Accent on comedy
Two fully-staged operas and a concert performance of two more brief ones constituted this year's BOV Opera Festival's fare. Falstaff The week of opera presented by the Bank of Valletta bore a decisively comic stamp. I found the choice a good one for...
Two fully-staged operas and a concert performance of two more brief ones constituted this year's BOV Opera Festival's fare.
Falstaff
The week of opera presented by the Bank of Valletta bore a decisively comic stamp. I found the choice a good one for it had some of the best examples of the genres both in the operas and the concert productions.
Verdi got over a hang-up lasting almost 53 years when his very last stage work Falstaff crowned his career in comic form. It took very long but Falstaff wiped out any lingering memory of the ill-fated Un giorno di regno. The amazing thing is that Falstaff never ceases to amaze. It is hard to imagine its bubbly and mischievous score to be the work of a quasi-octogenarian. The latter happened to be a genius, with a genius of a librettist in Boito, and both basing their joint effort on that other genius, Shakespeare by name.
There were two performances of Falstaff at the Manoel, the first of which is under review here. For this opera to succeed one needs an orchestra with a director able to keep the pace going without making it too hurried and breathless. Michael Laus and the National Orchestra did just that, for mindful of the texture and mood of the score they produced a work which sparkled like a combination of crystal and filigree. The orchestra matched the slick pace of this production, the artistic director of which was Giovanni Dispensa for the Istituzione Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Borgatti di Cento, Italy. Visually this performance was a delight, costumes colourful and attractive and functional scenery for good measure.
The cast was headed by baritone Paolo Drigo in the title role of the rascally fat knight who still thinks he is some irresistible lady-killer. He had some great monologues to declaim and sing and he was pretty convincing, complete with the purposely ungainly appearance the character has to project. His scheming knows no end but he always finds his come-uppance at the hands of a bevy of equally adept, scheming "merry wives". Poor Sir John really gets it all the way and is coerced into a final act of repentance. Drigo was in good voice. His henchmen, Bardolph (tenor Dario Prola) and Pistol (bass Gianluca Breda), were an agile pair. They were agile not only physically but also in their penchant to change sides. Besides, Breda's deep bass was one of the best voices heard this evening. Fenton (tenor Francesco Marsiglia) was in very good voice and had some of the loveliest lyrical passages in the whole opera. He made a constant and convincing suitor to Anne Ford. The latter's father, Ford (baritone Carlo Riccioli) has a basically fine voice but one he did not entirely exploit although he did carry off a long monologue pretty well. The weakest vocal link in the male section of the cast was that of tenor Luigi Maria Barione as the dull Dr Caius.
The ladies had to be, perforce, a lively lot. Soprano Valentina Coladonato made a fine Alice Ford while soprano Francesca Bruni as her daughter Anne improved vocally as the opera progressed. This character too has just about the only set aria in the opera, which comes in the last act, and this too is very beautiful music indeed. Meg Page was sung by mezzo-soprano Luisa Mauro Partridge. Hers is not a big voice and there were times when she was inaudible. On the other hand, the other mezzo in the cast, Simona Forni as Dame Quickly, made her presence and voice very much felt. She has a lot of comic flair and was very amusing as part of the conspiratorial quartet of ladies especially with her extravagant curtsies on her visits to Falstaff.
The ensemble singing and the movements of various groups were very well handled and the blend of words and music so well interwoven that one easily takes to this far from "usual" Verdi. The Manoel Theatre Opera Chorus did well too. Some situations are hilarious, such as the laundry basket scene and the way Falstaff is beset by "demons" and punished for his misdemeanours in the last act. In this scene I found the two acrobats rather distracting. As long as the imagination could be stretched to see them representing trees, or Herne's Oak in particular, well and good. Their movements were very well-coordinated and ironically, because they were that good they also distracted attention from what was going on.
L'Elisir d'Amore
Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore was given two performances at the Manoel, the second of which is under review here. This is one of the most successful comic operas ever written and there is absolutely never a dull moment in it. The score is beautiful and the opera's charm irresistible. This production's artistic director was Elizabeth Smith with cast and chorus from Palermo's Operalaboratorio. This continues a now well-established tradition of cooperation with and participation by Operalaboratorio during the BOV opera festival.
Elisir has four main characters, two of whom, Adina and Nemorino are the busiest on stage. They provide the love interest, something to which even Belcore aspires. This sergeant, so over-convinced of his own importance and sexual prowess, is more of a satyr and provides the main real comic interest, somewhat shared by the rascally but not unlikable quack Dulcamara. Adina is the typical coquette whose yes means no and vice-versa until she finally sorts out her feelings much to the joy of the country yokel Nemorino, a simple soul but not really a dimwit.
Looking at the performance of this quartet of singers I found soprano Caterina Ilardo's Adina rather disappointing. She has the looks and the presence and although I was assured that during the first performance she had sung well, this was not the case. She just made it to some of the high notes and was often inaudible in ensemble singing. Although at some point in the second half she seemed to improve, this proved to be ephemeral. Pity as she is a good actress, so this may have been just a bad day. The only non-Italian singer in this performance was our own tenor Charles Vincenti. He is a promising singer who has locally made something of a name for himself. This collaboration with Operalaboratorio gave him the chance to sing his first leading role in opera. He knew it extremely well, is more than a reasonably good actor and his overall singing was pleasant and delivered in a convincing manner. Of course everybody was waiting for the opera's show stopper Una furtiva lacrima, which comes rather late in the action. I feel he could have sung parts of it better but the opera is not just this particular number. His performance has to be overall and he did himself credit. There is always room for improvement and this was still a pretty good start.
The other male protagonists did very well, giving fine all-round performances. Baritone Giovanni Bellavia was Belcore, the amorous sergeant who burst into the scene very effectively with his Come Paride vezzoso. Ardent, jealous and over-precipitate suitor, scheming to get Nemorino out of the way he is thwarted in the end and once all hope of wedding Adina fades, he consoles himself with the thought that the world is full of pretty women. Bellavia gave a very good performance, whether on his own or in ensemble. His comic sense was matched by the more deep-toned baritone, Marco Filippo Romano as Dulcamara. He had a pretty good romp, and was on very good form vocally. From one who knows his elixir is a fake (like the ersatz donkey drawing his cart) he ends up believing in it when we do know of course that is true love not a dubious elixir which wins the day.
The minor role of Giannetta was sung by Claudia Munda, while the chorus, all from Operalaboratorio, did a very good job. They moved and sang very well indeed. The ladies wore beautiful costumes by Francesca Pipi while Nadia Campanotta's sets were the simplest possible. The National Orchestra was again under the excellent direction of Michael Laus who held together and consolidated the whole fabric of the opera.
By the way it was disappointing to many patrons that printed programmes ran out.
Concert
The by now traditional concert held midway during the BOV Opera Festival was one with a difference this year. Held at the Sacred Heart Convent Hall in St Julians it featured the National Orchestra directed by Christopher Muscat, a young conductor slowly growing in directional stature. The main difference this year was that instead of a concert performance of one smaller-scale opera, there were two of them. Cimarosa's Il maestro di cappella and Pergolesi's La serva padrona are actually intermezzi. Such works were normally performed in between acts of some far more serious and longer opera.
The Cimarosa is a one-man show, and this was excellently handled by young baritone Kevin Caruana. He has an amazing feel for the stage, in the way he moves, and how he uses facial expressions to emphasise a point. His singing has improved greatly and his diction is ever so good. He is a very promising young man indeed. His energy never flagged as he buzzed around the stage in and out between different sections of the orchestra. For the plot requires this Kapellmeister to ensure that all the musicians, whether soli or in sections, know the piece he has composed for them. He walks off the stage when after much endeavour the orchestra does well enough for him to write another piece.
The artistic director of this smoothly running intermezzo was John Gauci. He directed the other and more familiar intermezzo in two sections, Pergolesi's La serva padrona. Here too local talent was given a chance to take part and to shine and shine did bass Noel Galea as the hard-pressed, nagged wealthy bachelor Uberto. His was an all-round convincing performance, which says it all. Young Maltese soprano Maria Abela, who is still studying in Milan, was given the part of Serpina, the bossy maid who ends up marrying her boss. She too has a lot of stage sense and acted very well identifying herself very convincingly with the character. There is lots of room for improvement to her basically attractive voice and she needs to clear up her diction too. One sees no reason why she could not succeed. Kevin Caruana had the silent but effective part of the servant Vespone, who also masquerades as Capitan Tempesta.
This evening had started in keeping with the comic and amusing nature of the occasion. It did with Mozart's Ein Musikalischer Spass, K.522 in four movements which the orchestra played with verve in the fast outer ones. Of course, this heightened the satire and sending up of some conventions adhered to by some of Mozart's mediocre contemporaries. Certain inordinately pompous moments in the inner slower movements, and everywhere else for that matter, still bear the stamp of genius. Mozart says enough, as in the way he treats the horns but does not overdo it. If he has to send up something or somebody he still does it with taste and style. These did mark the reading of this unusual work which the orchestra enjoyed playing, as one is sure the rest of the audience did.
Falstaff
The week of opera presented by the Bank of Valletta bore a decisively comic stamp. I found the choice a good one for it had some of the best examples of the genres both in the operas and the concert productions.Verdi got over a hang-up lasting almost 53 years when his very last stage work Falstaff crowned his career in comic form. It took very long but Falstaff wiped out any lingering memory of the ill-fated Un giorno di regno. The amazing thing is that Falstaff never ceases to amaze. It is hard to imagine its bubbly and mischievous score to be the work of a quasi-octogenarian. The latter happened to be a genius, with a genius of a librettist in Boito, and both basing their joint effort on that other genius, Shakespeare by name.
There were two performances of Falstaff at the Manoel, the first of which is under review here. For this opera to succeed one needs an orchestra with a director able to keep the pace going without making it too hurried and breathless. Michael Laus and the National Orchestra did just that, for mindful of the texture and mood of the score they produced a work which sparkled like a combination of crystal and filigree. The orchestra matched the slick pace of this production, the artistic director of which was Giovanni Dispensa for the Istituzione Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Borgatti di Cento, Italy. Visually this performance was a delight, costumes colourful and attractive and functional scenery for good measure.
The cast was headed by baritone Paolo Drigo in the title role of the rascally fat knight who still thinks he is some irresistible lady-killer. He had some great monologues to declaim and sing and he was pretty convincing, complete with the purposely ungainly appearance the character has to project. His scheming knows no end but he always finds his come-uppance at the hands of a bevy of equally adept, scheming "merry wives". Poor Sir John really gets it all the way and is coerced into a final act of repentance. Drigo was in good voice. His henchmen, Bardolph (tenor Dario Prola) and Pistol (bass Gianluca Breda), were an agile pair. They were agile not only physically but also in their penchant to change sides. Besides, Breda's deep bass was one of the best voices heard this evening. Fenton (tenor Francesco Marsiglia) was in very good voice and had some of the loveliest lyrical passages in the whole opera. He made a constant and convincing suitor to Anne Ford. The latter's father, Ford (baritone Carlo Riccioli) has a basically fine voice but one he did not entirely exploit although he did carry off a long monologue pretty well. The weakest vocal link in the male section of the cast was that of tenor Luigi Maria Barione as the dull Dr Caius.
The ladies had to be, perforce, a lively lot. Soprano Valentina Coladonato made a fine Alice Ford while soprano Francesca Bruni as her daughter Anne improved vocally as the opera progressed. This character too has just about the only set aria in the opera, which comes in the last act, and this too is very beautiful music indeed. Meg Page was sung by mezzo-soprano Luisa Mauro Partridge. Hers is not a big voice and there were times when she was inaudible. On the other hand, the other mezzo in the cast, Simona Forni as Dame Quickly, made her presence and voice very much felt. She has a lot of comic flair and was very amusing as part of the conspiratorial quartet of ladies especially with her extravagant curtsies on her visits to Falstaff.
The ensemble singing and the movements of various groups were very well handled and the blend of words and music so well interwoven that one easily takes to this far from "usual" Verdi. The Manoel Theatre Opera Chorus did well too. Some situations are hilarious, such as the laundry basket scene and the way Falstaff is beset by "demons" and punished for his misdemeanours in the last act. In this scene I found the two acrobats rather distracting. As long as the imagination could be stretched to see them representing trees, or Herne's Oak in particular, well and good. Their movements were very well-coordinated and ironically, because they were that good they also distracted attention from what was going on.
L'Elisir d'Amore
Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore was given two performances at the Manoel, the second of which is under review here. This is one of the most successful comic operas ever written and there is absolutely never a dull moment in it. The score is beautiful and the opera's charm irresistible. This production's artistic director was Elizabeth Smith with cast and chorus from Palermo's Operalaboratorio. This continues a now well-established tradition of cooperation with and participation by Operalaboratorio during the BOV opera festival.Elisir has four main characters, two of whom, Adina and Nemorino are the busiest on stage. They provide the love interest, something to which even Belcore aspires. This sergeant, so over-convinced of his own importance and sexual prowess, is more of a satyr and provides the main real comic interest, somewhat shared by the rascally but not unlikable quack Dulcamara. Adina is the typical coquette whose yes means no and vice-versa until she finally sorts out her feelings much to the joy of the country yokel Nemorino, a simple soul but not really a dimwit.
Looking at the performance of this quartet of singers I found soprano Caterina Ilardo's Adina rather disappointing. She has the looks and the presence and although I was assured that during the first performance she had sung well, this was not the case. She just made it to some of the high notes and was often inaudible in ensemble singing. Although at some point in the second half she seemed to improve, this proved to be ephemeral. Pity as she is a good actress, so this may have been just a bad day. The only non-Italian singer in this performance was our own tenor Charles Vincenti. He is a promising singer who has locally made something of a name for himself. This collaboration with Operalaboratorio gave him the chance to sing his first leading role in opera. He knew it extremely well, is more than a reasonably good actor and his overall singing was pleasant and delivered in a convincing manner. Of course everybody was waiting for the opera's show stopper Una furtiva lacrima, which comes rather late in the action. I feel he could have sung parts of it better but the opera is not just this particular number. His performance has to be overall and he did himself credit. There is always room for improvement and this was still a pretty good start.
The other male protagonists did very well, giving fine all-round performances. Baritone Giovanni Bellavia was Belcore, the amorous sergeant who burst into the scene very effectively with his Come Paride vezzoso. Ardent, jealous and over-precipitate suitor, scheming to get Nemorino out of the way he is thwarted in the end and once all hope of wedding Adina fades, he consoles himself with the thought that the world is full of pretty women. Bellavia gave a very good performance, whether on his own or in ensemble. His comic sense was matched by the more deep-toned baritone, Marco Filippo Romano as Dulcamara. He had a pretty good romp, and was on very good form vocally. From one who knows his elixir is a fake (like the ersatz donkey drawing his cart) he ends up believing in it when we do know of course that is true love not a dubious elixir which wins the day.
The minor role of Giannetta was sung by Claudia Munda, while the chorus, all from Operalaboratorio, did a very good job. They moved and sang very well indeed. The ladies wore beautiful costumes by Francesca Pipi while Nadia Campanotta's sets were the simplest possible. The National Orchestra was again under the excellent direction of Michael Laus who held together and consolidated the whole fabric of the opera.
By the way it was disappointing to many patrons that printed programmes ran out.
Concert
The by now traditional concert held midway during the BOV Opera Festival was one with a difference this year. Held at the Sacred Heart Convent Hall in St Julians it featured the National Orchestra directed by Christopher Muscat, a young conductor slowly growing in directional stature. The main difference this year was that instead of a concert performance of one smaller-scale opera, there were two of them. Cimarosa's Il maestro di cappella and Pergolesi's La serva padrona are actually intermezzi. Such works were normally performed in between acts of some far more serious and longer opera.The Cimarosa is a one-man show, and this was excellently handled by young baritone Kevin Caruana. He has an amazing feel for the stage, in the way he moves, and how he uses facial expressions to emphasise a point. His singing has improved greatly and his diction is ever so good. He is a very promising young man indeed. His energy never flagged as he buzzed around the stage in and out between different sections of the orchestra. For the plot requires this Kapellmeister to ensure that all the musicians, whether soli or in sections, know the piece he has composed for them. He walks off the stage when after much endeavour the orchestra does well enough for him to write another piece.
The artistic director of this smoothly running intermezzo was John Gauci. He directed the other and more familiar intermezzo in two sections, Pergolesi's La serva padrona. Here too local talent was given a chance to take part and to shine and shine did bass Noel Galea as the hard-pressed, nagged wealthy bachelor Uberto. His was an all-round convincing performance, which says it all. Young Maltese soprano Maria Abela, who is still studying in Milan, was given the part of Serpina, the bossy maid who ends up marrying her boss. She too has a lot of stage sense and acted very well identifying herself very convincingly with the character. There is lots of room for improvement to her basically attractive voice and she needs to clear up her diction too. One sees no reason why she could not succeed. Kevin Caruana had the silent but effective part of the servant Vespone, who also masquerades as Capitan Tempesta.
This evening had started in keeping with the comic and amusing nature of the occasion. It did with Mozart's Ein Musikalischer Spass, K.522 in four movements which the orchestra played with verve in the fast outer ones. Of course, this heightened the satire and sending up of some conventions adhered to by some of Mozart's mediocre contemporaries. Certain inordinately pompous moments in the inner slower movements, and everywhere else for that matter, still bear the stamp of genius. Mozart says enough, as in the way he treats the horns but does not overdo it. If he has to send up something or somebody he still does it with taste and style. These did mark the reading of this unusual work which the orchestra enjoyed playing, as one is sure the rest of the audience did.