|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Rare Verdis Get Star Treatment
| Article
# : |
12101 |
|
|
Section : |
THE ARTS
|
| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1994 |
1,351 Words |
| Author
: |
Philip Kennicott
Philip Kennicott, based in New York, is a writer on
performance arts. |
The Metropolitan Opera devoted two of its new productions this season to superstar tenors Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, both of whom are celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary with the company. To each was given a little or lesser known opera of Verdi: Domingo undertook the title role in Stiffelio, and Pavarotti sang the lead tenor role of Oronte in I Lombardi aila Prima Crociata. The latter work, the lesser of the two musically and dramatically, is ironičally the better known. It has been produced by the New York City Opera in recent years and has the distinction of being the first of Verdi's operas performed in the United States. Stiffelio, however, was for most operagoers completely unknown. The work has been produced in New York before-by the small New York Grand Opera in 1976-but it has had little exposure since.
Thus both works afforded not only the opportunity to compare two great tenors as they approach their autumnal years, but a rare chance to experience works by Verdi with new eyes and ears. I Lombardi and Stiffelio are both from Verdi's first, youthful artistic period; they are the bookends of along, bumpy period of artistic maturation, a period during which Verdi advanced from being a typically Italian composer of the midnineteenth century to being a universal and international musical voice. They show his mastery of the bel canto framework-his ability to work creatively within it and even to subvert it without ever entirely abandoning its vocabulary.
Perhaps unintentionally, the two productions emphasized the composer's growth from conventionality to originality. Director Mark Lamos, an American making his Met debut, emphasized the formal regularity of the earlier work, I Lombardi, letting its rather four-square succession of massed choral scenes, arias, and ensembles play itself out without hindrance or elaboration. The directorial hand was so understated, at times, that one sensed Lamos' conception of the work was rather as an oratorio or a concert with costumes. In contrast, Giancarlo del Monaco, the director of Stiffelio, took a much more rigorous-and effectivetheatrical approach.
To be fair, the two directors were given very different resources with which to work. l Lombardi has a typically Byzantine plot that like so many poor librettos is simply a framework for a set of stock emotional confrontations. The libretto, by Temistocle Solera, is based on a poem by Tommaso Grossi. It follows the conflict and resolution of two brothers, Pagano and Arvino. The former covets the wife of the latter, and in attempting to steal her by force he kills his own father. In penance, Pagano becomes a hermit
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
