SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Production Picture © Foto Tabocchinni

Pier Luigi Pizzi (Pigi to his friends) is now in his fourth season as Artistic Director of the Sferisterio Opera Festival in Macerata. This immense arena (originally seating five thousand and with recent improvements in comfort and security, now about half that number) was constructed from privately-collected funding in the eighteenth century for a ball game which is no longer played. Extremely long in length and short in width, it calls for an architect to get the best out of it. In Pigi it has found one.

The Arena nowadays only opens for the short summer opera festival and this year the three operas to be staged are Faust, La Forza del Destino and I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata, gathered together by Pigi in a single, adjustable set, together with the two operas Juditha Triumphas (Vivaldi) and Atilla in Macerata’s delightful indoor opera house, Teatro Lauro Rossi (600 seats): everything under this year’s dedication, To the Greater Glory of God.

Good against evil features in all the libretti, but God is only triumphant if you accept a twist of theological logic of perceiving Him as such in situations where he appears not to be. Massimo Cacciari touched on this matter brilliantly in his introductory lecture.

God, who I seem to recall from my church-going days, “moves in a mysterious way” appears as unpredictable as the Italian weather: the opening of Faust was rained-off. For the second opera, La Forza del Destino, Carlo Di Felice, who should have sung Don Carlo, was indisposed. Fortunately, an angel custodian was to hand, in the shape of Mrs Pavarotti’s artists’ agency, just up the road in Bologna. They produced Elia Fabbian, who sang from the score in the orchestra pit with a mime going through the movements on stage. Understandably, Fabbian sounded uncertain to begin with, but as he warmed into the role, he was vocally reassuring.

It was the immensely popular tenor, Enrico Tamberlick (himself partly Russian) who secured the commission from St Petersburg for Verdi to write La Forza . Tamberlick was no stranger to Paris or London as well as his native Naples, even if a fair part of his career was in St Petersburg. Verdi owed a debt to Tamberlick and there is indeed the feeling of a tailor-made role: a tenor of notable power who at the same time is expressive and respectful of the long phrases. In Zoran Todorovich, Macerata had found the right voice for the role. He saved himself up for the demanding Act 3 aria which was delivered with great aplomb and met with overwhelming audience approval.

Teresa Romano is a twenty five year old soprano with whom I was delighted finally to have caught up. She has been making quite a stir. I am not entirely sure that Leonora will prove to be her best role. Nevertheless, she delivered, Pace, Pace, mio dio with a beauty of tone which would be hard to equal on today’s scene. More audience delirium. Her pianissimi have a magnificent Caballé quality. When she rises above mezzo-forte she sounds as though she is imitating Callas. That is always a mistake. Romano’s voice then gets out of control and she begins to force. She has already shown the solidity of her technique in the hushed passages and there is no need for her to follow this other path. As an actress, under Pigi’s loving tutelage, she convinces. I want to see and hear a lot more of her.

She was lucky in having Daniele Callegari as conductor; he had understood that this is a voice which needs more time than some for its best expression; he duly gave it to her. Callegari is that rare conductor who thoroughly understands singers. His choice of tempi are always perfect in accordance with considerations needed for any particular artist. His well-tuned musical sensibility avoids the extremes of hurrying or slowing.

A word of advice for Miss Romano: you have a much more beautiful voice than Callas, so please continue your work on the Caballé track and push the Great Maria to the back of your mind.

Roberto Scandiuzzi has to be among the greats of today’s Italian basses. His delivery as Father Superior of the monastery had all the warmth, roundness, firmness and authority of tone which rang out as the most commanding performance within my experience.

The role of Preziosilla is strange –not exactly a principal role, though not a minor one either; her two set numbers can make as great an effect as any Verdi mezzo role. Often, theatres have run short of money by the time they come to cast Preziosilla. It sounded like this had happened here. I hope I shall never have the misfortune to hear Anna Maria Chiuri ever again. Shrieky, tasteless, unmusical and out of tune, would sum her up.

You will notice that I have side-stepped any attempt to get involved with the daftness of the plot (if that is not too strong a word) of La Forza del Destino . Verdi’s melodic invention did certainly not desert him for St Petersburg and there are even hugely effective dramatic moments but in the third act, for instance, where the drama ought to intensify, the libretto leads the composer into thankless meandering. Had someone tipped off Verdi that meandering was seen more of a virtue than a vice in Russia? Just think of the Karamazov Brothers.

However, in Macerata, Pier Luigi Pizzi was at hand to impose order and sense on all this chaos. Imagine you are sitting in front of the world’s widest cinemascope screen, one where you would need to move your head from side to side, like a tennis audience, to follow the action. On the centre of a seemingly endless back wall is a cross whose angles can be adjusted, below this, an elevation of half a dozen steps on a disc which also rotates, then to the right and left, man-width platforms, each in the shape of a cross.

Simple, yet highly original, dignified, geometrically satisfying: all Pigi hallmarks. But I haven’t yet mentioned to his finest quality: he is the most wonderfully instinctive musician. Never is there movement where there should be stillness, or vice versa, or a fast movement when a slow one would be right. All this, of course, is in the music. But which other director is such an obedient master/ servant to the composer? And underpinning it all is To the Greater Glory of God. Even heathens like me are converted. The title says it all: La Forza del Destino.

Jack Buckley