The Elixir of Love

 

Conductor:  Bruno Campanella
Director:  James Robinson

Giannetta: Ji Young Yang

Adina: Inva Mula

Nemorino:  Ramón Vargas

Belcore: Giorgio Caoduro

Dr. Dulcamara: Alessandro Corbelli

 

This version of Donizetti's L’Elisir d’Amore from 2008 at the San Francisco Opera is completely new to me.  How is this possible?  We are in Napa in California before the US entrance into WWI.  Uncle Sam is recruiting for the army.  For people from California this completely works.  Farms, wine, a rich lady farm owner.  Yes.  Adina and Nemorino are singing and eating ice cream.  They just nibble, or we would worry. 

 

Ramon Vargas is the perfect Nemorino, overflowing with cheerfulness..  This performance includes the greatest of all comic Italian baritones--Alessandro Corbelli.  He seems like the ideal con man.  This is charming and fun.  This is Inva Mula's only appearance at the San Francisco Opera.  She is not my favorite Adina but projects the too good for Nemorino aura required.  Stylistically she is dead on.

There is an ice cream truck and a motorcycle with a side car.  Belcore has boxing gloves instead of a uniform.  All the young men put on military uniforms as volunteers for the war.  It's fun and transfers effectively to Napa.

La Forza del Destino at ROH

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Conductor: Antonio Pappano
Original director: Christof Loy

Leonora: Anna Netrebko
Don Alvaro: Jonas Kaufmann
Don Carlo di Vargas: Ludovic Tézier
Padre Guardiano: Ferruccio Furlanetto
Fra Melitone: Alessandro Corbelli
Preziosilla: Veronica Simeoni
Marquis of Calatrava: Robert Lloyd
Curra: Roberta Alexander
Alcalde: Michael Mofidian

This production of La Forza del Destino from the Royal Opera in London emphasizes the already chaotic nature of this opera.  The plot is enhanced by staging the overture with scenes from the childhood of siblings Leonora and Don Carlo.  It is clear that Don Carlo hates his sister from long before her boyfriend shot their father.   A grown up Don Carlo is still playing with a red yo-yo from these scenes.  This is a visual clue so you will recognize Don Carlo as a grown up.

The opening scene of the shooting is by far the best staging I have seen of this difficult scene. Wonderful. You must believe that he intends no harm when he throws the gun to the floor. A further enhancement in the staging comes with projections of this death scene to show how it lives in Leonora's memory.

I love this chaotic opera, primarily for the music--it is some of the best Verdi--but would like very much to love it as theater as well.  It never quite works.  But here the opening is true to the plot and clearly outlined.  With our love of guns we still must ask ourselves, "What is he doing in her house with a gun in the first place?"

I'll admit I could do entirely without Preziosilla and her scenes.  Now that I realize "rataplan" came from Meyerbeer, I'm still not sure anything about the opera is improved by it.  Silliness in the deadly serious opera seems like nonsense.  It represents soldiers relaxing between killing people.  When Leonora sees her brother in this place, she knows she must go into hiding.

It's a terrible opera with glorious music and in this case spectacular singing.  Netrebko represents the
fear and horror that haunts Leonora with wonderful intensity.  Jonas is his usual spectacular self.  Tézier is a beautiful man who portrays Don Carlo's evil nature better than seems possible.  All this great music is wasted on useless vengeance.  I guess Rigoletto has a similar plot but hating your boss and hating your sister are rather different.  At least Rigoletto loves someone.

L'Italiana in Algeri from Salzburg

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Conductor:  Jean-Christophe Spinosi
Production:  Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier

Isabella:  Cecilia Bartoli (mezzo)
Mustafa:  Ildar Abdrazakov (baritone)
Lindoro: Edgardo Rocha  (tenor)
Taddeo, suitor:  Alessandro Corbelli (baritone)
Elvira, Mustafa's wife: Rebeca Olvero (soprano)

Constant searching has led me to a film of Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri from Whitsun at Salzburg in 2018.  This is regie, of course.  The subtitles seem to be in French.  We are in Mustafa's bedroom where his wife makes advances while husband Mustafa is sleeping.  He doesn't like it.  Lindoro comes in with a vaccuum, smoking, wearing dreads and a tattoo.  There is lots of nice music for Lindoro and Mustafa.  The houses in the street all have satellite dishes.

After the guys leave, Cecilia comes in riding on a camel.  Camel raises tail, Cecilia holds nose.  This is an opera comedy that seems actually to be funny.  Corbelli runs out of one of the stores to save Cecilia from bandits [cops?] waving guns?  She says he is her uncle and shows her passport.  Isabella is a contralto and is fairly easy for Cecilia.  Everything is charming.  I'm so glad she is singing this and that I am finally seeing it.  My traveling days may be over.

In the next scene Isabella meets Mustafa and critiques his figure.  In a row behind them are men smoking hookahs and blowing the smoke out onto the stage.  Lindoro and Isabella see each other.  Stuffed chairs roll around the stage.  Isabella tells Mustafa he already has a wife.

This is fun.  It is wonderful to see Isabella played by the essential Italian woman.  Cecilia has long been my favorite Italian.

In the prelude to act 2 there are annoying banging sounds which turn out to be people slicing vegetables.  The male chorus, clearly Mustafa's flunkies, carry boxes of electronics.  Is Mustafa selling them, stealing them, what?   Mustafa is arranging a meeting with Isabella.  Cecilia enters smoking, but I don't see smoke.  Sight gags.  Smooching.

Taddeo takes off his trousers and is wearing Superman briefs.  We have as many sight gags as you could possibly want.  I am enjoying this very much.  Suddenly male chorus all have guns and shoot them off.  Perhaps Mustafa is an Algerian mafioso.

Back in Isabella's apartment she is taking a bubble bath with people all around, including us, of course.  Mustafa enters in his night clothes and tries to get an eyeful.  Isabella is waving bras around and singing.  It is a fact that this is my first time seeing The Italian Girl in Algiers with a real Italian girl.  So we know what has been missing.  The aria ends and Lindoro wheels the bathtub off stage.  Isabella soon reenters in her nightgown.  Taddeo assumes the lotus position.  Everything is getting out of control when Elvira enters.  Mustafa passes out.

We see clips of La Dolce Vita where Anita Ekberg gets into the Trevi Fountain, the ultimate Italian woman film.  I don't know what the general reception for this production was, but I am loving it.  It is colossally silly with the spectacular Cecilia Bartoli in the middle.  I find that I am shockingly unfamiliar with most of the music in this opera.

In the final scene the male chorus are all dressed as soccer players.  Isabella feeds them from a giant pot of pasta.  She sings "Pensa la patria" to Lindoro who is also Italian.  This is at last familiar, probably from one of Cecilia's albums.  She flirts with everyone.  Mustafa is to be made a Pappataci.  He goes back to his regular wife and the Italians all sail off for Italy.  Bon voyage.  Everyone lives happily ever after.  Isabella and Lindoro are doing Titanic at the end, but let's assume their fates are different.  How many icebergs can there be in the Mediterranean?

For me this production was perfect.  Yes, it's modernized but I found the changes never to be a distortion of the story.  After all, an Italian woman is an Italian woman in any era.  I also thought the cast was as good as it gets, most of all our Italian woman, Cecilia Bartoli.

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Salzburg Cenerentola

 

Very 1950s. 

I did not say I wouldn't post any more pictures.  She (Cecilia Bartoli) is in costume, and maybe he (Javier Camarena) is too.  Toi toi toi.

Or maybe not.  It's a rehearsal.  You can't tell anymore.

I want to express my joy in the continuing glory of Cecilia Bartoli's fabulous career.  She is in my heart even when I stay home.  There is an article in the New York Times today about the soon to begin Whitsun Festival and her management of it.  This article says she would like to sing opera in American again.  We are keeping our fingers crossed.

Buffet Don Magnifico

P.S.  I think every currently active Rossini singer in the world is performing.  Tenors alone included Juan Diego Florez, John Osborn, Javier Camarena, Edgardo Rocha, Barry Banks and Lawrence Brownlee.  And didn't I see José Carreras?  Also Cecilia Bartoli, Vesselina Kasarova, Joyce DiDonato, Carlos Chausson, Alessandro Corbelli, Massimo Cavalletti, Franco Fagioli, Michele Pertusi, Ruggero Raimondi, Erwin Schrott and I'm sure a lot more.

La bontà in trionfo

Conductor: Fabio Luisi
Production: Cesare Lievi

Cast

Angelina: Joyce DiDonato
Prince Ramiro: Juan Diego Flórez
Dandini: Pietro Spagnoli
Don Magnifico: Alessandro Corbelli
Clorinda: Rachelle Durkin
Tisbe: Patricia Risley
Alidoro: Luca Pisaroni


This series of Rossini's La Cenerentola at the Metropolitan Opera was a first go for Fabio Luisi, and I must say he was fantastic.  His tempos were great.  His ability to follow the singers was incredible.  Every note was secure, joyful and invigorating.  Someone mentioned in the interviews how nice it was to look down into the pit and see his smiling face.

All of these great singing actors were in form.  I didn't even mind Don Magnifico played by the great Alessandro Corbelli.  He explains that he never plays anything for laughs, and in this performance only the sisters and Dandini seemed to be deliberately aiming for silliness.  Joyce, Juan Diego, Luca, Pietro, all were fabulous.  The entire performance was filled with love and joy.  It was a truly great La Cenerentola.

I apologize to my fellow viewers for conducting and humming along throughout most of this. It is still the opera I have listened to most, and apparently I know every note.

The Barber of Seville

Rosina receiving her singing lesson

Conductor:  Giuseppe Finzi

Director:  Emilio Sagi

Figaro:  Lucas Meachem (1), Audun Iversen * (2)
Rosina:  Isabel Leonard * (1), Daniela Mack (2)
Count Almaviva:  Javier Camarena * (1),  Alek Shrader (2)
Doctor Bartolo:  Alessandro Corbelli (1), Maurizio Muraro * (2)
Don Basilio:  Andrea Silvestrelli
Berta:  Catherine Cook
Ambrogio:  A.J. Glueckert
Fiorello:  Ao Li
An Officer:  Hadleigh Adams
Notary:  Andrew Truett

I went to the first and second performances of Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the San Francisco Opera because I wanted to see both casts.  This is a new production.  This photo of the first scene will give you an idea of how it looks. 

First we are outside Doctor Bartolo's house, then we are in the back garden, and last we are inside the house.  The slanted floor is a kind of door where people and objects enter and exit.  There is dancing that is fully integrated into the action.  There is a storm complete with water.  There is extreme ambiguity about the precise period, but it must be long after Rossini.  The action was very busy, but I found it charming and entertaining.  Berta and Ambrogio, Bartolo's servants, maintained a constant flow of silly, entertaining business.

Perhaps this is the long version which I first saw in Met simulcast where Count Almaviva sings the long aria from La Cenerentola at the end.  The opera used to be performed without it, but perhaps this is now the new standard version.

I felt that the first cast was the more successful, but this was mainly due to the fact that the War Memorial Opera House has somewhat bad acoustics, and they were louder.  One of the primary criteria for a successful opera career is how loud your voice is.  Is this a silly topic?  From the second cast Daniela Mack and Maurizio Muraro were adequately loud.  I apologize for bringing this up.  The loudest person on the stage was probably Andrea Silvestrelli who played Don Basilio in both casts.  He has an incredibly large and resonant bass voice.  I would like to hear more of him.

I was charmed.  I felt lucky to hear Javier Camarena whom I saw in Paris with Natalie Dessay.  He was making his San Francisco Opera debut.  As was Isabel Leonard who appeared here recently in recital at the San Francisco Conservatory.

It was fun.  Sometimes this opera takes a somewhat gloomy turn but that did not happen here.  I yelled a lot.  Bravissimi tutti.

Forgive me for not reviewing them separately.

Lost Copy of La Cenerentola

I am cataloging my opera video collection, and hidden out of view on the same tape as Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire I found Cecilia Bartoli's performance in the Metropolitan Opera production of La Cenerentola in 1997.  I am doing Cecilia right now, so it seems suitable to write something about it.  It is important to know that this is the first time La Cenerentola played at the Met.

I don't know what I could have been thinking when I wrote of the performance by Elina Garanča here that I had probably never seen the production before.  I must surely have seen this tape of it. 

Angelina: Cecilia Bartoli
Prince Ramiro:  Ramón Vargas
Dandini:  Alessandro Corbelli
Don Magnifico:  Simone Alaimo
Clorinda:   Joyce Guyer
Tisbe:  Wendy White
Alidoro:   Michele Pertusi

I had also almost forgotten the dynamo Bartoli.  Where Elina goes cautiously up and down the stairs on the wedding cake, Cecilia runs up and down them with complete abandon.  Her father hits her and throws her around the stage.  The whole production makes a remarkably different impression than it does with Elina.

The cast is superb.  Alessandro Corbelli made his Met debut as Dandini, and never have I seen such a perfect Dandini.  It's almost a shame that he can't sing Dandini and Don Magnifico in the same production.  Vargas has gone on from being the magnificent Rossini tenor he is here.  He and Cecilia make a well-matched couple.  And Michele Pertusi, looking very young, is the definitive Alidoro, even having golden wings (Alidoro means golden wings.)

A book was written about this.  Cecilia wows with her wonderful singing and great charm.  Questo cor piu mio non e.

You can watch this streamed from the Metropolitan Opera on Demand.

Brief summary of Houston Cenerentola

Angelina: Cecilia Bartoli
Prince Ramiro:  Raul Gimenez 
Dandini:  Alessandro Corbelli
Don Magnifico:  Enzo Dara
Clorinda:   Laura Knoop  
Tisbe:  Jill Grove 
Alidoro:   Michele Pertusi

I also have a tape of the Houston performance a couple of years earlier in 1995.  This production was filmed to preserve the production which originated in Bologna.  If you love Cecilia, she is better here.  If you love old fashioned productions, this is for you.  Corbelli and Pertusi are better at the Met.  I'm glad I don't have to choose.

In my collection is also a version with Ann Murray. Now I must say I am Cenerentolaed out.
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Adriana Lecouvreur

I have enjoyed very much the DVD of Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur with Angela Gheorghiu in the title role, Jonas Kaufmann as lover everyone wants (this is nothing new) and Olga Borodina as Princess de Bouillon, the woman rejected in favor of Adriana.  The cast includes Alessandro Corbelli as Michonnet.  This is the first time I have seen him in a serious opera.

One is attracted to but not overwhelmed by Adriana.  The music is lush and the singing gorgeous.  But the Princess is a stupid woman who thinks her lover will return to her if she just gets rid of her rival.  If you like this cast and this opera, this is an excellent version.  If you like conservative productions, you will be extremely happy with this.
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Thoughts on La Cenerentola

Because it was Cecilia Bartoli's main vehicle early in her career, Rossini's La Cenerentola is probably the piece of music I have listened to most. The ensembles are wonderful. Riccardo Chailly, the conductor on Cecilia's recording, is fabulous, and I would have to say based on the Saturday simulcast from the Met of La Cenerentola and last year's Barber of Seville that Maurizio Benini is, too. There were occasional minor disconnects between the singers and the orchestra, but generally it was very fine.

The production by Cesare Lievi was created for Bartoli's debut at the Met, but I don't think I'd seen it before. It has certain features in common with the Zurich production I did see.

• Buckets of water, umbrella and fire in the storm scene.
• A rows of shoes lined up along the front of the stage to remind us of the fairy tale.
• The men's chorus in bowlers.
• A string wound around the ensemble in the second act, though in Zurich it was Bartoli who did the winding while here it was the Prince.

In Zurich the outfits of the male chorus lit up. Except for the bowlers, the costumes were different. In Zurich there was no wedding cake, a pretty silly addition it seemed to me.

The simplicity of the production made it easy to follow the plot. When the Met decides to use a European production, it makes certain changes, typically including changing the costumes to a more conservative earlier period. That appears to be what has happened here.

Alessandro Corbelli as Don Magnifico was magnifico and much less annoying than anyone else I have seen in this role. He is a buffo bass, did Gianni Schicchi last season, and explained in the interviews that he plays comic roles seriously. He is very talented in his Fach.

Alidoro / Angel was also very pleasing in the person of John Relyea. Is there anything he can't do?

Both extremes of coloratura styles could be heard: most singers articulated the coloratura, but both Lawrence Brownlee as Don Ramiro and Elina Garanča as Angelina sang a very legato style. Interesting. Bartoli, Florez leggiero. Elina Garanča, Anna Netrebko, Lawrence Brownlee legato.

Elina explained in her interview that she is moving away from Rossini--which based on this example she does very well--to Romantic repertoire. I hope she will stick with Bellini.

Lawrence Brownlee. I had never heard him before. Oddly, the part actually sounded a bit low for him. In his low register he sounds almost like a baritone--far more than Jonas Kaufmann in my opinion--but his upper register just won't quit. He has astounding ping in his high notes. It would be interesting to hear him in some Rubini repertoire. Please understand that I am describing and not criticizing. His coloratura is very natural for a tenor.

Elina and Lawrence were on the same page musically and together made a beautiful Cenerentola. Of course, she is much too gorgeous for him, but perhaps Angelina sees things differently.
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Daughter of the Regiment

Marie...................Natalie Dessay
Tonio...................Juan Diego Flórez
Marquise of Berkenfield.Felicity Palmer
Sergeant Sulpice........Alessandro Corbelli
Hortentius..............Donald Maxwell
Duchesse of Krakentorp..Marian Seldes
 
Conductor...............Marco Armiliato
Production..............Laurent Pelly

What separates Natalie Dessay from the pack is that you completely believe whatever she does. If she frowns, you frown. And if she smiles, you smile, too. When she smiles at Juan Diego, it is true love.

Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment may well be the most naive and joyous comic opera of them all. Or maybe it's the production from the Metropolitan Opera. One can't help wondering why she longs so heartily for a life where she does laundry and peels potatoes all day? Or where her keepsakes include a sprouted potato? Perhaps it is love.

Is it my imagination or does Juan Diego Florez get handsomer and funnier by the day? He admitted in the intermission interview that the high D in the second act aria is his own addition. I think we can expect more of this. All 9 high C's were spectacular as well, but there was no encore.

And one can certainly see why Peter Gelb is attracted to Felicity Palmer, the Marquise of Berkenfield in this production. She also appeared in Peter Grimes. Singing actors are what opera is about these days. Everyone is talking about Regietheatre, and this opera is one of the best examples. We're not completely clear about the difference between Regietheatre and Eurotrash. One is new and exciting and the other is hated and reviled. I'm not really sure they aren't just terms for the same things.

If you want real photographs of this production which came from the Royal Opera, see here. I shouted out a "brava" in the movie theater, but it felt foolish.

La Cenerentola

La Cenerentola at the Royal Opera looks a little like the kitchen in Leave it to Beaver gone to seed. The only thing this Angiolina seems to really mind is that everyone is always so crabby. She doesn't mind cooking and cleaning all the time, if only she got to have a little fun once in a while. She tries to be pleasant, but they are such bitches. Her family are the nastiest, roughest, cruelest bunch I've seen in this opera. There was quite a lot of pushing around.

Magdalena Kožená in the title role projects as a very modern girl, attractive and together. I didn't warm to her unsentimental portrayal. To accomplish the coloratura she shakes her whole body from side to side in a not unattractive dance. This Angiolina is likable and steely, and will get along fine in her new life. She does the aria still in her serving clothes, something I've never seen before.

I've long thought the opera should be titled Don Magnifico, sung masterfully by Alessandro Corbelli, since he gets all the arias. When I was listening to this opera for hours on end, I usually skipped his stuff. I think this is the same guy. The tenor, Toby Spence, was appealing to me until he blooped too many high notes. I think the tenor for Cenerentola has to have high notes that float.

I love this opera, and loved it once again.

I didn't quite buy the paparazzi idea. In a world of paparazzi one would know which one was the real prince. Could Prince William swap with his valet? Not really.

The carriage is a gorgeous blue Rolls Royce, the star of the evening. The conducting was excellent with lots of fluidity and subtlety. Evelino Pido got that part right, but the other part of conducting opera, the part where you coordinate with the singers who are busy doing other things, was not so good. He lost them a few times.

Il Trittico in HD

Conductor...............Joseph Colaneri
Production..............Jack O'Brien

For me Il Trittico is virtually a new opera. If my memory serves, I have seen only Gianni Schicchi in the opera house, though I have videos of Il Tabarro with Domingo and Gianni Schicchi with Florez. (I've written about this before here.) This is my first time for Suor Angelica.


Obviously, I have been today to see the simulcast from the Metropolitan Opera of Puccini's Il Trittico, this time in Dayton Ohio, my fourth city. We were told in the intermission that this is the Met's most complicated production. The second most complicated is the current Turandot. There was a lot of hammering in the intermissions. The opera gets gigantic sets in the naturalistic style. We are at the Met, you know.

This opera is also known as the Stephanie Blythe show. In Il Tabarro she was Frugola who brings Giorgetta small items to please her. In Suor Angelica she played La Principessa, magnificently. My feeling was that whether or not Suor Angelica is a functioning, moving, tragic opera depends completely on how this character is played. She had a fabulous aura of the dominating, unforgiving aunt, the person who never forgives. Suor Angelica sends her to hell without an apparent afterthought. She tells Angelica that her son died two years ago, the only news she cares to hear. La Principessa is utterly pitiless. Stephanie Blythe's third part is Zita, Ranuccio's mother in Gianni Schicchi.

There is great wisdom in the current Peter Gelb administration. Making opera work dramatically is the best thing that can possibly happen to it. Second is transmitting it to movie theaters so we can spare the overwhelming expense of attending opera. Now that I have become a person on a fixed income, I appreciate these things a lot more.

Il Tabarro
Giorgetta...............Maria Guleghina
Luigi...................Salvatore Licitra
Michele.................Juan Pons
Frugola.................Stephanie Blythe
Talpa...................Paul Plishka

I liked very much the casting of Il Tabarro. Maria Guleghina as Giorgetta, the straying wife, Juan Pons as Michele, her husband, and Salvatore Licitra as Luigi, her boyfriend, felt like a cast that very much blended with one another. Licitra sang well and did a great dead guy, holding his eyes open for a really long time. I worry about him. I feel he doesn't support well enough and often oversings. Yes, I know that's the same thing. Juan Pons is always marvelous.

Suor Angelica 
Angelica................Barbara Frittoli
Princess................Stephanie Blythe
Genovieffa..............Heidi Grant Murphy
Osmina..................Sara Wiedt
Dolcina.................Jennifer Check
Monitor.................Wendy White
Abbess..................Patricia Risley
Head Mistress...........Barbara Dever
Nurse...................Maria Zifchak
Lay Sister..............Lisette Oropesa

James Levine was interviewed in the intermission and commented on the popularity here of Suor Angelica, an opera with a terrible reputation. I would guess that it would work or it wouldn't. Here it worked. The music is beautiful, and Barbara Frittoli as Angelica was intense and believable. There was a very pretty deus ex machina at the end where a small boy, her son we will suppose, appears to her representing forgiveness by the Virgin. She realizes too late that by killing herself she has committed a mortal sin and will not get to see her son in heaven.

Gianni Schicchi 
Gianni Schicchi.........Alessandro Corbelli
Lauretta................Olga Mykytenko
Rinuccio................Massimo Giordano
Nella...................Jennifer Check
Ciesca..................Patricia Risley
Zita....................Stephanie Blythe

The three operas are easily called Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. Alessandro Corbelli played Schicchi very athletically for a dying man. It was terse and amusing. At the end the two lovers appeared in a garden overlooking Florence, and we were treated to the view from Piazzale Michaelangelo. Wonderful.

 [See Kinderkuchen History 1890-1910]