Elsewhere
Elsewhere
✭✭✭✭✩
by Christoph Willibald Gluck, directed by Vincent Boussard
Oper Frankfurt, Opernhaus, Frankfurt am Main
December 9, 14, 17, 22 & 28, 2016
“A Revival Reveals the Power of Early Gluck”
This year Oper Frankfurt is presenting a revival of its acclaimed production of Gluck’s Ezio that it premiered in 2013. Gluck is primarily known for his “reform operas” starting with Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) in which he tried to emphasize drama in opera and break what he thought were the stultifying strictures of opera seria. Before 1762, however, Gluck was a composer of opera seria of which Ezio from 1750 is a fine example. The work conducted by Simone Di Felice is a sequence of beautiful arias whose psychological complexity shows that Gluck would eventually have to break with the restrictive form that contains them. The completely non-German cast is an impressive team of up-and-coming young singers anchored by the presence of Max Emanuel Cencic in the title role. The direction by Frenchman Vincent Boussard does nothing to help tell the story but it also does little to obscure it.
The libretto for Gluck’s opera was by Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782), the most famous writer of opera libretti in the 18th century and the one who helped determine the form of the opera seria. In a situation we cannot conceive of today, his libretti were so popular they were often used several times. Ezio, written in 1728, had already been set by several composers including Hasse (in 1730) and Handel (in 1732). Gluck himself set it twice, once in 1750 and again in 1763. Oper Frankfurt has opted for the 1750 version since it represents the early Gluck and shows him as a master of the opera seria form he would later rebel against.
The Ezio of the title is the Roman general Flavius Aetius (c.391-454 ad) who in 453 ad has just defeated Attila the Hun. In history the emperor Valentinian III, jealous of Aetius’s influence and power, plotted to kill Aetius with the senator Maximus and then killed Aetius himself. Metastasio takes the names and the rivalry from history but otherwise creates an entirely fictional story.
In the opera the senator Massimo (Theo Lebow) is the most trusted counsellor of the emperor Valentiniano (Rupert Enticknap), yet Massimo seeks to revenge himself upon the emperor for having tried to seduce his wife. Into this fraught situation Ezio (Max Emanuel Cencic) enters triumphant, but Massimo tries to enlist his aid by telling him that in his absence Valentiniano has fallen in love with Ezio’s beloved Fulvia (Cecelia Hall) and wants to marry her. To prevent this, Massimo says that Ezio must assassinate the emperor, but Ezio refuses. Massimo then turns to Fulvia and says she must marry the emperor and then kill him. But she also refuses. Massimo therefore resolves to send one of his henchmen to do it.
Meanwhile, it turns out that the emperor’s own sister Onoria (Sydney Mancasola) has fallen in love with Ezio. To reward Ezio for his victory, the emperor vows to give Onoria to Ezio in marriage. This causes Ezio to reveal that he cannot marry Onoria because he loves Fulvia. The furious emperor charges Ezio with ingratitude and insists he, the emperor, will marry Fulvia. Later, when Massimo’s henchman fails to kill the emperor, suspicion for the plot falls on Ezio who is taken away to prison.
The plot’s main interest in in showing how two characters, Ezio and Fulvia, attempt to act nobly and rationally, in the face of Massimo and Valentiniano, who act ignobly and irrationally. Since Valentiniano seems to be weak and dependant on Massimo, it is Machiavellian Massimo who comes off as the morally more reprehensible of the two and countering the usual Roman emperor-as-tyrant cliché.
One difficulty in casting Ezio is that it requires two countertenors of differing vocal ranges – a higher range for Valentiniano and a lower one for Ezio. Oper Frankfurt has found an excellent pair in Briton Rupert Enticknap and Croatian-born Max Emanuel Cencic. Enticknap’s voice is bright, pure and devoid of harshness. This makes it perfect for a character who is highly strung and weak like Valentiniano but aware of his own weakness. When Enticknap’s emperor believes that all around him have betrayed him, he does not lash out in anger but collapses in despair. It’s a fine portrayal of a highly ambiguous figure.
Max Emanuel Cencic sang Valentiniano when Opera Frankfurt last staged Ezio in 2013. His voice is considerably darker and warmer than Enticknap’s and his acting accomplishes the difficult task of making the travails of a good man gripping. Gluck gives Ezio one wonderful aria after another, but perhaps the loveliest is “Se la mia vita dono” when Ezio believes that the emperor has pardoned him and given him Fulvia has his wife. Cencic is especially adept at florid ornamentation in the repeated A section of his da capo arias.
American tenor Theo Lebow is a fine a Massimo. His voice has the sound of an heroic Italianate tenor but on a smaller scale well suited to baroque opera. His playing Massimo as completely unstraightforward with everyone he speaks to helps immeasurably in creating the key question of who in the opera, Massimo or Valentiniano, is the greater villain. Lebow’s finest moment is his beautiful aria “Se povero il ruscello” that with surprising gentleness compares life to a stream encountering impediments on its way.
American mezzo Cecelia Hall is gripping as Fulvia, whose emotions are toyed with by all around her. It is no wonder she begins to fear she is going mad. What dominates, however, in Hall’s performance is her passion and her strength, both conveyed by her beautifully full, agile voice and detailed acting. American soprano Sydney Mancasola’s Onoria, singing with a pure, clear voice, initially comes off as cold and haughty, but Mancasola reveals soon enough that Onoria is valiantly trying to maintain a rigid façade to conceal the emotions roiling within her.
The only remotely comic role in the opera is that of Varo, the chief of the Pretorian guards. Valentiniano gives him the order of assassinating Ezio, which he deliberately does not follow though he does spread the false rumour of Ezio’s death. The longest aria Metastasio gives him (“Nasce al bosco in rozza cuna”) is a reflection on the fickleness of fortune that director Vincent Boussard has Varo deliver directly to the audience. Firm-voiced American tenor Michael Porter brings this off with panache. Since the opera has three acts, Boussard decides to place the intermission directly in the midst of Varo’s aria, but Porter is able to pick things up with a reprise that serves as a welcome start to the rest of the work.
French director Vincent Boussard seems to have no clear idea of what he wants to do with the opera which is just as well because he thus has no particular concept to force on the work. Kaspar Glarner’s set consists of two white walls which, with the addition of a third can be moved into different configurations to represent different locations. At first with only two wall present, Boussard has video designer Bibi Abel project a loop of aircraft flying off into the distance signifying the end of the war with Attila. We could well think that Boussard has moved the action into the present or at least into the 1940s. Costume designer Christian Lacroix has dressed Massimo in a dark blue three-piece suit with a matching overcoat and Valentiniano in a an embroidered red silk robe as if he were relaxing in luxury. Ezio, however, is clad as a 5th-century Roman soldier with a tunic, trousers, boots and a metal breastplate.
When Fulvia appears she is garbed in a parody of a high-Victorian gown, all black with peaked sleeves and a train. At this point we realize that Boussard has gone for an eclectic style to signify the universality of the action. As an indication that costumes are no indication of personality, when Fulvia appears after intermission, she has changed for no particular reason into a 17th-century Spanish-style gown with panniers held together in front with a huge Kabuki-style silk bow.
The most annoying feature of the design is a wooden object, looking much like the Nike swoosh. In Act 1 we think it is supposed to be an airplane. When it is joined by two other swooshes and is lowered to face level, often concealing the singers’ expressions, it is meant to represent waves. When lit from the side, it looks like a claw. No matter what it is, it’s unnecessary. After playing with projections during the first act, Boussard focusses on shadows on the walls and reflections off the shiny floor in Act 2. Here he is at his most creative, as when Massimo’s shadow at one point engulfs Fulvia’s. As the opera nears it end, however, Boussard suddenly has the stage inundated with people in modern tourist wear looking at the walls as if at a museum. The performers sing the final chorus as this is going on.
So what’s happening? First Boussard uses video to place the action in the present. Then at the end he literally presents the opera as if it were a museum piece – a stance completely contrary to the point of reviving the work.
Luckily, his various views cancel each other out and the work survives because of the fine acting and singing of the entire cast. Conductor Simone Di Felice leads the renowned Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester in a gorgeous account of the score. In fact, it may be a bit too gorgeous for its own good since Di Felice seems to revel in the beauty of the individual arias more than emphasizing the forward movement through the work. The characters suffer one emergency after another, but Di Felice’s conducting doesn’t convey enough sense of urgency.
Oper Frankfurt is currently the only opera house in the world with Gluck’s Ezio in his repertory. While it is natural that opera companies would concentrate of Gluck’s more famous “reform” operas, the fact is that Gluck wrote at least half of his 49 operas in the style of the opera seria or opera buffa. Given the amount of emotion he packs into every aria and given his interest in complexity of character, a work like Ezio is filled with the tension of an artist straining at the seams of the form in which he was writing. A fine example is the hugely dramatic trio that closes Act 2. We stage the opere serie of Handel and Mozart. Ezio clearly demonstrates that by not staging the opere serie of Gluck, we have been denying ourselves a bounty of beautiful music.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Rupert Enticknap as Valentiniano and Max Emanuel Cencic as Ezio with Theo Lebow as Massimo (in the background); Max Emanuel Cencic and Cecelia Hall as Fulvia; Theo Lebow, Cecelia Hall, Max Emanuel Cencic, Michael Porter as Varo, Sydney Mancasola as Onoria and Rupert Enticknap. ©2016 Barbara Aumüller.
For tickets, visit www.oper-frankfurt.de.
2016-12-10
Frankfurt, GER: Ezio