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Liverpool, European Capital of Culture 2008 Programme - Wolf-Ferrari and Offenbach Operas:  European Opera Centre and Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko,  Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. 22.11.2008 (RJF)

Semi staged presentations of:

Wolf-Ferrari:  Il segreto di Susanna (1909)

Offenbach: Un mari à la porte (1859)


If the City of Liverpool was an unexpected choice as European Capital of Culture 2008 it has certainly done the title proud over this past year. Inevitably of course there has  been critical and destructive media comment about the cost involved, as there always is for arts venture  and for anything with the title of European in it. But with a first class orchestra already in situ, and the arrival of the European Opera Centre at Liverpool Hope University, the classical musical side of the year had promise from the start. Despite the media coverage of an event involving a former member of the Beatles, it was members of the European Opera Centre who initiated the Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008 last New Year’s Eve (see review) with a performance of Donizetti’s opera Emilia Di Liverpool. This was presented, in the round, in the wonderful ambience of the refurbished Small Concert Hall of St. Georges Hall, the whole Hall having undergone a  £23 million refurbishment before its formal opening by the Prince of Wales in early 2007. With a small stage orchestra and double and even triple casting,  the opera was presented over the following week. For their latest event, the European Opera Centre joined up with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra to present two one act operas with the linked theme of secrets and husbands.

Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall predates the Birmingham’s Symphony Hall and Manchester’s Bridgewater by a decade or three and its internal décor seems somewhat dated in comparison. However, its full orchestral stage was sufficient for semi-staged performances with an acting area accommodating real and representational sets as well as the full Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra directed by its Principal Conductor Vasily Petrenko.

The European Opera Centre began life eleven years ago with the support of the European Parliament and Commission. Its principal aim is to help young European  singers gain experience in order to help them find employment in opera after their training in a conservatoire. Prior to its creation the only such opportunities for young singers in Europe were mainly in eight of the German opera houses. It has to be noted that the concept and importance of the young artist in residence initiative has since been extended and taken up by other companies throughout Europe. The Opera Centre relocated its operations to the Liverpool Hope University in 2002.

Both productions were imaginatively directed by Bernard Rozet with musical preparation by Laurent Pillot, each of them having extensive international experience in their fields. Much was made of the linking theme of secrets and husbands,  but there is also the mirror-like theme in respect of the composers, Wolf-Ferrari and Offenbach, whose works were presented. Each was born in a country in which his works were not appreciated nor could find a place in the repertoire. Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was born in Venice to an Italian mother and a father from Baden Baden. He changed his name from Hermann Friedrich Wolf to that which he is now known by and  although he died in Venice,  he made his home in Munich.  Most of his operatic works received their premieres in German opera houses. In a near mirror contrast, Jacques Offenbach was originally Jacob, born in 1819 in Cologne, the son of a jobbing Jewish fiddler cum music teacher. The son revealed such early talent that the father made many sacrifices to send him to study in Paris and where he in turn scraped a living as a ‘session’ cellist. At the time of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1855, frustrated by inability to get his compositions performed, he opened the miniscule Bouffes Parisiens theatre in which visitors to The Exhibition flocked to hear his tuneful operettas satirising contemporary politics and society manners. As one successful work followed another,  Rossini dubbed Offenbach The Mozart of the Champs Elysées’.  His golden days in Paris and his music exemplifying the frivolity, even decadence and hedonism of the period, ended abruptly with the Franco-Prussian war and the siege of Paris in 1870-71. The fall of Emperor Napoleon III quickly followed and with it the collapse of the Second Empire. Even so, Offenbach bequeathed a vast number of frivolous melodic compositions to the musical heritage, many of them little known and rarely performed, of which Un mari à la porte is one example.

Dora Rodrigues as Susanna in Il segreto di Susanna

Wolf-Ferrari’s life falls very much in the period of the emergence of Italian verismo, although in his programme note Gerald Larner suggests that its melodic beauty and instrumental elaboration points towards Richard Strauss. Certainly the music is melodic and well orchestrated but in Susanna’s hymn in praise of the cigarette I heard shades of Doretta’s aria from Puccini’s La Rondine, the Italian’s effort at operetta  composed ten years after Il segreto di Susanna. Susanna, the wife whose secret is not a lover, but the vice of Turkish cigarettes, was sung by twenty nine years old Dora Rodrigues. Born in Portugal, Dora sang with strong tone and with good characterisation and expression. She has already sung the likes of Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Nannetta (Falstaff) Pamina (Magic Flute), and Musetta (La Bohème) as well as various other roles in operas by Britten, Hindemith and Virgil Thompson, an eclectic collection. Her full voice and variety of colour seems to point towards the lyrico spinto fach. She acts with poise and presents a good ‘face’ to the audience. The baritone Marc Canturri sang the role of husband, whose olfactory sense leads him to suspect his wife is entertaining a man during his frequent absences at his club. He was in the alternative cast of Emilia Di Liverpool in January. From Andorra, Canturri worked at Cologne’s Opera Studio and has also sung in Madrid and Barcelona. His voice is strong, firm, rich and varied in colour. Like his partner,  the coaching of Bernard Rozet has helped make his stage presence and acting involving and convincing. But however laudable the acting was, that by Loïc Varraut in the unspoken, role of Sante the servant, nearly stole this show.  The way in which he worked the minimal props, which included cards denoting No Smoking in a variety of languages, and signed  to Susanna behind her husbands back, was immenselyamusing without degenerating to slapstick.

Anaïk Morel (L) and Caroline Garnier - both Suzanne in Un mari à la porte
 

Offenbach’s Un mari à la porte tells the story of Florestan, a young man being chased by a bailiff who happens to land, via the chimney, in the bedroom of Rosita the friend of Suzanne who is preparing for her wedding later that day. They try to make him leave, but as they do so the future husband, Martel, appears. Naturally, he is the bailiff chasing Florestan. The ladies lock the door and refuse to let him in and Florestan wants to jump from the window and but its too high. Between them they lose the key through the window and can no longer let the husband in nor Florestan out: an excellent basis for an Offenbach opéra bouffe. The chimneys and doors were represented on stage by named cards, duplicated either side of a central table. In typical opéra comique style there is plenty of spoken dialect. In this presentation, paired actors speaking the French words, and singers, each of the pair in similar costumes,  populate the stage miming the actions of the other as they sing or speak. The timing of the duplication of the movement and acting in this mirrored approach was unfortunately not always spot on, detracting from the effectiveness of the idea.

The firm rich mezzo-soprano voice of Anaïk Morel contrasted well with the lyric coloratura soprano of Gabrielle Philiponet whose high notes were pleasingly secure. As the husband to be, and bailiff, the Saint-Denis born Stephane Malbec-Garcia sang with an ardent opened toned tenor voice paired with Marc Canturri in the cameo role of the bailiff. Like the actors, all the singers are born Francophones and had no difficulty with the language.  All were wholly idiomatic and they coped well with the stage business whilst giving all they had to the singing or speaking; a clear measure of the benefit of their time with the European Opera Centre. The speed of the dialogue did make for difficulty for those in the audience trying to follow the story from the large surtitle screen behind the orchestra whilst also watching the stage. But for that blame Offenbach and the genre.

With all of these young people giving very accomplished performances it is too easy to forget  the orchestra and conductor Vasily Petrenko. He looked younger than many of the performers! Without the benefit of European Opera Centre coaching himself, he had the challenging task of commanding the very different musical genres represented by the programme. His success in both explains why he and the Liverpool Orchestra are making waves in the classical music world just now. His interpretation and support of his singers was wholly commendable with the orchestral playing responding to his every nuance. It was  commendable too that he and the orchestra, with the support of the Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008 programme, joined with the European Opera Centre to give a well-supported audience an excellent night at the opera, something Liverpudlians get only very rarely.

Robert J Farr

Pictures © Mark McNulty

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