E la nava va - xpost
- From: "richergar@xxxxxxxxxxx" <richergar@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:06:17 -0700 (PDT)
Teatro Grattacielo presented what it calls the North American premier
of a concert version of Mascagni's 1921 opera, Il Piccolo Marat,
tonight, and despite what looked like the elements of a train wreck in
repeated cancellations of the principal cast, I thought the evening
very successful one for this company, and to judge from the applause
at Avery Fisher, so did most of the rest of the audience. At short
notice the company had to replace its planned Marat and Orge, and just
a few days ago the Carpenter came down with bronchitis, and his role
was assumed by the cover. (At the MET, when they don't know the score
in time, they get to say they broke their ankle). The performances
were all at least 'good enough', and in some cases better, and what
was certainly better than good enough was the execution of the music
by the orchestra and large chorus under David Wroe, who did much more,
I thought, than 'merely' pull it all together.
The entire three act opera runs, with intermissions, almost three
hours, and it's an exhausting sing for the leading two men, so there
no way I can see to run the final two acts together. Exactly 'what'
Piccolo Marat 'is' I am not entirely sure - I have seen it labeled as
a lyric drama, but it may be better to think of it as a secular
oratorio, or a political cantata. The story centers on a conventional
operatic triangle - the French Revolutionary Ogre, who is Scarpia writ
large, Mariella, the innocent niece of the Orge and Marat, a young
noble in disguise trying to free his mother from Revolutionary
imprisonment and certain death, and who eventually helps free his
mother, dispatches the Orge and sets off on a boat with both of them
to a better world. It is an opera packed with melodramatic incident,
but there is something ultimately static about the libretto, which
gives us, intentionally, I think, characters drawn to the
specifications of Fascist realism rather than 'real people', and I am
not sure how much more effective the opera would be if fully staged,
although undoubtedly it would offer many distractions a concert
performance doesn't.
While the excellent program notes by Carlo Todeschi suggest that the
opera offered something for both the left and the right in the Italy
of 1921, going back to look at the contemporary review in the New York
Times makes clear that the Rome premier was a great state occasion,
seen as a resurrection for Mascagni, a major social event of the
season, and it goes on to say,
"Dazed and overcome (after the first act curtain), he received a
magnificent wreath of flowers from the Fascisti, the patriotic young
Italians, who thus welcomed him back to their midst after his recent
passing fliratation with Bolshevism. His wife, radiant, smiled amid
tears of joy....."
There were in the event thirty one curtain calls for Mascagni, and the
final curtain came down at 1 30 am (from which fact, knew we no
others, we could deduce the nature of the Italian Syndalicist movement
with the labor unions of the time). The cast for the opening night
performance included Gilda Dalla Rizza, Hippolito Lazzaro, Ferroni as
the Orge and Badini as the Carpenter, who helps the deserving couple
to ultimately escape by building a boat which will take them far away.
Mascagni conducted. The opera was given with great frequency through
the end of the Second World War, largely in Italy, as the Mascagni web
page indicates, and then only ocassionally thereafter, most notably in
a number of revivals with Zeani and Rossi-Lemeni. During its heyday,
its exponents included tenors such as Merli, Gigli (how did he cut
through), Bergameschi and later Taccani, among others.
It is indeed a tenor's workout, not least because so much of the piece
lies in the passagio and the orchestration is rather overwhelming, I
think.....there is no way that either Marat or the bass can cut
through consistently, and I don't think that Mascagni would have
intended this, actually. In fact, while the program notes make clear
that Mascagni was doing some very interesting harmonic things with
this piece, what strikes the ear immediately is that very few of the
melodies are really intended to be heard outside of the background of
the continuous orchestration - if you listen to the vocal parts
(leaving aside a few of the real character pieces, including the duet
at the top of the second act for the soprano and the baritone
Carpenter, the nature of the vocal music is largely parlando and holds
clearly to the rise and fall of the text, and while it's always
dangerous and perhaps glib to make this kind of comparison, the actual
'placement' of the voices within the texture of the orchestral music
often seems deliberately subserviant to the harmonic background, and
so there seems to me an element, at least conceptually, of Wagner in
this work to my ears, the other pretty clear references being Boito
and, I think, oddly, Rimsky, although I would have a hard time
probably defending this, but it wouldn't stop me.
All of the performers deserve praise, I think, for handling their
assignments as well as they did. First of all I would actually give
praise to the tenor substitute, Richard Crawley, who did better than
yoeman's work as Marat. He has virtually no problem with stamina or
cutting through, to the extent that's possible with anything other
than a laser instrument, and I thought him involved given how little
time he must have had here. His peer, and perhaps a better stylist,
was the very late cover for the Carpenter, Daniel Ihn-kyu Lee, a
baritone with a good sized voice and a lovely sense of phrasing and
legato. Brian Jauhianinen, the bass L'Orco, threw himself into the
role but I thought tired in the middle of the superhuman lengthy
second act, understandably so, but this is one of the two roles where
I think you want a singer who really can incarnate the character in
voice and physical presence, and perhaps you'd need a Pape kind of
actor (if he'd descend to what he'd consider this level of music) to
bring the right kind of malevolence. I thought Paula Deligatti as
Mariella ok, but a bit acidulous at the top, and this is the 'other'
role that really has to be felt and acted for the opera to move off
the page....you need a real fragility and womanly warmth, and there
are few today who have that on stage. A special word for Joshua
Benaim as well.
Would it work today on stage? I don't know. The story had a
particular, very localized kind of reference at the time,and in a
sense the motor of the opera isn't really the dilemma of the
characters individually, but the political context they are in, and
opeas written with such an agenda don't often survive if the stories
don't transcend the specific to the general, which this, I think, does
not. It risks seeming as overblown as the Tomb of Victor Emmanuel in
Rome - I wasn't being sarcastic about it being 'Fascist Realism' - and
yet it wouldn't tolerate any monkeying by a 'regie' director. If it
survives it survives for a clarion voiced tenor (ummm...how many do we
have?) and great bass and soprano singer actors. Their relationship
(Orca is abusvie of his neice, by the way) is the fulcrum of the
opera, and I suspect you can make it live if you can give that tension
to the relationship, but we lack lots of those singes as well. More
than a curio, I think, and fascinating (to me) in the hearing and
reading about the musical structure - at least as engaging as Boito -
but, like the large pieces of furniture which were built a century ago
for homes which were many multiples of the floor size of ours today,
it just may be too difficult to fit into most theatrical seasons, and
expectations, very much any more.
But a very fine evening for Grattacielo, and a work I'd hear under
other circumstances again.
.
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