giovedì 25 luglio 2013

Bitter Reflection in Music nd Vision 26 June



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Bitter Reflection
A half-baked 'Don Pasquale',
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

Gaetano Donizetti's final masterpiece Don Pasquale (his last opera Dom Sébastien, Roi du Portugal had a very mixed outcome at its premiere and has been seldom staged since then) has been missing from Rome's major opera house, the Teatro dell'Opera, for twelve years. Thus, the new production unveiled on 18 June 2013 (the basis for this review) was much awaited, especially because it had been entrusted to a winning team: Ruggero Cappuccio for stage direction (with his usual colleagues Carlo Savi for sets and Carlo Poggioli for costumes) and Bruno Campanella for musical direction. In the last two seasons, the Cappuccio-Campanella partnership has had major successes in L'Elisir d'Amore [Drama and Comedy, 7 February 2011] and in Il Barbiere di Siviglia [All the Ingredients, 21 April 2012]. This time Cappuccio and his team missed the key point of the opera and, on the opening night, even received some boos from the generally phlegmatic and rather apathetic Rome audience.
Joel Prieto as Ernesto and Eleonora Buratto as Norina in the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma production of Donizetti's 'Don Pasquale'. © 2013 Luciano Romano
Joel Prieto as Ernesto and Eleonora Buratto as Norina in the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma production of Donizetti's 'Don Pasquale'.
© 2013 Luciano Romano. Click on the image for higher resolution
What is the key point of Don Pasquale? The opera is called dramma buffo, thus a blend of comic and dramatic elements. Composed for the Parisian audience, and immediately a major hit all over Europe, Don Pasquale is, at the same time, the apex of Donizetti's hilarious and merry melodramas (eg L'Elisir d'Amore) and the first, and for a long time, the only 'bourgeois comedy in music'. The libretto (largely written by the composer himself) and the score (composed in eleven days and orchestrated in eight) form a bitter (but eventually wise) reflection on aging, on longing for bygone youth, and on various aspects of love and marriage. There are funny moments (like, for example, in Verdi's Falstaff) but the text and the music are full of melancholy. Also, as a 'bourgeois comedy' -- the period in the 1840s and 50s featured the increasing role of the middle class in France (but not yet elsewhere in Europe) -- it could be very well staged in contemporary attire (as in 1843 at the Théâtre des Italiens in Paris and at La Scala in Milan).
Eleonora Buratto as Norina and Mario Cassi as Doctor Malatesta in the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma production of Donizetti's 'Don Pasquale'. © 2013 Luciano Romano
Eleonora Buratto as Norina and Mario Cassi as Doctor Malatesta in the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma production of Donizetti's 'Don Pasquale'.
© 2013 Luciano Romano. Click on the image for higher resolution
Cappuccio sets the action in a period between the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century in an aristocratic palace, just forgetting that the protagonist is a nouveau riche, the owner of several shops and stores in Rome, but without anything that would belong to an aristocrat. He is surrounded by servants in wigs; they are mimes, always busy with slapstick. Also, Norina is surrounded by slapstick chamber maids. In the third act, the choir becomes a crowd of colorful helpers. This would be fine and good if Don Pasquale were a farce and not a dramma buffo.
Nicola Alaimo as Don Pasquale and Mario Cassi as Doctor Malatesta in the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma production of Donizetti's 'Don Pasquale'. © 2013 Luciano Romano
Nicola Alaimo as Don Pasquale and Mario Cassi as Doctor Malatesta in the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma production of Donizetti's 'Don Pasquale'.
© 2013 Luciano Romano. Click on the image for higher resolution
Luckily, Bruno Campanella and the singers follow Donizetti's intentions from the sparkling yet nostalgic symphony to the expansive tenderness even in duets full of humor (eg Malatesta-Norina in the first act) to the waltz tune in the third act, and the musical continuity from number to number obtained by the innovation (at that time) of melodious recitatives accompanied by strings instead of harpsichord.
Nicola Alaimo as Don Pasquale and Eleonora Buratto as Norina in the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma production of Donizetti's 'Don Pasquale'. © 2013 Luciano Romano
Nicola Alaimo as Don Pasquale and Eleonora Buratto as Norina in the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma production of Donizetti's 'Don Pasquale'.
© 2013 Luciano Romano. Click on the image for higher resolution
The singers were quite good, even though they were made to act as if the plot were a Marx Brothers film. Nicola Alaimo and Mario Cassi are young but already veterans of the roles of Don Pasquale and Malatesta. The real surprise is the very young couple. Joel Prieto as Ernesto has a velvet lyric tenor voice and ascends easily to a high register. (His pathetic allegretto Cercherò lontana terra was marvelous.) Eleonora Buratto, singing the part of Norina, is a frizzy coloratura soprano as delightful as a glass of high quality champagne. They have great careers ahead of them, and fully deserve the applause and the accolades they received on 18 June.
Copyright © 26 June 2013 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome,
Italy
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