Edinburgh Music
Italian operatic rarities
Rodney Milnes
It was something of a risk for the Edinburgh Festival in invite the Teatro Massimo from Palermo with three early romantic operas that depend largely on extremely careful, if not lavish, production to make their full effect. If it did not entirely pay off, the works themselves, written within thirty-one years of each other, will never (please God) be given full-scale productions by cne of our native companies, and are therefore fair festival game.
The plot of Bellini's La Straniera (1829) is concerned with that romantic standby, the young man who on the eve of his wedding becomes infatuated with a mysterious stranger. This time it is no Sylphide or Naiad, but a sort of morganatic Queen of France who has taken to wandering around rocky places in perilously high heels, pearl nail varnish and a black balaclava. The locals very properly take he r for a witch, but her trial for murder falls flat when the victim (ner brother, by the way) turns up to give evidence for the defence. When the hero discovers he is in love with a queen, he stabs himself.
All this to Bellini's tasteful, throughcomposed aria/arioso. Much has been written of the classical purity of his vocal writing, but it is so damned pure that it seldom goes out and gets anywhere dramatically speaking. If produced, conducted and sung with the utmost taste and sensitivity, this farrago might possibly work today, though I doubt it. There was probably little left of the seven-year-old production by Mauro Bolognini, a film director noted for his authentic period reconstructions. The chorus wandered aimlessly and fidgeted amidst wan sets. Renata Scotto, the strange queen herself, is a fine singer, but one whose tone is apt to become shrill under pressure in a fashion ill-suited to Bellini's limpid line, and her prima-donna posturing, together with some extravagant arm gestures which suggested she has been to master classes by Anja Silja, did not convince. Only the bass Enrico Campi seemed to know how to stand and move on a stage.
Taste and sensitivity were not much in evidence in Attila (1846), but they are not really required. This is full-frontal early Verdi, wham-barn-comic-strip take it or leave it, and that is the sort of performance it got. I took it. Sets and costumes were Cinecitta mediaeval but carried through with complete conviction: even Attila's hordes were racially differentiated — I presumed those with Fu Manchu moustaches were Huns while those without were mere Ostrogoths. It would have been nice if the Huns had watered down their Hunnish make-up before turning up as a chorus of Christian hermits (a chorus of hermits?), if one of the hymn singing virgins who halt Attila in his tracks had not popped a sweet into her mouth in midverse, and if the stage management had not wandered into Attila's tent to draw the curtains. If this gives some idea of the rough-and-readiness of the staging, it is to ignore the singing, which was superb. Ranato Bruson as the shifty Roman general Ezio produced line, tone and control such as I have never before heard, and Ruggero Raimondi in the title role was not far behind. Maria Parazzini, deputising for an ailing prima donna, was the Odabella, a Verdian virago worthy of Lady Macbeth and Abigaille; she hurled herself at the Act 1 aria and cabaletta with tremendous effect, and when, poor dear, she got hopelessly lost in the final trio she received neither sympathy nor help from the conductor, Nino Sanzogno, but plenty of the former from me. Only the tenor, Bruno Prevedi, let the side down by singing double fortissimo, none too pleasingly, throughout.
Rossini's Elisabetta, Regina d'Inghilterra (1915) is, to be blunt, a load of old rubbish. The music, written to dazzle Neapolitan audiences with vocal display, is matched in its triviality only by the plot. This tells of Elizabeth's wrath on discovering that her favourite Leicester has secretly married a crofter's daughter while campaigning north of the border. The latter turns up in Whitehall in drag and with a group of hostages, who entered here in scarlet tights, tartan bonnets and carrying elephant trophies, which caused something of a stir. Dizzy heights of operatic lunacy are reached in a prison cell with more doors than the average Feydeau farce.
Rossini, a shrewd judge of his own music, hollanderised the best bits for The Barber, missing out only with the Queen's last aria ' Bell'alme generose,' which has now appeared in La Fille Mal Gardde. The chorus confirmed their growing reputation for ill-discipline by chatting during the Queen's first aria (courtiers have been beheaded, for less) and having a jolly good laugh when one of their number nearly lost her hat. Production was confined to singers entering, gazing with justifiable amazement at the sets, and turning out front to sing. A dispiriting evening.
Music theatre of a far more substantial nature came from The Fires of London. Their single appearance at the Haymarket Ice Rink was a sell-out — more next year, please. Supporting pieces by Birtwistle and Bruce Cole seemed pale, academic almost, next to Maxwell Davies's own, and threw the unique power of his musico-dramatic vision into sharp relief. The main item was his 'Eight Songs for a Mad King.' While my admiration for William Pearson's white-hot, super-neurotic performance is unbounded, it is an indication of the work's strength that one can imagine it being interpreted in a more restrained, inward way without it losing anything of its mesmerising quality. Certainly, the composer's prediliction for parody ard 'thirties dance rhythms, which sometimes gives cause for worry, is here triumphantly vindicated.
The arrival of the Berlin Philharmonic was eagerly awaited. They are strong in every department, but the incandescent string playing and smooth horn tone stand out. The inimitable Karajan gave his Eroica Symphony in every way a titanic interpretation, as prone to disaster as it is mighty. The still small voice: why can't ' great' conductors just leave great music alone, let it speak for itself? Berg's Three Pieces Op. 6, the most modern (1915) work that Karajan conducts, I fancy, showed the band off to perfection. Earlier in the festival, there was a performance of the Brahms Requiem under Barenboim in full romantic flood which is fading fast from memory, but not nearly fast enough.
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