patrikpen: Real Power in Music and Vision 19 June

giovedì 25 luglio 2013

Real Power in Music and Vision 19 June

Real Power

Three one act operas
exploring the condition of women,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

Three one-act operas on women's condition were premiered in Rome and Bologna during the last weeks. In Rome on 29 May 2013, the Accademica Filarmonica Romana presented the world premiere of a double bill: Fadwa, text and music by Dmitri Scarlato and La stanza di Lena, text by Renata Molinari and music by Daniele Carnini. In Bologna on 11 June, Divorzio all'Italiana by Giorgio Battistelli had its Italian premiere. They are very different works. The double bill is based on grueling episodes of violence against women, which had received considerable press coverage: the murder of a Pakistani girl by her own father -- both emigrants and long term residents of Northern Italy -- because she was in love with a young Italian; the abduction and the ten years in prison of an Austrian girl at the hands of a psychopathic monster. Divorzio all'Italiana is based on the Academy Award movie Divorce Italian Style, a major box office hit of the nineteen sixties. Very gloomy and tragic, the double bill was entrusted to young composers from Azio Corghi school. Very funny, and in experienced hands, Divorzio all'Italiana is a rare modern 'comic opera'.

The first and the second one act opera belong to a new line of music theater being tried out in Italy with the aim of attracting new audience: 'reality operas' based on current events. Three such operas were presented in 2011 at the Lyric Experimental Theatre in Spoleto: their success was minimal. Nonetheless, on 15 June 2013, the Spoleto Theater announced two additional 'reality operas' for September. Fadwa and La stanza di Lena were performed on one night only in the 2,000 seat Teatro Olimpico. The production had been financed, to a large extent, by a 'support group' of 180 women and the staging was timed to coincide with the Italian ratification of a UN convention against violence to women. Many politicians were in the audience. A 'sold out' house, with accolades, applause and ovations, seemed to bode well for the future. The real proof will be when and whether other theatres will take the production.

A scene from the Rome production of 'La stanza di Lena' by Renata Molinari and Daniele Carnini. Click on the image for higher resolution

In my view, Fadwa is a one-hour attempt to make musical theatre on a rather poor (and quite pretentious) libretto, with skilled orchestration but vocal lines based almost only on declamation. La stanza di Lena is more promising: a concise two character plot with an echo also of German music of the nineteen thirties. There's vivid orchestration and vocal contrast between the tenor and soprano, evolving into a final grand 'arioso' for the latter. The Musica d'oggi Ensemble and the young soloists selected from among a hundred candidates -- Damiana Mizzi, Arianna Vendittelli, Martina Belli, Alessandro Luciano, Gianluca Bocchino and Dario Ciotoli -- were unexceptional.

A scene from Dmitri Scarlato's 'Fadwa' in Rome. Click on the image for higher resolution

Divorzio all'Italiana received its world premiere in 2009 in Nancy after a commission by the Opéra National de la Lorraine. It is already a well-travelled opera; I believe it may reach the UK and the US. The libretto follows the nineteen sixties film quite closely. In nearly ninety minutes, there are twenty-three 'musical sequences' or numbers. Inspired by Giorgio De Chirico's 'metaphysical paintings', the single sets shows, with a few props, all the 'ins' and 'outs' of a small and gossipy Sicilian town of some fifty years ago where women have the key to real power even though men think of themselves as being astute womanizers. The protagonist, Don Fefè, devises a plot to have his own wife betray him with a former boyfriend. Thus, he kills them but a very clement court condemns him to only eighteen months in jail (because the 'crime' was caused by an 'honor offense' against him, his family and the whole town). The very sophisticated orchestral and vocal score also has reminiscences of baroque theatre, since all the characters are sung by men; the women's roles are entrusted to baritones and basses and the male roles mostly to tenors, even with very high registers). There is 'bel canto' married to Sprechstimme, recitative, declamation and the 'terzetti' and 'quartetti' of eighteenth century Italian comic opera.

A scene from the Bologna premiere of Giorgio Battistelli's 'Divorzio all'Italiana'. Click on the image for higher resolution

The British David Pountney was the stage director; the French Daniel Kawka the conductor, and there was a top class cast with Alfonso Antoniozzi in the role en travesti of the unfaithful wife (the key protagonist), along with Cristiano Cremonini, Gabriele Ribis, Marco Bussi, Nicolò Ceriani, Alessandro Spina, Sonia Visentin, Daichi Fujiki, Maurizio Leoni, Fabrizio Beggi and Carlo Morini.