Tutino - La ciociara (Wexford, 2023)

Marco Tutino - La ciociara

Wexford Festival Opera, 2023

Francesco Cilluffo, Rosetta Cucchi, Na’ama Goldman, Jade Phoenix, Leonardo Caimi, Devid Cecconi, Alexander Kiechle, Allen Boxer, Carolyn Dobbin, Conor Prendiville, Erin Fflur, Julian Henao Gonzalez, Grace Maria Wain, Meilir Jones, Christian Loizou, Will Searle, Peter McCamley

O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House - 26th October 2023

Wexford Festival Opera may be noted for its unearthing of rare works mainly from the 19th century, but the reviving of works as a way of keeping opera alive and vital also extends to programming new and recent 20th and 21st century works. It's in the context of the 72nd festival's Women & War theme that even against some notable historical competition it was a contemporary composer Marco Tutino and his opera La ciociara that proved to be the most musically and dramatically satisfying work in programme. You might think that the task of composing an opera on the subject of war might have been made easier by having the cinematic source material of the master of post-war neo-realism Vittorio de Sica to work with, which in turn is adapted from Alberto Moravia's war time experiences in Italy, but there is clearly much more to making all that into a successful opera. And indeed a challenge to stage it successfully, so we were fortunate that conductor Francesco Cilluffo and director Rosetta Cucchi were key to realising the full dramatic potential of the work for Wexford.

Composed in 2015 where it was premiered at San Francisco Opera, it's a newly revised version of La ciociara that was being performed for the first time at Wexford. For a festival specialising in reviving old and forgotten opera, Wexford manage to rack up a surprising number of premieres, also managing this year to put on the first ever staged production of the original version of a rare Donizetti opera, Zoraida di Granata. La ciociara was however even more of a coup, since in its new form at least it's an extraordinary piece of opera. It has the opera-cinematic quality of Richard Strauss in its huge dramatic and romantic sweeps, matching the dynamic and range of human experience during a time of war, but it is also thoroughly modern in how it adapts to those changes of tone and provides a consistent accompaniment to the dramatic action without ever resorting to film soundtrack backing.

Photo: Clive Barda

It's a work that more fully realises the Women & War theme of the 72nd Wexford Festival Opera. Where Zoraida and L'aube rouge struggled to get a satisfactory balance, La ciociara also has a romantic core but fully humanises it in while placing it in the context of war. And by humanising that also includes the dehumanising effect of war. There is no holding back here on the brutality and the horror that war inflicts on society and the individual. The individuals in question are Cesira and her daughter Rosetta, the 'two women' of the English version of the Moravia book and film, and Michele, the school teacher Cesira meets in the village of Sant'Eufemia when she returns to her home region of Ciociara escaping from the war in Rome.

Another aspect of the impact that war has on individuals comes in the form of Giovanni, a brute who has followed Cesira and Rosetta from Rome who joins a fascist militia. He hears that the two women and Michele have given aid to a wounded American soldier and, in a jealous rage over Cesira's blossoming relationship with Michele, he informs the local Nazi commander Von Bock - a Scarpia-like figure - which leads to a similar anguished confrontation and eventual execution of Michele, not to mention a rape scene. It's hard not to associate the musical connection and heritage of the brutality pushed by Puccini in Tosca in such scenes.

Photo: Clive Barda

You can detect the post-Wagner and post-Verdi approach to opera of Strauss and Puccini in Tutino's music, but the composer nonetheless puts a neo-Romantico spin on ot, the music dramatic, theatrical and emphatic. Musically everything goes hand in hand with the drama, enhancing the narrative and emotional tone of the piece at every stage. Not a moment is wasted, the opera simply flowing from one scene to the next. The director Rosetta Cucchi (also the artistic director of the Wexford Festival Opera) has a hand in that of course, using filmed segments to link the journey of the two women, Tutino helpfully providing linking music to mark the passage of time and distance. 

Cucchi also takes inspiration from Vittorio De Sica (Peter McCamley), the director of the film version of La Ciociara, including him as a silent figure in the drama during preparations for filming, taking in the location and imagining what he will make of each scene. That gives Cucchi licence to include a dancer figure, a representation of his inspiration perhaps, the emotional core of what he wants to capture on film, the essence of woman maybe? Strength? Endurance? It doesn't necessarily need a name or single definition, since it is really something deeper that arises out of the music that can connect on a different level with the personal experience and reaction of each person in the audience.

This is vital to the human aspect of the work, to the connection it makes with the listener and as a reflection of how the experience of war can be different for different people. It can dehumanise and inflict horror, as Zoraida di Granata and L'Aube rouge made clear earlier in the opera festival, but it can also bring out the better human qualities. Cesira in fact was not such a nice person while she was in Rome, using the war as an excuse to inflate prices in her store. Returning to what was known as the Ciociara region south of Rome, in the country, she finds a closer relationship with nature, naming the flowers and trees, finding secret paths in the woods, finding love, the contrast of the war revealing what is truly important.

Photo: Clive Barda

The opera evidently requires a strong central performance in Cesira, and you couldn't ask for better than Na'ama Goldman, or indeed praise her performance enough. She held the work together as its heart, her singing and dramatic performance absolutely exceptional. Just as remarkable was Jade Phoenix as Rosetta, the young soprano giving an amazing performance through some challenging scenes, singing absolutely superbly. The scene where she took to the front of the stage to offer up a song of prayer was a revelation, winning over the audience as she lived through the trauma and post-trauma brilliantly. Leonardo Caimi was excellent as Michele and Devid Cecconi marvellous in the thankless role of the fascist brute, Giovanni, but neither overshadowed the outstanding performances of the "two women" at the heart of the work.

Superbly directed by Rosetta Cucchi with no expense spared on the impressive production design, the staging couldn't have been in better hands. The same goes for the musical direction of Francesco Cilluffo, and the Wexford orchestra were on fire as they tend to be under this conductor. I look forward to the work he directs at Wexford every year in the assurance that it will be among the best of the festival. That was certainly the case this year in a very good main programme, but in terms of being the full package, La ciociara topped the bill and that was recognised by fierce applause and a standing ovation at the curtain call. I don't think there is any such thing as the perfect opera, but when music, drama, performance and presentation come together as well as they do here, this is as good opera gets.

External links: Wexford Festival Opera

Tutino - The Embers (Armel Opera Festival, 2014 - Webcast)

Marco Tutino - The Embers

Szeged National Theatre, 2014

Sándor Gyüdi, Attila Toronykóy, Tamás Altorjay, Jean-Philippe Biojout, Szilveszter Szélpál, Tivadar Kiss, Krisztina Kónya, Boglárka Laczák

Armel Opera Festival, ARTE Concert - 9 October 2014

Based on a novel by Sándor Márai, Embers deals with the passing of time, with youthful ideals and old-age regrets, with friendship and love and how it too can change over time and under the cold gaze of reflection. The time span of the work also presents an allegorical level of the change that occurred in the world around the turn of the 20th century. Marco Tutino's one-act opera effectively treats the question of youthful friendship and idealism embittered by the passing of time within its musical composition, while the production of the work's world premiere at the 2014 Armel Opera Festival, highlights the supernatural element that expresses the allegorical side of the work.

The drama in the opera is divided between the present of 1940 and a significant moment in 1899. In the present, and old man Henrik lives a solitary and embittered existence in a room of faded paintings. He has advised his servant Nini that he is expecting a visit from an old friend Konrad, but the prospect of the visit is not one that brings him any happiness. It stirs up old memories of a time when Henrik was in love with Kristina. All his life Henrik has had suspicions stemming from events one day in July 1899, the day of the hunt. Kristina's presence in Konrad's room and a suspicion that Konrad actually took aim at him during the hunt, have led him to believe that they had an affair. Many years later, having walked out on both of them, Henrik still replays the events in his mind, unable to find any answers. He hopes that Konrad's visit after 40 years will put matters to rest.

Dealing with the passing of time, questions of regret for the past, of falling in love with the wrong person, of a love triangle situation resulting in jealousy and the shattering of illusions, Embers recalls both Eugene Onegin and Pélleas et Mélisande, and Marco Tutino's score even employs the same musical language. It's a modern score however and there are no direct or indirect quotes of Tchaikovsky or Debussy, but it uses contrasting styles to highlight the differences between the periods. On the one side there is the joy and youthful idealism of the three young people before the Great War and on the other is the bitter experience that has marked Henrik in the present just as another world war commences.

There's a personal element then to the sense of disillusionment with love and friendship, but it's tied then into a reflection on the differences between a more carefree time in the Austro-Hungarian empire of the late 19th century and the reality of the 20th century post-war world. It's as if the actions of Konrad, prepared to take a shot at his best friend, are a betrayal of the old rules of decency, duty and behaviour that has led to or in a way foreshadowed the barbarism unleashed in the Great War. In Henrik's mind, at least, and that's the world that the composer attempts to explore in Embers. Tutino is aware of how these historical events changed the musical landscape of the 20th century, and it's the reflection of that in the score that marks it out from Tchaikovsky and Debussy's musical treatments of such subject matter.

That contrast is also reflected in Attila Toronykóy's direction of the world premiere of the work for the Szeged National Theatre at the Armel Opera Festival. If there are any suggestions of Eugene Onegin and Pélleas et Mélisande, it perhaps as much to do with how the two distinct periods of the work are treated, the past played out in 19th century period with younger versions of the main characters, while the present is a much more shadowy and unsettling abstract world of dark undercurrents where morals have been subverted. This takes an abstraction of being practically photo-negative, the older Henrik wearing a white suit with dark grey shirt, his face blanched white, the glass of wine he holds coloured blue. Portraits on the wall are also negatives, as is the significant scene - one fixed in Henrik's mind - of one man pointing a gun at another on the day of the hunt.

The timelines are however not entirely distinct and the past does bleed into the present. Rather than the ghosts being those of the past, the production design places emphasis on it being the older Henrik and Konrad who are the ghosts. Shadows of themselves, you might say, broken by the past, but the final lines of the libretto give this a more literal (or perhaps ethereal) reading. Perhaps both Konrad and Henrik have died in the war and are restless spirits that are still looking for answers. Inevitably, definitive answers are hard to come by.

The Armel Opera Festival is also a singing competition, and both the competition singers for this performance - Tamás Altorjay singing the bass role of the older Henrik and Jean-Philippe Biojout singing the bass-baritone role of the older Konrad - richly expressed the dark melancholic undercurrents of the libretto. Despite the focus being on the older and younger versions of the men, the importance of the woman in the middle is not neglected, and Krisztina Kónya gave an outstanding performance as Kristina. The younger men were sung by Szilveszter Szélpál and Tivadar Kiss, with Boglárka Laczák giving a fine performance also in the role of Nini.

Links: ARTE Concert, Armel Opera Festival