Foto: Teatro Carlo Felice Genova
Suzanne Daumann
It is always interesting
to be there for the first performance of a contemporary work. The opera that
was born tonight, however, was a somewhat bastardly child. Based on a
Neapolitan farce from 1880 which has been made into at least two movies
already, the libretto was not exactly contemporary, and Marco Tutino is well
known for his neo-romantic music that uses the tonal language of the romantic
movements of the past. Librettists Luca Rossi
and Fabio Ceresa transferred the action to the third of June 1946. On that day, Italy voted a
referendum to determine if the country was to be a monarchy or a republic. By
no means did this mean that we were to assist a political satire or a work of
some depth. We were to assist the unfolding of a rather pathetic spectacle. The
texts displayed a banality that we thought banned since the Nazi
sentimentalism; the music was freely borrowing from the late 19th and early
20th century repertoire, squeezing every quote and theme until its total
exhaustion, with a marked preference for the style of Puccini. Unlike composers
such as Stravinsky or Shostakovich, who used the music of the past as food for
thought and ultimately created something new, Tutino sticks to citing musical
banalities. All this was rather heavy; one was also tempted to contemplate the
concepts of misery and nobility in the light of what we saw and heard: lots of
artistic misery here and little nobility. The story is about a
young couple who want to get married. Gemma is a dancer and her fiance Eugenio
is the son of a somewhat libertine prince who runs after Gemma himself. Gemma’s
father, Don Gaetano, would like to meet the prince and expects him for dinner.
The prince, however, will never accept what he considers a mis-marriage for his
son. The lovers convince Eugenio’s former schoolmaster, Felice Sciosciammocca,
to impersonate the prince at the dinner party. Felice is out of work and raises
alone his son, making him believe that his mother has gone to America in search
of work. In truth, she has given in to the prince’s pursuit just once, in order
to make him reinstate Felice in his job. Now she is Don Gaetano’s cook. She has
met her son on the square and takes him with her to the workplace. When the
true and the false prince meet, the truth will unfold also about her and her
motivations and the family will be reunited. The first act was played
out in a poor quarter of Naples; we saw people in their houses, working on
building sites, children playing… The destructions of the war were still
visible and the people were miserable and hungry. The choir was singing an
enumeration of culinary specialties, now unavailable. In the background, a
young couple were cradling their baby, another couple arrived, obviously rich
and well-dressed, and took the baby away. Now, we were certain that the authors
of this show were shying away from no cliché… For Act II, we found
ourselves in the mansion of Don Gaetano, where we could see at the same time
the kitchen and the dining room. Just like in Act I, this dollhouse-like
scenography was quite charming, even though it was just as conventional and
self-complacent as the whole show. The work had been
announced as an opera buffa, but the sentimental element was largely
overrepresented; the two jokes that survived from the original farce used
exactly the same schema and drew only very moderate laughs. For a comedy to
function, it needs a vivacious dramaturgy and a fast tempo. Here, every scene
took its time and more…The cast had some
difficulty to be heard, Francesco Cilluffo conducted very enthusiastically. The young lovers,
mezzo-soprano Martina Belli (Gemma) and tenor Fabrizio Paesano (Eugenio), were
a bit strained in the forte passages. Valentina Mastrangelo, Bettina, had a
sweet and cristalline soprano, a bit shrill in the forte however. The baritones
were better off: Alessandro Luongo as Felice Scisciammocca was quite credible,
Alfonso Antoniozzi was Don Gaetano and almost stole the scene thanks to his
warm and powerful voice and strong stage presence. A pity that Don Gaetano
didn’t have to be more present. Andrea Concetti, bass, played the Prince of
Casador, Eugenio’s father, with finesse and abandon. Tenor Nicola Pamio was
credible and even a bit funny in the role of the drunken valet. Mezzo-soprano
Francesca Sartorato played Pepiniello, Felice’s son, and brayed her lines very
creditably. All in all, it was an
evening that proved once more that opera as an art form is dead, and that
trying to revive it this way is paramount to smearing make-up on a dead body
and making it dance like a puppet.
