multiple roles of all abilities – suitable for children aged 9-18

large chorus
professional band (9 players)

3 clarinets in Bb and A (2+Eb clarinet/3+bass clarinet in Bb)
trumpet in Bb
harp
piano
violin
‘cello
double-bass

for W11 opera website click HERE

Libretto by the composer

first performance 20 July 2011, Oundle Festival

Commissioned by the Oundle Music Trust for the 2011 Oundle Festival

p. Ali Boag d. Rebecca Desmond
c. Alexander Walker

cast

Nessa Husk – chairman of Husk Inc: Victoria Simmonds (mezzo soprano)
Rolfus Husk – her father – Edwin Hawke (bass)
Naya’il – a strange being – Derek Lee-Ragin (counter-tenor)
Syke – Nessa’s elder son – Toby Girling (baritone)
Fracto – Nessa’s younger son – Adrian Ward (tenor)
Mattie – Nessa’s maternal instinct – Alison Charlton-West (soprano)

(MINOR ROLES – taken by chorus members/children)
Young Syke and Young Fracto – children’s roles
Board members – children’s roles
A Secretary
Gili – A mountain village child
Two tourists – adults
A child, women, pilgrims
Press corps – a group of three adults (Announcer, Cameraman and Sound)

(CHORUSES)

SATB chorus (offstage): mysterious voices, funeral congregation, voices of the village
Semichorus: Unison chorus (onstage): Nannies, shoppers, Board-members, relatives and mistresses at funeral, villagers, devils
Children’s chorus: Village children, funeral congregation, surgeons, press

ORCHESTRA

accordion
harp
guitar
piano
percussion
2 violins
viola
‘cello
double-bass

LIBRETTO

VOCAL SCORE

Sc. 1: A coffee shop. Nessa is absorbed in her blackberry, conducting a business deal for Husk Inc. A waiter (Naya’il), a recent émigré, or an exchange student worker, interrupts her, wanting to practice his English. She fobs him off, and he clumsily drops a cup – at which point unearthly voices are heard, which she does not notice. She gives him her e-mail address to get rid of him.

Sc 2: Rolfus, terrifying patriarch and businessman, who bequeathed his company to Nessa, but demands to be kept abreast of every little detail, is hospitalized and infirm. We learn that there is an offshore leak that is out of control. He is frustrated that he cannot be present at an upcoming board meeting, and is briefing her. She, distracted by receiving a stream of enigmatic e-mails in fractured English (accompanied by unearthly music) protests that he is driving her too hard, and she doesn’t see enough of her family. Rolfus rails at her choice of husband, a weakling who has had to be paid off to disappear. We see (acted out as an ensemble number) a history of her marriage with her two children being raised, and her divesting herself of family ties by appointing Mattie to be her maternal instinct and her fashion sense, and her husband (represented by a scare-crow or blow-up doll) walking out and no one noticing. Nessa’s children, Syke and Fracto, grow from innocence to unruly teenagers, attention deprived and madly dysfunctional. Fracto is sullen and withdrawn and can only utter monosyllables and Syke is hyperactive. Rolfus, from his bed, despises his grandsons and vows that they will never run his company. He takes Nessa to one side and reveals irregularities in the company that he authorized without her knowing. Syke steals Nessa’s blackberry only to find all the enigmatic messages. He accuses her of having an affair and never paying any attention to them – a major adolescent tantrum, punctuated by monosyllables from Fracto.

Sc. 3: Board meeting. Environmental catastrophe looms, yet Nessa insists that Husk Inc. is too big to fail, despite panicking at Rolfus’s revelations. More enigmatic e-mails accrue on her blackberry and she now can hear the unearthly music. This distracts her, so that her board members accuse her of losing the plot. In the middle of the meeting, urgent news arrives that Rolfus has died. Before Nessa can react, a mysterious emissary (Naya’il) summons her to a briefing before a governmental inquiry.

Sc. 4: Rolfus’s funeral. The Priest (Naya’il) leads the congregation, which includes a grief stricken secretary, board members who need to prove Rolfus is dead, Mattie, Syke and Fracto. The service is disrupted by the late arrival of Nessa and then by her phone going off. The phone is answered by the dead Rolfus, who warns Nessa that she will never be alone. Nessa panics, grabs the children and jumps into a taxi.

ACT 2

Sc.1: A mountainous village, maybe suggestive of Nepal, chaotic and teeming. Nessa is incognito. Clamorous bicycle bells and car horns and beggars (children’s chorus) assail them. Fracto, from an internet café, alerts Syke to a worldwide search for the chairman of Husk Inc. The sons are finding the proximity of their mother disconcerting: now, she notices what they get up to and intervenes and offers advice. An enigmatic tour guide (Naya’il) approaches Nessa, offering to guide her and her sons to a retreat. As they leave, he runs over Gili, a village child and disappears into the crowd. The crowd turns on Nessa. Fracto and Syke slink into the crowd.

Sc.2: A filthy prison cell. Nessa, finally, reflects. Rolfus appears to her in a vision, and she dismisses/exorcises him. The prison guard (Naya’il), tells her that the village child accidentally run over needs an organ transplant to survive. Nessa donates an organ. With the help of a village doctor (Naya’il) the child is saved, and the village acclaims Nessa saviour. She donates other parts of her body to help the sick.

Sc.3: We see Rolfus in hell, appropriately boiling in oil.

Sc.4: Mattie arrives searching for the children. Syke and Fracto arrive with a local guerilla group of children to spring Nessa from prison. A Press Corps arrives, led by news of the miraculous healer. Naya’il wheels Nessa in, who is now just a head, and the Press recognize her as the missing chairman of Husk. She bequeaths the company to her sons, before the final, ultimate sacrifice.

© JULIAN GRANT 2010

for SATB choir and piano

Poems by Anne Pierson-Wiese

Commissioned by the Grace and Spiritus Chorale of Brooklyn, with a grant from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs to mark the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

fp Grace and Spiritus Chorale, c. James Busby. Friday 21 January 2011, Grace Church, Brooklyn Heights, NY,  Saturday 22 January 2011: Lafayatte Avenue Presbyterian Church, Fort Greene: Sunday 23 January 2011, Old First Reformed Church, Park Slope

Mariola Cantarero (Zulema), Mariá José Suárez (Almeraya), Ana Ibarra (Isabel), José Bros (Gonzalo), David Rubiera (Boabdil), Ángel Ódena (Lara), Alastair Miles (Muley-Hassem), David Menéndez (Alamar)

 r. live July 2006 Teatro Real, Madrid

 Coro y Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid c. Jesús López Cobos

Dynamic CDS 618/1-2 (2 discs 133 minutes)

It is always instructive to find a work that lies at a tangent to a central tradition, as it invariably shows familiar works in a different context. Emilio Arrieta (1821-94) is a composer associated with Zarzuela; his Marina remains a central pillar of that repertoire, he collaborated with Antonio García Gutiérrez, who is known to Verdi scholars as the playwright of El trovador (Il trovatore) and Simon Boccanegra, and his pupils included Chapí and Bretón. But, before this Arrieta studied at the Milan Conservatoire and completed two Italian operas of which La conquista di Granata (1850) is the second. It boasts a libretto by Temistocle Solera, who wrote five libretti for Verdi, notably his first opera Oberto, and his early successes Nabucco and I Lombardi. Returning to Spain, Arrieta became a favourite of Queen Isabel II, who made him Composer-Director of the Teatro Real, Madrid, where La conquista was successfully premiered. It achieved a second run five years later, and was then buried, until two concert performances in 2006, again at the Teatro Real; the basis of this recording, which coincides with the publication of a critical edition of the score.

The plot concerns the Catholic monarch’s siege of the Alhambra, the last Muslim stronghold and conflicts and relationships within and without. We hear a young composer steeped in the idioms of early Verdi, and while there is much stock material lacking the master’s propulsive energy, melodic genius and instinct for streamlined construction, there is also a quirky individuality at work. Attention is held by an intermittent melodic lopsidedness, as if Berlioz were trying to write within the foursquare constraints of the lingua franca of 1840’s Italian opera, some refined orchestration and harmonic and musicianly qualities that are more reminiscent of Mercadante. There are occasional (not enough) Moorish inflections that surprise within their context, and are very attractive and catchy. Much of the first act is routine, culminating in a father-daughter duet that cannot compare to Verdi’s many essays in this vein. But before, there is an offstage soprano aria Molle zeffiro del cielo, sung by the half-Moorish girl Zulema that has a delicious oriental tint and striking orchestration of tremolo strings, harp and a curious double bass pizzicato riff that almost hints at a tango. Interestingly, this scoring reappears several times in Zulema’s later music – almost a leit-texture. Both performance and music liven up considerably in the later acts: the mezzo Queen Isabella has a lovely visionary aria about Columbus Sola, io sola, with a virtuoso flute obbligato, and a rousing duet Prendi, la lama, and there is a prison scene in the last act which contains two heavenly visions and a prayer:  music of real inspiration. Structurally, the piece lives moment by moment. There is a very catchy concertato in Act Two, but it sounds incomplete and it, in fact finishes the act without a stretto, and the final scene of religious conversion is both musically and dramatically perfunctory.

The Madrid forces under Jesús López Cobos give a highly sprung rhythmic performance, with much attractive solo playing – the flute has a very busy night, featuring in many arias and in an almost Bizet-style intermezzo. The chorus is bright, forwardly placed and well blended. As Zulema, Mariola Cantarero has a slightly backward placed soprano which despite an attractive timbre can sound strained – she is capable of very musical phrasing that does full justice to her many showpieces, yet her tone can splinter under pressure. José Bros, as Gonzalo, her Christian lover, displays a focused tenor sound, that is slightly pinched in the upper register – both tend to lurch ill-advisedly to extreme, presumably interpolated, high notes. Ana Ibarra is Queen Isabel, a part for a Donizetti rather than a Verdi mezzo. She has an attractive timbre, but sounds tremulous in her demanding opening aria. She comes into her own in her last act scena. Alastair Miles similarly takes a while to warm up, but rises to the Prison scene with great warmth of tone. The supporting cast is strong. Recording quality is spacious, but some tutti passages sound constricted and occasionally murky. I’m not sure the opera would bear repeated listening, but as a footnote in the history of Italian – or Spanish – opera, there is much to enjoy. Excellent notes and booklet. 

 [first published in OPERA magazine]

 JULIAN GRANT 2009

Serena Daolio (Marcella), Natalizia Carone (Clara), Angelica Girardi (Raimonda), Mara D’Antini (Eliana), Maria Rosa Rondinelli (Lea), Danilo Formaggio (Giorgio), Marcello Rosiello (Vernier), Pierluigi Dilengite (Drasco), Giovanni Coletta (Barthélemy), Graziano De Pace (Flament) )

 Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia, c. Manlio Benzi

 Dynamic CDS 573 (64 minutes)

Amica  Mascagni

Anna Malavasi (Amica), Francesca De Giorgi (Magdelone), David Sotgiu (Giorgio), Pierluigi Dilengite (Rinaldo), Marcello Rosiello (MaÎtre Camoine)

 Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia, Bratislava Chamber Choir c. Manlio Benzi

 Dynamic CDS 574 (78 minutes)

These live recordings derive from the Festival della Valle d’Itria at Martina Franca Festival (reviewed in OPERA, December 2007). As both of these operas are among the least known by their respective composers, the presentation is good, with detailed liner notes. Marcella has not previously been recorded, but Amica, Mascagni’s only opera with a French libretto, was recorded in 1996, with Katia Ricciarelli, in a later Italian version. The recording quality for both operas is constricted and congested, the orchestra often covering voices in moments of climax.  Stage noise can be most intrusive, particularly in Marcella where the hushed conclusion is wrecked by clumping footsteps. The conductor, Manlio Benzi, paces and phrases with sensitivity, though the orchestra is too small for these ripe idioms, and sounds increasingly ragged, particularly in Mascagni’s stentorian climaxes.  There are a few disconcerting moments when stage and pit part company.

Marcella was not a success in 1907: its most famous aria, Dolce notte misterioso, was added for a 1938 revival with Tito Schipa, who later recorded the aria. The opera charts very stale waters indeed; an incognito prince, a Parisian restaurant and a lovers idyll were over-mined seams for Italian bourgeois opera and despite Giordano’s customary craft and extreme compactness (three acts last just over an hour), every moment recalls situations from a slew of much stronger works: La traviata, Manon(s), bohème(s), and Zazà, as well as pre-empting La rondine. Giordano, who revered Massenet, and whose publisher Sonzogno, promoted many of the French master’s works in Italy, closely modeled the first act’s interplay of café music and orchestra on Sapho (1897), and appropriated the third act prelude of Chérubin (1905) for his own third act. More bare-facedly, Giordano rewrites his tenor hit Amor ti vieta from Fedora in O mia Marcella in Act Two: it is demonstrably a retread, with salient features blunted. Serena Daolio and Danilo Formaggio as the lovers, the only roles with any profile, have attractive youthful timbres, though her top register can be wayward and her tuning occasionally imprecise.

Amica (1905) was Mascagni’s return to composition after the vainglorious stunt of premiering his previous opera, Le Maschere, at six Italian theatres on the same night in 1901, backfired. As if re-launching his career, he signed a contract with French publisher Choudens who provided the librettist, Paul Bérel, a pseudonym for Paul de Choudens, from the family firm. It had a stellar send-off in Monte-Carlo with Geraldine Farrar and Maurice Renaud, but failed to make an impression. Structurally, as a short two-acter with intermezzo, it resembles Cavalleria Rusticana, but its Alpine milieu and wayward heroine recall Catalani’s La Wally. The opera starts promisingly with a passage for tuned cowbells and oboe, and a carefully composed pastoral chorus that turns into a Hymn to the Sun, though much less imposing than that which opens his Japanese opera Iris (1898). As the opera progresses the inspiration grows more fitful and the execution careless, mirroring the increasing lack of structure and psychological credibility in the libretto. The intermezzo is memorable, but climaxes too soon, and the one passage that is intended to bear genuine dramatic weight; an evocation of the lure of the mountain heights, is banal and square; a composite of the Ride of the Valkyries and the avalanche music in La Wally. Mascagni’s attempts to spice his harmonic palette with non-sequitur modulations that tend to lurch back to the home key via commonplace cadences, make for queasy listening, and he imposes no musical structure on the libretto: the opera degenerates into a rant.

Anna Malavasi’s dark soprano is ideal for Amica, and she negotiates Mascagni’s violent declamation with aplomb, though it sounds unidiomatic in French – more Mascagni’s fault than hers. David Sotgiu, as the weakling brother (who nevertheless outruns heroine and macho brother up a mountain side) has a whitish tenor voice that manages the impossibly strenuous tessitura with vulnerability yet not strain, a laudable attempt to do justice to an impossibly conceived role. The remaining cast is not as good, particularly the baritone brother, whose clotted timbre runs roughshod over the score, often a beat or three short of his notated entries. Interesting insights into cobwebbed corners of the repertoire, to be sure, but one cannot argue with history’s implacable verdict on both pieces.

 [first published in OPERA magazine]

JULIAN GRANT 2008

 Sarah Tynan (Monique), Alinka Kozári (Lucille), Anna Leese (Laura), Josephine Thorpe (Dominic’s Grandmother), Patricia Orr (Yolande), Nicholas Sharratt (Prince Dominic), Patrick Ashcroft (A Suitor), George von Bergen (Edward)

 The Departure

 Louise Poole (Julia), Håkan Vramsmo (Mark)

 Chorus and Ensemble of Independent Opera at Sadler’s Wells c. Dominic Wheeler

Chandos CHAN 10508 (70 minutes)

These brief one-acters, revived for the centenary of Maconchy’s birth by Independent Opera (a showcase company for young opera professionals) at Sadler’s Wells in 2007, are given further exposure by this Chandos studio recording, funded by the Peter Moore’s Foundation, who have done so much for Opera in English. They were assessed in depth, in the January 2008 issue, by Tim Ashley, who gave them a not-quite convinced endorsement.  A third one-act work, The Three Strangers, based on Thomas Hardy, remains un-revived, and given the length of these two, could possibly fill out an evening to make an English Trittico.

 I did not see these operas staged, but as a listener I found The Sofa to be the more rewarding of the two – the opposite to Tim Ashley. Maybe the updating of The Sofa –from the librettist’s nineteenth century to a present day rave submerged the craft and poise of this rather coy sex comedy. Those familiar with the uncompromising string quartets are in for a shock, the language is tonal, sharply parodic, yet woven into a fabric that absorbs a wealth of allusions to vernacular dance music and deepens out into something more individual and telling – the interplay of ‘vapid party music’ – Ashley’s words, not mine – and other material works well enough for La traviata, and does so again here, and the transitions from solo to ensemble are effortless and masterly. It is a shame that more salient material is not reprised, as many memorable ideas whizz past without being consolidated, and Maconchy balks at nailing a scene or situation with an expected climax.

I wasn’t so convinced by The Departure, an elegiac colloquy between the dead and living that reminded me, in musical language and subject matter, of Holst’s Savitri. The musical material has less profile, and the construction is more haphazard. Several promising lyrical moments disperse too soon, the alternation between cantabile singing and spoken declamation –a challenge for any singer to deliver convincingly, and not well managed here – repeatedly breaks the spell. The one allusion to dance music, a bitter-sweet waltz reminiscence, unlike those in The Sofa, seems out of character with the prevailing musical landscape. Surely the crucial revelation that it is Julia, and not her husband who is dead, comes too early in the piece and is volunteered too casually. The whole work is pitched at an emotional mezzo-forte which never quite clinches, though there are arresting ideas and textures. Anne Ridler’s libretto proves resistible; the sincerity is not in doubt, but there are jolting turns of phrase (‘Joy is afar over the Alps of loss’)which prove momentarily undermining. Nevertheless, both pieces strike me as more rewarding than the late one-acters of Holst and Walton, and deserve wider currency.

Some of the reservations Tim Ashley made concerning the performances are ameliorated by the recording. Diction is clearer and the voices are not overbearing, rather they are put in a pleasing aural perspective (both onstage and off) within a generous, yet natural ambience. In The Sofa, Nicholas Sharratt dominates; his tightish tenor is not the most flexible instrument, but the profligate Prince Dominic is well-characterized.  Sarah Tynan phrases nicely as Monique, coping well with Maconchy’s alluring and shapely high register writing. Josephine Thorpe as Dominic’s Grandmother, is lamb not convincing as mutton: there are legions of redoubtable operatic trouts who would not need acting to bring this short yet crucial cameo to life, even though such casting is presumably beyond the remit of this youth-oriented company. In The Departure, Louise Poole’s performance as Julia is not as comfortable a listen as her glowing stage reviews led me to expect. Though designated a mezzo-soprano role, it lies consistently high and requires an expansive legato maybe more suited to a clear soprano: here such phrases sound tense and stretched, though there are some ravishing high floated notes. Inevitably, diction is a casualty. Not so with Håkan Vramsmo, who gives an intense performance with crisp enunciation. Dominic Wheeler leads the Independent Opera Ensemble with a good ear for colour, rhythmic clarity and a wide range of dynamics.  Packaging is to Chandos’s usual exemplary standard, with highly informative notes from Stephen Pettitt.

 [first published in OPERA magazine]

JULIAN GRANT 2009

Renée Fleming with

Saito Kaoru, Emma Latis, Lucia Mencaroni, Barbara Vignudelli (soprano), Annalisa Dessi (mezzo soprano), Paolo Cautoruccio, Arturo Chacón-Cruz, Jonas Kaufmann (tenor), Marco Calabrese, Carlos Gomez (baritone), Gilles Armani (bass)

 Coro e Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, Giuseppe Verdi c. Marco Armiliato

 Arias from La Bohème (Leoncavallo and Puccini), Conchita, Fedora, Gloria, Iris, Lodoletta, Manon Lescaut, La rondine, Siberia, Suor Angelica, Turandot, La Wally, Zazà

Verismo (‘truth’) is a most misused word: usually (as here) it is applied, carelessly, to almost all late-romantic Italian opera after Verdi, or maybe a style of vocal utterance where bel canto is swept away by emphatic declamation and over the top emoting. In an assiduously researched programme note Renée Fleming makes the case for a lighter, lyric voice in this repertoire, citing a list of forbears (including Claudia Muzio, Mafalda Favero, Magda Olivero and Rosanna Carteri) as models, while respectfully acknowledging the ‘iconic’, but heavier voiced interpretations of Callas, Tebaldi, Freni and Scotto. In fact, none of the latter four ladies were dramatic sopranos –Freni (a definitive Susanna) and Scotto (likewise Lucia) came to roles like Fedora at the end of their careers, when their voices were not as versatile as they once were. This is not the case with Fleming (who sings Rossini’s coloratura enchantress Armida at the Met this season) who here chooses excerpts within her lyric fach, though in fact this period is not new to her, many late romantic Italian plums by Puccini, Catalani, Cilea and co. have appeared on earlier recitals, notably a 2001 disc with Mackerras.

As for ‘truth’, I’m not sure we get it here. Fleming fans will not be disappointed; she is in glowing voice and is attentive to diction, and to a lesser extent, character. However, I’m not convinced that this material suits her. The same care which she took in preparing her notes results in a lack of spontaneity, and fussiness of execution in music that requires emotional directness to make its point. Take the opening item: Senza Mamma, from Suor Angelica. The line is never quite left alone, it is intercut with little catches of breath and tiny slides. Turn to Magda Olivero and you find more   refinement, a longer, more direct sense of line, more specific nuance, including a telling observance of staccati at the close, and stricter tempo. Fleming makes these ‘little women’ – Puccini’s Mimì, Liu and Mascagni’s Lodoletta included – sound calculating and not nearly fragile enough. Her lustrous but slightly backwardly placed sound, and comparatively occluded diction place her at a disadvantage. Just compare her to specialists in these styles from Carla Gavazzi and Augusta Oltrabella to Denia Mazzola and Diane Soviero (whose 1995 Verismo recital contains similar rarities) and they all have a slimmer, even wiry open sound.  Even the more lyric approach from say, Freni and Maria Chiara reveals diction with more forward bite. 

Still there are surprises: Fleming’s Iris is pacier, and more involved than Scotto’s on her classic 1974 verismo disc, she sings the lovely solos from Siberia and Cilea’s Gloria cleanly. She saves her greatest involvement for, of all things, the final scene of Fedora.

The recital is scrupulously planned, with the repertoire offering a mix of the familiar and rare (though not as recherché as in Fleming’s recent ‘Homage’); and steps are taken to alleviate torpor, a danger when most arias are slow and expressive. Witness the two operetta-ish excerpts from Leoncavallo’s Bohème, Iris’s frantically declaimed dream of a sea-serpent, and Conchita’s catchy five-in-a-bar account of dealing with three suitors which provide up-tempo contrast. There are less familiar solos from familiar operas (La Wally, La rondine) and even a world premiere recording of Puccini’s first thoughts for Manon Lescaut’s Sola, perduta, abbandonata! with different text in places, a more organic transition to the middle section, and a clunkingly awful vocal and orchestral peroration – still, instructive to hear once. An extensive supporting cast and chorus are also in the mix, with a luxurious cameo from Jonas Kaufmann in the quartet from La rondine along with fully cast chunks of Liu’s death in Turandot and the finale to Fedora.  A real novelty is the extended scene (of quite revolting sentimentality) from Leoncavallo’s Zazà involving a speaking child and a piano lesson. Orchestral playing is nuanced, and details such as tuned gongs in Iris and rasping trumpet dissonances in Conchita, register. Recording ambience is natural, capturing Fleming’s voice faithfully without cocooning her in artificial resonance. It’s an interesting, and intermittently captivating listen, but I cannot help but think Dvorˇák, Massenet and Strauss suit this diva better.

 [first published in OPERA magazine]

JULIAN GRANT 2009

A Film by Elisabeth Kapnist

NVC Arts 50 51865 211525 (58 minutes)

One might have thought that Chaliapin would be a fascinating subject for a film biography, as there is much source material to choose from; his memoirs, dictated to his close friend Maxim Gorky, an extensive discography, some choice film footage and many colourful reminiscences from the likes of Rachmaninov, an apologist for Chaliapin’s backstage brawling, Rosa Ponselle and Geraldine Farrar on the art of upstaging, Massenet on the hysterics attending the play-through of Don Quichotte, and much, much more.

Nothing so vivid here, alas. Instead, an impressionist travelogue, incorporating the memoirs as a voice-over, wafts us through a vaguely chronological account of Chaliapin’s career up to the Russian Revolution, after that, it deals with his international celebrity in the west perfunctorily. There is a scattergun appliqué of images, footage and music of hit-and-miss relevance. Threaded throughout are interviews with Sergei Leiferkus, bass Alexei Mochalov, the director Boris Pokrovsky, theatre writer Anatoly Smeliansky, violinist and conductor Vladimir Spivakov and Marina Freddi, one of Chaliapin’s daughters. Only the last seems at ease on camera, and delivers some touching reminiscences. The others seem lost.  Leiferkus is introduced singing the first of Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death (uncredited), segued by a discourse on Chaliapin’s way with performing folk music. Then, in a segment on Stanislavsky and Chaliapin’s immersion in theatre, he dries embarrassingly, telling a none too relevant anecdote about Chaliapin leaving the theatre in his Mephisto costume and scaring a cabby – surely a retake was necessary. Pokrovsky and Smeliansky offer platitudes about our hero’s Russian-ness, and dramatic truth, nothing specific enough is said. Mochalov give a voice production lesson to a student, yet doesn’t discuss Chaliapin’s voice production, legendary breath control and unusual (for a Russian bass) timbre, being more baritonal than the basso profondo of the choir tradition – it is fleetingly mentioned in passing, almost as an aside.

The chronology comes adrift after a segment on Chaliapin clashing with Toscanini at Mefistofele rehearsals (La Scala 1901), implying that he went straight to a new triumph in Don Quichotte  – which was 1910: Massenet‘s name is never mentioned. We do get to see enticing snippets of the film he made with Pabst in 1933. This is followed by Diaghilev’s production of Boris Godunov (1908), where it is explained how successful the Ballet Russes were with the Polovtsian Dances. Funny – I’d always thought they were from Prince Igor – maybe Diaghilev put them into Boris to liven it up. There is no mention that Boris was catapulted into the international repertoire by this benchmark event. Chaliapin’s reasons for leaving Russia in the revolution are unclear. This film won a prize somewhere for best documentary. Go figure! There is a two column blurb on the inside DVD jacket, written by John Steane, which brings the subject to instant life and saves wasting an hour.

 [first published in OPERA magazine]

JULIAN GRANT 2009

Anne-Lise Sollied (Rosaura), Elena Rossi (Marionette), Mark Milhofer (Il Conte di Bosco Nero), Emanuele D’Aguanno (Monsieur Le Bleau), Luca Favaron (Folletto), Maurizio Muraro (Milord Runebif), Antonio Casagrande (Un servo di Don Alvaro), Riccardo Zanellato (Don Alvaro di Castiglia), Alex Esposito (Arlecchino), Claudio Zancopè (Birif)

Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro La Fenice, Venice c. Karl Martin

Naxos 8.660225-6 (2 discs 142 minutes)

This is the fourth (out of five) Wolf-Ferrari comedies, based on Carlo Goldoni, a work that is referred to as one of his lesser pieces. It is a civilized, rather than rambunctious experience, taking its cue perhaps from Goldoni’s stylized and often schematic take on the world of the commedia dell’arte. Rosaura, the shrewd widow of the title, wishes to remarry, and four suitors, from Italy, Spain, France and England attempt to win her. She and her maid contrive to test them, with the Italian proving faithful and winning the prize. With such an improbable plot, it is a comedy of stock situation and archetype, rather than character or psychology: Cosi fan tutte it ain’t.

This recording taken from two live performances during a run at La Fenice has also been released as a DVD, where presumably there are subtitles. Here, an Italian libretto available online (with CD track cues) and a fairly detailed synopsis make following this wordy opus problematic. Strangely, it is the second recording of the work in a few years – the previous one, from 2005, in a series of rare operas from Montpellier on the Accord label is not a budget recording, as is Naxos, but is sumptuously packaged, and can be found online at reduced prices. It even boasts the same widow, Rosaura, sung by Norwegian soprano Anne-Lise Sollied.

Recording quality is natural and not too shallow for a live recording, with a pleasing resonance. Sometimes the singers are caught a little close, though Anna-Lise Sollied is a veteran of this opera, she takes a while to warm up, and the high-lying tessitura of the waltz-duet in Act One, one of the few extended melodic moments, and a little lyrical oasis in the expository first act is rather fierce. Her maid, Marionette, has an acidic top register that does not mellow as the evening progresses, which is a drawback. Their voices are rather too similar, and neither exudes enough vocal or verbal allure to give dramatic lift to their scenes. The men are better, Mark Milhofer as the Italian Count has a tremor on occasion, but phrases nicely in his little set-pieces, Emanuele D’Aguanno is more polished vocally, but has less to do. Of the others, Alex Esposito as the servant Arlecchino, is the most spirited, though Riccardo Zanellato as the swaggering Spanish grandee has a nice sense of character. The La Fenice forces are kept on a tight rein by Karl Martin.

Goldoni was a successful librettist himself, collaborating with Galuppi and Piccinni among others, but his librettos abide by the set-piece conventions of the mid eighteenth century. Wolf-Ferrari, employing a more flexible melos, fillets the original play text for his uses, but at two hours and twenty minutes the piece feels too long. It is wordy, in a musical language that appropriates gestures from Falstaff back in time through the opera buffa tradition. It’s not that the musical language is about fifty years out from its 1931 composition date – thankfully we have moved on from such a twentieth century view of musical progress in this polymorphous age -  it’s that the language (unlike neo-classical Stravinsky or Strauss in Ariadne) has no ‘take’ on the tradition it alludes to. Instead, we get a freeze-dried relic echoing earlier eras, with the juice extracted. There is occasional (seemingly arbritrary) use of a piano for snatches of secco recitativo, a few tiny bursts of orchestral fireworks, but nary an ensemble or culmination and no memorable melodies. Instructively, the live recording has audience rustle, little reaction and almost no laughter.

 [first published in OPERA magazine]

JULIAN GRANT 2009