Revolution of 1830 when he abdicated rather than become a constitutional monarch." This is important because he is the one they are all traveling to see crowned, and the opera ends in a long aria praising him. Maybe that's why the opera was lost. He was a notorious reprobate.

Here's another quote from the internet: "The story of Rossini's last Italian opera was well known for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: written for the coronation of Charles X and performed at the Parisian Théâtre royal italien on 19 June 1825, half of Rossini's pièce de circonstance was almost immediately cannibalized as Le Comte Ory, premiered at the Académie royale de musique (the Paris Opéra) three years later. But after 1825, as anything more than a point of historical reference, Il viaggio a Reims disappeared almost completely."

It was reconstructed by Janet Johnson and "formed the basis of a performance at the Pesaro Festival in 1984..."

Very interesting stuff, don't you think? The French had trouble deciding what kind of government they wanted in those days. I don't normally research anything I write about, but I was browsing through some old papers.

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