Zaida and Fiorilla in front of the Turkish "ship."
James Karas
Fate was simply not on the side
of the Aix-en-Provence Festival for a couple of days this year. Perhaps that eschatological
supposition is exaggerated. Let’s say that the union representing stage hands
and technicians who work occasionally, “les intermittents,” went on strike. A
polite strike in the end but sufficiently bad to cause the cancellation of the
opening production of Il Turco in Italia on July 4.
There was a second performance scheduled
for July 7 and all was well with union. It was no so with the weather as rain was
forecast and playing in the open-air Théâtre de l'Archevêché, was not a good idea. They
decided to transfer the performance to the Grand Théâtre de Provence and tell
everyone about the switch. Somehow the message trickled through but the
performance was to be a concert version or a semi-staged affair at best.
Fortunately the union and the
weather cooperated and the opera was performed at l'Archevêché on July 9, 2014.
There is nothing more pleasant
than seeing a production twice in three days unless, that is, you can see it
three times. The concert performance was thoroughly enjoyable. The characters wore
the same costumes as in the staged performance and you got some idea of what
Director Christopher Alden had in mind.
Alden seems to have taken some
inspiration for his conception of the opera from Pirandello’s Six
Characters in Search of an Author. Il
Turco is structured around a poet looking for plot ideas from the happenings
on the beach of Naples. A Turk arrives and falls in love with the lovely Fiorilla.
Don Narcisso is already in love with her and her husband Don Geronio is pretty
mad about it. The Turk is followed by Zaida, a former love of his. For the poet
this is pretty juicy stuff and excellent plot material.
In the concert version, Il Turco turned into Seven Characters in
Search of a Director. When I saw the staged version, I confirmed that the characters
in the concert performance appeared in costume. They all wore modern clothes
that would be suitable in Naples, I suppose. There was nothing particularly
notable about what any of them wore except for Fiorilla who was a knockout.
There was some interaction among
the characters to be sure but with the stage occupied by Les Musiciens du
Louvre Grenoble there was not much space to do very much. Under the
circumstances, the cast did extraordinary work. In the end, the performers
received a thoroughly enthusiastic and sustained ovation.
However good, it was still like kissing through a fence –
something was missing. There is no substitute for a fully staged performance.
Alden converts Rossini’s “dramma
buffa” into a play-within-a-play using the character of the Poet Prosdocimo as
the directing mind of the unfolding events. The Poet is not just an observer of
happenings; he directs and creates some of the events of the opera. He gives
the characters sheets of paper containing dialogue and they read out what he
has written for them. The Poet becomes the most important character in the
opera.
The major characters are on stage
most of the time, even when they have nothing to do. After all this is a play/opera
in the making and not an actual performance.
Who makes the poet’s plot?
Don Geronio and Fiorilla
Fiorilla (sung beautifully by
Olga Peretyatko) is an airhead but she is a gorgeous airhead. She is also a coquette,
a teaser and a sexual magnet that no sensible man could resist. She puts on a
blonde wig, strips to a slip and drives men crazy. She is married to the older
Don Geronio (Alessandro Corbelli) and falls in love with Selim the Turk (Adrian
Sampetrean) and invites him to her house for coffee. Peretyatko brings out all
these traits and in the end sings “Squallida veste e bruna,” a show-stopping
aria where Fiorilla repents and sees herself as she is. With beautiful but restrained
ornamentation and outpouring of emotion, her bravura performance brings the
house down. In the concert performance Peretyatko fell on her knees; in the
staged performance she wrapped herself in the sail of the ship that is part of
the set. Both nights she was magnificent.
Corbelli, short, chubby, is the
perfect comic character. He can do patter songs, comic business and deliver
those funny baritone roles as if they written for him.
Sampetrean as Selim appears just
like any visitor to Naples, wearing a not-too-distinctive cap. There are no
jewels on his turban, nor any fancy robes as the libretto mentions. He serves
the production well vocally.
Baritone Pietro Spagnoli, as I
said, is given center stage by Alden. Even before the overture, we see him
pacing up and down, looking at his typewriter, a man in distress. He is
suffering from writer’s block until he sees a good story unfolding before his
eyes. He controls the development of the characters until a couple of them
rebel against their creator. Spagnoli is a fine acting singer who brings to
life the Poet.
Don Narcisso is a puzzling character.
He is in love with Fiorilla and provides one more source of fun, I suppose. He
is a relatively minor character but he does get a major aria in “Tu seconda il mio
disegno.” But do you bring the extraordinary tenor Lawrence Brownlee for that?
Alden makes Narcisso into a pathetic non-entity in a trench coat. He walks with
his head down, tilted to the side; he looks and acts like a lifeless loser. In
the concert version, Brownlee walked on stage with self-assurance. In the
staged performance, he had to act the role of the dummy and I am not sure why Alden
cast the character as such.
By adopting Pirandellian ideas
for Il
Turco, Alden makes the opera more interesting and perhaps a more
substantial work. Its silly plot becomes a play in the making, Prosdocimo
becomes a writer in search of a plot whose characters rebel against him. Not
bad for an opera whose plot seems pretty inane.
_____
Il Turco in Italia by Gioacchino Rossini was
performed in a concert version on July 7 at the
Grand Théâtre de Provence and in a fully staged version on July 9 at the Théâtre de l'Archevêché where it
will be performed another five times until July 22, 2014 in Aix-en-Provence, France. http://festival-aix.com/
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