Opera - Danilo Rea and Flavio Boltro at Schloss Elmau
Claudio MONTEVERDI (1567-1643)
Lasciatemi morire — L’Arianna (1608) [2:58]
Toccata from Orfeo (1607) [02:52]
Gioachino ROSSINI (1792-1868)
Dal tuo stellato soglio — Mosé in Egitto (1818) [5:04]
Sinfonia dal Barbiere di Siviglia [7:39]
Sinfonia dal Guglielmo Tell (1816) [5:32]
Vincenzo BELLINI (1801-1835)
Vaga luna che inargenti — Composizioni de Camera (c.1820) [4:55]
Casta Diva — Norma [3:05]
Giuseppe GIORDANI (1751-1798)
Caro mio ben [4:55]
Antonio VIVALDI (1678 1741)
Piango, gemo, sospiro e peno [3:04]
Giacomo PUCCINI (1858-1924)
E lucevan le stele — Tosca (1900) [4:41]
O mio babbino caro — Gianni Schicchi (1918) [4:26]
Francesco CILEA (1866-1950)
Io son L'umile ancella — Adriana Lecouveur (1902) [4:28]
Danilo Rea (piano): Flavio Boltro (trumpet)
rec. studio and live, 9 December 2010, Schloss Elmau
ACT 9508-2 [54:20]
This is an unusual album with a crossover classical-jazz ethos. It teams trumpeter
Flavio Boltro with pianist Danilo Rea in all-Italian repertoire and as the
disc title makes clear, it’s all operatic - well, almost all.
Rea is a jazz pianist but had a classical training at the Santa Cecilia academy
in Rome, where he was born. He discovered a love of opera through Puccini,
so it’s appropriate that he includes some in the album. Whereas Rea has a
classical training and now plays jazz, Boltro is perhaps better known as a
classical stylist who is willing and able to embark on other projects, such
as this one. He studied in Turin and has worked in symphonic music, but he’s
clearly well versed in the lexicon of bop trumpet.
It’s unusual to use Monteverdi as a basis for homage and improvisation but
one senses that Rea in particular, the guiding force, wants to celebrate the
totality of Italian operatic music, and where better to start than the fons
et origo? Rea’s allusive chording and Boltro’s rich, sometimes fat tone,
fuse jazz with a kind of romanticised idealism in Lasciatemi morire.
Rea turns more experimental in the famous fanfare Toccata from Orfeo,
slithering fingers over the piano strings and using a very percussive treble
as a basis for timbral exploration. His boppish licks and luscious roulades
are complemented by the declamatory trumpet lines, to produce music of undeniable
newness.
It’s fortunate that Rea has thought carefully how he wishes to present these
arias and other pieces. Each is therefore nicely characterised, as the plangent
chording on Rossini’s Dal tuo stellato soglio demonstrates. I take
it that here he wishes to mark a sharp distinction between playing what sounds
like, in effect, a piano reduction and then launching on fully fledged improvisation
and overt lyricism. The longest track is Sinfonia dal Barbiere di Siviglia.
This allows the duo the most room for manoeuvre in terms of using terse staccati,
fragmentary themes, and an experimental approach tailed by a far-out scena,
forged from the near cutting-edge. It’s the nearest they get to, say, The
Art Ensemble of Chicago.
Caro mio ben, an aria antiche beloved of singers down the years, inspires
the duo to relaxed warmth complete with trumpet flurries. Similarly the ‘B’
section of Vivaldi’s Piango, gemo, sospiro e peno is fruitily boppish,
as is much of O mio babbino caro, once past the opening impressionist
hints from Rea. The duo gets funky on Sinfonia dal Guglielmo Tell,
one of the live tracks. The extra adrenalin imparted by the audience seems
to inspire them to a more raucous, straight ahead Nat Adderley kind of approach
– one to which I’m very partial. The final track, also live, offers a clement
Cilea aria.
Do you file this under Jazz or Classical? Is it jazz on classical themes,
or is it reclaiming the improvisatory prerogative in classical music-making?
For those of us who find such absolutes restrictive, other than in the strictly
filing sense, I’m not certain that it really much matters. Doubtless highbrows
will find the whole thing a bit cheap. I liked it.
Jonathan Woolf
Doubtless highbrows will find the whole thing a bit cheap. I liked it.