ARTS
Poor wicked Venice
More questions should be asked about the origin of the fire at La Fenice, says Rupert Christiansen The press coverage of the destruction of Venice's opera house, La Fenice, burnt out in mysterious circumstances last week, is beginning to grate. Do I detect a certain Schadenfreude in the way the news has been so widely splashed — a certain gloat- ing over the latest humiliation visited on opera, that most presumptuous dowager of culture's ancien regime?
I am also getting sick of hearing Vera Stravinsky's casual remark to the effect that the Fenice was 'the most beautiful the- atre in the world' reported as if it was somehow canonical; didn't she remember the Maryinsky, and what about the San Carlo in Naples or the new Glyndebourne come to that? (By the way, the interior was not, as reported in the Guardian, scarlet and gold, but pink and green.) Then we have to put up with the nauseating wails of Pavarotti and Domingo, beating their breasts over the charred corpse as they continue their Homeric slug-out. Pavarotti wants to give a fund-raising recital in the Piazza San Marco, Domingo (when .did he ever condescend to appear at La Fenice, I would like to know) caps that by offering to sing Otello there. More mess, more crowds, more hysteria. Poor Venice, poor wicked Venice.
Which leads me to wonder why the press isn't asking more insistently why and how the fire happened, on a windless night at a time when the surrounding canals had just been dredged. The destruction of the Petruzzelli in Bari in 1991 is now being for- mally investigated, and the general director faces a possibly framed prosecution. It can- not be out of the question that an innocent, accidental short circuit isn't the end of the story. Let's not be sentimental: Italy is par excellence the land of insurance scams, sab- otage, vendettas and corrupt tenders for public works. As John Fisher, the Scots conductor who was the Fenice's artistic director from 1989 to 1993, gnomically put it to me earlier this week, 'There is a very strange series of coincidences involved and some very fortuitous timing. You have to remember too that Venetians are by nature self-defeatist. They don't like straightfor- ward success and solutions. They like disas- ter and they love moaning about it.' Fisher packed his bags because he was sick of the skulduggery, the hopeless daily bickering confusion of the unions and a general director, now also departed, who Proved 'lacking in conviction'. He had done good job in raising the Fenice's perform- ing standards — 'they were rock bottom When I arrived,' he claims — and increas- ing its productivity, but he couldn't do Much about the fundamental problems Which face all Italian opera houses, in par- ticular the 13 major institutions, directly administered by the state, of which the Fenice is one. These are collectively known as the Ente Lirici, and they have recently become something of a political hot potato, since reforming factions would like to see them hived off. Over-manning, over-gener- ous subsidy, corruption, idleness, jobs-for- life and staggering levels of unaccountability are among the symptoms of the disease they suffer from; the only cure in some cases could be total closure. That may not be such a great loss to art, from what I have seen.
The good news was sensibly reported by Marcus Binney in the Times. There seems to be no reason why the prettiest opera house in the world should not live up to its phoenix name and rise again. It's amazing what can be sifted from the debris and how meticulously accurate reconstruction can be. Look at the bombed-out Semper Oper in Dresden, look at what is currently being done to the Liceu in Barcelona, gutted in 1991. Architects may be argy-bargying about the merits of copying what was only pastiche to begin with (the original 1792 interior was itself burnt out and revived in the mid-19th century by the piquantly christened Tranquillo Orsi, which you can almost translate as Sleepy Bears), but there is every likelihood that within two years the fire will have proved a blessing, as the Fenice reopens in radically improved shape, its powdery rococo charms intact.
My own most memorable experience of La Fenice dates back seven years, when one Gianni Tangucci was in charge. He was a mild-mannered man with a remarkable resemblance to Gorbachev, and the wall of his office displayed his photograph embla- zoned with the slogan 'Perestroika per la Fenice'. He was efficient, I gather, and soon moved on to La Scala, but when I met him he was being severely tested by a new production of Donizetti's La Favorita, directed by none other than Pavarotti him- self. The overall result wasn't actually that bad, but what I recall most vividly about the occasion is a bizarre but rather fetching puppet show held in the foyer the after- noon before the premiere. It was entitled Una Favorita, per favore, and its central fig- ure was Big P himself, enduring a series of comic and erotic misadventures with every- one from Julius Caesar to Turandot among the dramatis personae. Signor Tangucci stood by wringing his hands with anxiety: the satire was a little bit risque — suppos- ing the great man got wind of it, and put in an appearance?
Half way through the proceedings, a side door did indeed open. Silhouetted against the darkness emerged the immense familiar figure. Tangucci rushed forward, Pavarotti sat down and was provided with a footstool on which to rest his ganuny leg. We had all been chuckling away, but now a terrible silence ensued. The puppet P, Little Big P, suddenly broke into a ludicrous aerobic rou- tine, to the accompaniment of a famous aria from La Favorita. For at least a minute, we watched the puppet's cavortings in a deathly hush — God knows what the wretched pup- peteers can have thought. Suddenly Big P saw the joke — he must be a bit slow and glorious uninhibited tenorial guffaws, trumpeting squeals and donkey-like bray- ings rent the air. Then everyone else laughed. But equally abruptly, Big P fell silent, and, as if a plug had been pulled out, we stopped again too. It was reminiscent of those stories about waiting to see whether Stalin would pat you on the back or order you a ticket to the Gulag. I can't remember what happened in the end.
The premiere of La Favorita was dogged by the worst scene changes I have ever experienced. They took for ever, and were conducted with an amount of banging and shouting and coming and going which would not have disgraced the Nibelheim. Someone in the stage crew had it in for Big P or perestroika, they said afterwards, and the performance was completely scuppered by a moment of bathos, which may well have been the result of activities in the dirty tricks department. At the climax of he third act, there is a terrific ensemble in which 'the characters severally voice their different feelings'. Old men with beards bring down the wrath of God on malefac- tors, innocent damsels beg for pity, the chorus have a nice old singalong. Enter the tenor — in this case a porky little fellow of unromantic mien in doublet and hose. He promises giustizia or whatever and every- one gasps in a fortissimo of orrore. To prove he means business, he then draws his sword from its scabbard and waves it menacingly. Unfortunately on this occasion, his trusty blade proved to be made of something floppy, and the moment it was brandished heavenwards, it dropped like a, like a well, you know. How we roared. Big P, sit- ting in a box, put his head in his hands. He has never directed an opera again.
Opera in Italy is all too often like that nowadays — the highlight of your evening being an episode of unintentional comedy resulting from a muddle of red tape, incompetence, viciousness and greed, all puffed-up with the vague idea that 'the Italians are wonderful at opera'. Well, I'm not so sure they are — any more than the British are wonderful at making tea. It's not that the Italians are any better at opera than anyone else, it's just that they throw more money at it. I only hope that by the time the curtain rises on the reborn Fenice, the government will have made the stringent reforms necessary to wake the Ente Lirici to reality.
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