SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL OPERA FESTIVAL REPORT
 

Sferisterio Opera Festival Macerata (1) – ‘To the Greater Glory of God’, Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine: Ensemble Cantar Lontano, Conductor Marco Mencoboni. Introduction by Massimo Cacciari. Auditorium San Paolo, Macerata  29.7.2010 (JB)

It is probably the off-putting sound of the name itself – Le Marche  translates as The Marshes- that causes it to be among the least explored of Italy’s Regions. A pity. You will find here some of the finest scenery in the country and little explored mountain passes and given that the Region is predominantly agricultural, some of Italy’s best food. Best here in Jane Grigson’s sense: find the freshest produce in the market, take it home and do as little as possible to it and you will have produced an excellent lunch.

There is no major city. In the centre is Ancona –once a busy port town, nowadays, with more charm than activity, though it is the Region’s capital. In the north, also on the coast, is the birthplace of Rossini –Pesaro (more of which in a future report). The south has another provincial headquarters –Macerata, built inland into the foothills of the Apennines, which stretch in all their glory from north to south. The eastern border is the Adriatic sea and to the west is Tuscany and Umbria, both at points where the mountains descend to the planes.

The Marchegiani are, for the most part, country folk: upright, hard working, with a strong inborn sense of fairness, hardly known in the rest of the country. Tourists never dominate the scene, even in summer, but if you learn to eat and drink like the locals, the experience is unforgettable as well as remarkable value for money. Black truffles abound here. Service is excellent providing you are not expecting subservience. Their business-like approach to most matters may be misinterpreted as brusqueness by those not fluent in the language: as a visitor, the respect which you show towards your hosts will be automatically reciprocated to you as a visitor. Warning: this applies too to any who may appear patronising.

Together with its surrounding Regions, the Marshes was an important part of Red Italy, when the country rebounded against fascism into its own brand of communism. This brings us to Massimo Cacciari (pronounced catch-Ari , with the accent on the second A ) twice mayor of Venice and internationally acclaimed philosopher. He opened the Sferisterio Opera Festival with a stimulating lecture.

A flashback is in order here to better illustrate what is to come. In 1978, as British Council Arts Officer, I was contacted by John Rutter, who wanted to bring Clare College Choir, Cambridge, to Venice with the collaboration of the Venice Municipality and the British Council. To perform Vespro della Beata Vergine, possibly in St Mark’s Cathedral, for which Monteverdi had written the piece.

I called Luigi Nono, the Venetian composer and a friend, who immediately told me there was no way I would be able to persuade the ecclesiastical authorities to open the galleries in which the composer had originally placed his antiphonal choirs: the frescoes up there were made in part of leaf-gold and ripping a few bits off would be too easy. The request had been made many times, Nono told me, and always turned down.

Nothing daunted, I took the next train to Venice for a meeting with the Cultural Assessor of the city (this was pre-Cacciari). The city had agreed to meet the costs of the choir’s stay in Venice. I wanted to know who in the Church could give permission for the galleries to be used. The answer was the Patriarch, but the city council was communist and didn’t have a dialogue with His Eminence. Would they mind if I attempted this negotiation? Not at all, was the reply.

The Patriarch received me, smiled benignly, and said “yes” to my request. He then appeared at the performance, blessed the students and a month later, became Pope John Paul 1. (He had one of the briefest reigns in papal history of only thirty three days, it being rumoured that he was bumped off by enemies in the Vatican.)

John Rutter was thrilled to be able to use the overhead galleries in reproducing the all-important antiphonal effects. When John Eliot Gardiner wanted to record the same piece for DGG in St Mark’s, getting permission was fairly straightforward with the precedent already established. And so far as I know, there were no missing pieces of gold-leaf.

Times change. Massimo Cacciari is not only an enthusiastic Italian communist philosopher but he has succeeded where others have failed in provoking a dialogue with the Church. This year’s Sferisterio Opera Festival has as its theme – To the Greater Glory of God -  which was also the title of his inaugural lecture in the deconsecrated and packed church of San Paolo in Macerata.

Professor Cacciari performed an intellectual tap-dance of inestimable entertainment value in his introduction, deftly feeling his way round Giordano Bruno’s contention that God is a circle whose circumference is found everywhere. He never mentioned Bruno, but he chuckled as he admitted the inspiration, when I challenged him later. He was equally articulate in his examination of enthusiasm (something else he is not short on) which he sees as an essential quality of any communication, and in particular , one which is purporting to look at the Glory of God.

The same evening (29 July) the Sferisterio Opera Festival opened in what we must now call the auditorium of San Paolo with a remarkable performance of Vespro della Beata Virgine. Monteverdi wrote the piece in 1610, which was also the year of the death in China of the Maceratese Jesuit missionary priest, Father Matteo Ricci. A double quatorcentenary was marked.

The conductor was Marco Mencoboni, himself Maceratese, harpsichordist and conductor as well as a musicologist and editor of music of this period, fast establishing himself as a leader in the field. Those who appreciated the gutsy feel which John Eliot Gardiner brought to this work would have greatly appreciated the Mencoboni approach: the work becomes more markedly operatic and while colleagues from the French press expressed doubts about this, I found myself warming to it. Mencoboni performs with his own singers – Cantar Lontano - precision prepared in a way which gives marked clarity to some of the contrapuntal writing. These passages have never sounded so purposeful.

He was right too to move the performance from the proposed Arena of the Sferisterio into San Paolo. But although he had painstakingly spaced the vocal groups round the former church, he was defeated if his wish was to reproduce the antiphonal effects from the overhead galleries of St Mark’s.

One difficulty of San Paolo is its enormous width with some thirty chairs to a row. I was in seat 7 of row 7, and so got more than an earful of the choir in the left side-chapel but very little of the right chapel.  I should not emphasise necessary shortcomings. This was a vital performance of a masterpiece which will live in the mind’s ear for a long time. May Marco Mencoboni find a way to record it. If he does, it will unquestionably add to our understanding of Monteverdi.

Jack Buckley

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