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musical america, June 28, 2013 |
By ANDREW POWELL |
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Verdi: Il trovatore, Bayerische Staatsoper, 27. Juni 2013
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Kaufmann Sings Manrico
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MUNICH — It helps when two of Caruso’s “four greatest singers” live in your
back yard, the more so when they act as well as they sound and exude
palpable mutual rapport. So the Bavarian State Opera enjoyed a leg-up in
mounting anew Verdi’s Il trovatore to open its 138-year-old Munich Opera
Festival yesterday (June 27) — one of 17 operas by birthday boys Verdi and
Wagner to be given here in the next 35 days. (Take that, Salzburg!)
But leave it to Nikolaus Bachler — gifted narrator, sometime actor, and
guiding light at this, Germany’s richest and busiest opera company — to OK a
staging scheme that substitutes Age of Steam vaudeville and farce for
15th-century Aragón and Vascongadas melodrama, black-on-black sets and
glaring white-neon slashes for Latin color, hokey rootless stand-ins for
impassioned characters.
French régisseur Olivier Py “focuses on the
darkness, nightmare and horror of the story” (duh), making use of a rotating
four-level unit set, with add-ons and modular subtractions as events
progress. Engaging for a while, the unit unavoidably out-twirls its welcome,
and by Parts III and IV, bereft of sufficient new dramaturgical thought, it
is largely shunted aside. Sooner than that, however, Py’s translocation of
the beings painted by Verdi and librettist Salvadore Cammarano thwarts
traction and suspense. Ferrando’s story-setting — the sleeping babies, the
gypsy hag, and all that — plays on a vaudeville stage, within the stage, to
men in gray suits and ties. After an Anvil Chorus peppered by hammerings on
a steam locomotive, all depart, leaving Azucena to wail her own
backgrounder, Stride la vampa!, with no takers. Py conspicuously loses his
focus just past the opera’s midpoint, and not only in how to employ the set:
Leonora’s “rescue” from a convent future misfires as a result of action
split onto two non-competing levels; and Manrico’s execution confounds
situational logic, even on the director’s terms, capping the story in
hollowness.
Those locals, Anja Harteros and Jonas Kaufmann, made
their scenic role débuts amid the non-suspense. It was her night, not so
much the troubadour’s, but both sang with consistent beauty of tone and
expressive point. Aided, perhaps abetted, by conductor Paolo Carignani, the
Greek-German soprano delivered a luxuriant, pleasingly inflected Tacea la
notte placida and later fairly milked D’amor sull’ali rosee, bringing down
the house. Then Carignani, otherwise robust of purpose, failed to infuse
tension for the Miserere, and so Leonora’s ensuing stretta fell flat.
Kaufmann traversed his seventh Verdi role with power to spare. Ah sì, ben
mio, produced against a reflecting board, drew best use of his bronzed
timbre and deft messa di voce. On the phrase O teco almeno he mustered (to
these ears) a high B Flat, and held it without strain for four seconds; he
refused to push for volume in the All’armi! A smart Manrico. Nobody’s mad
thriller.
Caruso’s quartet found completion in relative veterans
Elena Manistina and Alexey Markov, an Azucena and Conte di Luna pairing at
the Met this past January. She unquestionably has the chops for the gypsy —
contralto with an extended top, more than mezzo-soprano as marketed — but
she did not yesterday convey terror, horror, or motherhood. After an
impeccable Il balen del suo sorriso, Markov’s unified, rich baritone seemed
to fade. He came nowhere near matching Harteros in the sexually charged and
vital sequence Mira, di acerbe lagrime … Vivrà! contende il giubilo, the
evening’s one serious musical let-down.
Years of Bayreuth duty have
sadly lodged a beat in Kwangchul Youn’s warm and solidly trained bass. As
Ferrando on that vaudeville stage, he gamely and vividly introduced the
story (Di due figli vivea padre beato … Abbietta zingara, fosca vegliarda!)
to Py’s implausible audience.
Carignani found the lift in Verdi’s
lines, and his rhythms injected unforced energy. He favored light textures,
kindly supporting the voices, but the string sound wanted significantly more
bottom and resonance: the equivalent of four more cellos, two double basses.
That much. The Bavarian State Orchestra played well; the chorus sang in
unclear Italian with fair discipline.
During intermission, Manistina
and Kaufmann silently indulged the director in an on-stage, magic-trick
box-slicing of the troubadour’s body. Maybe fortuitously this passed without
much notice, as the well-dressed première throngs were still out sipping
wine, munching canapés, and spooning Rote Grütze mit Vanillesoße. |
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