Reviews 2016
Reviews 2016
✭✭✭✭✩
by Gioacchino Rossini, directed by David Alden
Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto
April 29-May 14, 2016
Coro di Musulmani: “Qual magico incanto / quel ciglio, quel pianto / ha sul vincitor!” (“What magic spell, those eyes, those tears, have on the victor!”)
Canadian Opera Company is currently presenting the Canadian premiere of Rossini’s opera Maometto II. The COC is using the production from Santa Fe Opera, where the opera had its North American premiere in 2012. Not only that, but two of the stars from Santa Fe are on hand in Toronto – Luca Pisaroni in the title role and Leah Crocetto as Anna. Musically, it is such a feast of extraordinary singing that one can ignore its unimaginative direction.
Until 2012, Maometto II had not been heard in its original form since its poorly-received premiere in Naples in 1820. If the music was heard at all it was in the radically revised version Rossini wrote for Paris in 1826 retitled Le Siège de Corinthe. The reason for Maometto’s failure is that it is one of Rossini’s most experimental works. It does not have neat divisions between recitatives and arias familiar from Rossini’s comic operas. Instead, Maometto employs long arcs of interconnected solos and ensembles that anticipate the completely through-composed works later in the century. Just as Santa Fe Opera used the first critical edition of the work by Hans Schellevis, do does the COC.
Director David Alden, known here for his concept productions, such as his incest-laden Lucia di Lammermoor in 2013, has no particular concept to impose on Maometto II. Rather surprisingly, he reverts to an antiquated style of direction one seldom sees anymore. Alden moves the chorus in formation from point A to B and back with more concern for their decorative than their dramatic function. Singers sing more often directly to the audience than to each other. This style of moving from one static tableau to another considerably blunts the work’s dramatic impact.
The personal touches Alden adds are irrelevant at best. Why do the Ottoman Turks have four acrobatic Japanese ninjas with them? Are people from the “East” somehow all alike? Why is Anna greeted in Maometto’s camp by a stripping belly-dancer as women in full purdah look on? Is this supposed to point to contradictions in Muslim society? Why do Maometto’s troops wear kohl-ringed eyes making them look like cartoons of Islamic terrorists? The surprise arrival of a sculpted troika of horses pulling a chariot turns silly when it then has to be pulled backwards with Maometto at the reins.
In terms of design, why has Jon Morrell updated the Venetians’ garb to 1820 (i.e. Rossini’s time) but clad the Turks in outfits circa 1470 (i.e. the historical period of the action)? Is this to suggest that the Ottomans are less enlightened than the Venetians? This notion seemed to reinforced by a a prominent plaque on the wall in the Venetian fortress claiming in a paraphrase of Petrarch: “Venezia – unico albergo di libertà, di giustizia, di pace” (Venice: the sole refuge of liberty, of justice, of peace”). In his “Director’s Note” Alden suggests his depiction of the Turks and Venetians is balanced. If so, why were only the Turkish troops accompanied by someone holding up death’s-head and later playing the Grim Reaper?
What drama there is lies with the singers and the orchestra. Luca Pisaroni, who created the title role for the 21st century, is a charismatic Maometto with an amazingly agile bass-baritone to match. His arias serve as impressive display pieces, especially his thrilling account of his final aria, “All’invito generoso.” Yet, what really enlivens the opera is the wealth of colour and expressivity that Pisaroni brings to Maometto’s long passages of recitativo accompagnato. Through these, Pisaroni almost single-handedly helps pull his scenes out of Alden’s stasis into drama.
Vocally, soprano Leah Crocetto’s performance is spectacular in its precision, control and beauty of tone even in Rossini’s most elaborately ornamented passages. Her voice maintains its purity from her crystalline top notes down to her sumptuous low notes. All one could ask for is some modicum of facial expression or gestural variety to turn her breathtaking displays of virtuosity into living drama. Both Pisaroni and Elizabeth DeShong as Calbo demonstrate that the production of Rossini’s demanding vocal pyrotechnics need not preclude infusing them with emotion. Yet, Crocetto appears more like a recitalist in costume than as singer playing a character.
As Erisso, tenor Bruce Sledge is also impressively agile of voice. He produces an enormous sound that becomes more confined in his upper register, but he makes Rossini’s complex ornamentation sound completely natural. His acting tends towards the generic, and he, like Crocetto, is content with the old-fashioned style of stand-and-deliver.
Among the Venetian characters Elizabeth DeShong’s Calbo consistently stands out as the one who most successfully uses her seemingly limitless vocal prowess and stamina to communicate her character’s wide range of emotions. Her beautiful mezzo-soprano never loses its lush, rounded tone even in Calbo’s most high-lying passages. With DeShong vocal display, no matter how perfectly executed, is never an end in itself but always contributes to the forward movement of the drama. Though conductor Harry Bicket tries to suppress applause, he could do nothing to stop the tumultuous ovation that greeted DeShong at the conclusion of her sensational Act 2 aria “Non temer: d'un basso affetto.”
For his part Harry Bicket and the COC Orchestra clearly revel in one of Rossini’s most experimental scores. Bicket brings out the distinctly dark tinto of the score and beautifully articulated the changes in rhythm within each structural arc as well as between them. The orchestra with over 60 musicians is much larger than a typical orchestra for Rossini’s comic operas, yet Bicket’s emphasis on internal clarity over lushness related the music back to the 18th century even while its complex structure looks forward to the late 19th century.
Of the seven operas by Rossini that the COC has staged, Maometto II is only the second that is not a comic opera. The previous opera seria was Tancredi (1813) in 2005 with the great Ewa Podleś in the title role. Given the thunderous acclaim that Bicket and the cast received as they took their bows, we can only hope that this musically dazzling Maometto II will open the door for more unjustly neglected bel canto operas in future seasons.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This is a version of the review that will appear later this year in Opera News.
Photos: (from top) Luca Pisarone (front centre) with chorus, ©2016 Gary Beechey; Luca Pisaroni as Maometto II; Bruce Sledge, Leah Crocetto and Elizabeth DeShong, ©2016 Michael Cooper.
For tickets, visit www.coc.ca.
2016-05-01
Maometto II