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Offenbach: The Tales of 29th February 2012 OperaBritannia Here's the Hoffmann Sunday, 04 March 2012 22:47 administrator Opera Britannia review of Britten's A Midsummer The Teatro Verdi of Pisa has concluded its A nightmarish world of Night's Dream from 2011/2012 season with a rare and @guildhallschool hallucinations for an author intriguing diptych, Mozart and Salieri by @BarbicanCentre: who created dark, twisted Nikolaj Rimsky-Korsakov and Zanetto by tinyurl.com/OBMndGSMD yesterday · reply · retweet · favorite works himself (The . These two works do not Nutcracker is far from a have much in common, other than being OperaBritannia And here's a link to the reposted review festive confection in its coeval, the having had its of Aida from the RAH: original tale) was highly premiere in 1896 and the Russian one two tinyurl.com/OBAidaMP appropriate in English years later (though it had already been yesterday · reply · retweet · favorite National Opera’s first new written in 1897). They both feature two OperaBritannia Apologies production of the year,The characters: two male voices for the for the delay, but Opera Tales of Hoffmann. In a (Mozart, a ) and Salieri Britannia is back, with a double bill from Pisa of (indicated as a in the score, but trademark Richard Jones Zanetto + Mozart & Salieri: creation, first seen at the normally sung by basses or - tinyurl.com/OBZanetto Bavarian State Opera, ) and two female voices in the yesterday · reply · retweet · favorite Mascagni work: Silvia () and last autumn, OperaBritannia Zanetto, a mezzo-soprano en travestì. Hoffmann seeks solace in @OperaCreep @RuthElleson Thus, Marcello Lippi, former baritone and There is some fantastic alcohol... now general manager of the Teatro Verdi singing on offer. The ladies are pretty extraordinary. Read more>> (as well as writer of the Italian rhythmic yesterday · reply · retweet · favorite version of the Russian ), and stage director Gianluca Floris have identified an oneiric and proto-psychological dimension as fil Bellini: Norma rouge of the two , both based on all-consuming obsession. Another element in Join the conversation common is their virtual disappearance from the standard repertoire.

Opera North, 28th January Mozart and Salieri did have its moment in the sun - not surprisingly, in Russia. In 1898 the 2012 great Russian bass Chaliapin, famous for his crazed portrayal of Boris Godunov, sang the role News updates of Salieri in and scored a great success. ''From this time,'' writes Rimsky-Korsakov in Bellini’s masterpiece Norma, his autobiography, ''dates Chaliapin's fame and the growth of his popularity.'' Not so for the Subscribe to Opera Britannia to arguably the zenith of bel opera, which even in Russia has been rarely performed since. receive all the latest news and canto opera, is not performed latest reviews It is a realistic psychological tragedy of small, but intense proportions, a work of verbal and anywhere near as often as it emotional detail, very different from the lavishly scenic and extravagantly orchestrated fairy- Signup >> ought to be, primarily tale – , - for which Rimsky-Korsakov is better known. The because we lack singers of atmosphere is heavy and brooding – even Dostoevskian. sufficient calibre to take on its Around the Houses fearsome title role, one In Rimsky-Korsakov's setting Salieri actually does murder Mozart by pouring poison in his associated with the monstres glass. One of the opera's most striking moments has Salieri, seconds after slipping the poison News of new productions sacrés of the past, such as into Mozart's wine, sob unrestrainedly as he listens to Mozart play his just-composed , heading to Covent Garden via Ponselle, Callas, Sutherland whose opening is quoted in full in the orchestral accompaniment. , plus news of and Caballé. Michael Fabbiano... Read More>> . Read More>>

"Around the Houses" concentrates on providing the latest news on future plans for opera companies Handel: Giulio Cesare around the globe, artists schedules, cancellations and interesting Opera North, 14th January snippets of information. We will try 2012 and avoid unsubstantiated gossip wherever possible, but all of our It’s been more than ten years sources will remain completely since Opera North last confidential. If you would like to staged a Handel opera, so advise us about potential news for this section, then please feel free to http://www.opera-britannia.com/index.php?option=com_content&view…zanetto-pisa-29th-february-2012&catid=8:opera-reviews&Itemid=16 Pagina 1 di 3 Mozart & Salieri/ Zanetto: Pisa, 29th February 2012 06/03/12 10.13

this intelligent and attractive email us at info@opera- new production of Giulio britannia.com. Cesare directed by Tim Albery was long overdue but ultimately proved worth the Coming Soon! wait. Coming soon, links to new reviews Read More>> Coming Soon Verdi: La traviata Reviews to be published shortly Royal Opera, 2nd January 2012

Only the second day of the New Year and we were back for the third cast of the Royal Opera’s umpteenth revival of Richard Eyre’s La Traviata. If ever a production earned its money back then it The opera ends with Salieri's desperate questioning, directed more to himself than to the is this reliable showcase. audience: ''So villainy and genius are two things that never go together? That's not true; Think but of Buonarroti ...Or was that a tale of the dull, stupid crowd -and he who built the Vatican Read More>> was not a murderer?'' Here Salieri compares himself to Michelangelo who, it is rumoured, murdered the man who served as the model for Christ in the crucifixion painting above the altar in the Sistine Chapel.

Interestingly, a relationship not unlike that between Salieri and Mozart existed between Rimsky-Korsakov and his contemporary . Both belonged to the group of Russian 19th-century known as ''; they worked together closely and at one News time even shared an apartment. Mussorgsky never had formal musical training, while Rimsky- Korsakov forced himself to master the fundamentals in his late 20's. Like the Salieri in Pushkin's drama, Rimsky-Korsakov ''dissected music like a corpse, checked harmony by algebraic rules.'' Rimsky-Korsakov admitted that he both ''loved and hated'' the strange Lehman pulls out of harmonies of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov; he always viewed Mussorgsky as an enormously Met 'Siegfried' gifted but irresponsible and undisciplined . One could even see Rimsky-Korsakov's controversial re- of Boris Godunov after Mussorgsky’s death as a kind of envious Gary Lehman, who was due musical poisoning of his less fortunate colleague. to sing the title role of Ultimately, Mozart and Salieri is, like Pushkin's poem-drama that inspired it, an experiment. Siegfried in Robert Lepage's Pushkin originally called Mozart and Salieri a ''dramatic investigation.'' It was not written to be new production at the staged. It was written more for Pushkin than for his readers, and is not intended to provide an , has answer to the thorny issue - the incompatibility of genius and villainy - that it raises. pulled out because of illness, the Met have announced. Rimsky-Korsakov's opera is composed in a similar spirit. Already the popular and established composer of six operas - including Sadko, and - and much Read more>> instrumental music, Rimsky-Korsakov, no longer so anxious to please, decided to write one for himself in Mozart and Salieri. The opera's originality seem to support the controversial thesis Royal Opera: Cast that it is precisely when they forget their audience that artists produce their most interesting change work.

Zanetto, premiered in 1896 at the Liceo “Rossini” of , was one of Mascagni’s Due to ill health, German many attempts at replicating the popular bass-baritone Falk success of without Struckmann has withdrawn producing another full-blown work from singing the title role in as he had done the previous year with the the Royal Opera’s production mediocre . In his anxiety to renew of Der fliegender Holländer. himself, Mascagni turned to a position that could be called “Parnassian”, an adjective normally used to indicate the late Read More>> nineteenth century French movement known for its anti-Romantic tendencies. The parsimony, if not downright the absence, of a narrative course or plot absorbs every tension, relying instead on a series of delicate psychological shadings.

Critics welcomed it with enthusiasm. “I believe that Mascagni with these delightful scenes has created his most organic, original and continuous opera. Removing or modifying one single note would damage the jewel,”, wrote Ugo Ojetti, one of the leading music critics of the time. Poetry Corner Audiences also took a liking to Zanetto, which was one of Mascagni’s most performed operas http://www.opera-britannia.com/index.php?option=com_content&view…zanetto-pisa-29th-february-2012&catid=8:opera-reviews&Itemid=16 Pagina 2 di 3 Mozart & Salieri/ Zanetto: Pisa, 29th February 2012 06/03/12 10.13

during his lifetime. The composer, trying to break the rustproof combination of Cavalleria rusticana/ , often replaced the Biography: Mary Robertson is an Leoncavallo evergreen with his own Emeritus Professor in Zanetto, which was sung by some of the Neuropsychiatry at University most of legendary prima donnas of the first College London and visiting Professor at St George’s Hospital half of twentieth century, including Madame Medical School, London. Aside Verismo herself, , Maria from being an opera devotee, Mary Farneti, Adami Corradetti, Rosanna is a published poet and Carteri as Silvia, and Gianna Pederzini, photographer. Gilda Alfano and in the

(New poems added: 04/08/2010) title role.

Stage director Gianluca Floris created two more >> essential, almost bare sets. Only a table, a couple of chairs, and a were featured in the Rimsky-Korsakov work. Zanetto had

even less: a marble fountain and an L shaped platform. With such paucity of means, the protagonist turned out to be Enrico Basoccu’s expert and evocative lighting.

Highly impressive was Francesco Pasqualetti on the podium. The young conductor’s terse, analytical approach benefited not only the mathematical precision of Rimsky Korsakov’s opera, but also (and I would say particularly) the turgid, almost redundant expansions of Mascagni’s work, some parts of which – in the wrong hands – could sound – ante litteram - dangerously close to a classic Disney movie soundtrack.

The cast was more than adequate. Matteo Mezzaro has a pleasant but still unripe instrument, which the extremely central tessitura of the role of Mozart did not however unduly put to the test. Chaliapin, who as mentioned earlier created Salieri, asked Rimsky-Korsakov not to write anything higher than a G4 for Mozart, because he wished his antagonist’s role not to go above the highest note he himself was able to comfortably sing. Our Salieri, Alessandro Calamai, relied more on a varied and nuanced phrasing than richness of timbre. Exactly the same comment could be applied to Sandra Buongrazio’s slender mezzo-soprano (Zanetto), while her Silvia, Silvana Froli, revealed an opulent instrument typical of a soprano accustomed to dozens of Toscas and Turandots. Only the very top sounded a bit too spread for comfort.

Overall this diptych was a sophisticated ending to an interesting season, made of (mostly) hits and one big miss (Aida). The Teatro Verdi must be commended for more than doubling the operas offered compared to the previous season, and the audience filled to capacity even for this unusual duo of rarities proved that Pisa is hungrier for opera than ever.

Nicola Lischi

Opera Britannia

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