VIDEO
November 2003
VERDI: Aida
Gencer, Cossotto; Bergonzi, Colzani, Giaiotti, Pugliese; Orch. & Ch. of the Arena di Verona, Capuana. August 1966. Hardy Classic DVD HCD 4010 (VAI, dist.), black & white, subtitled, 160 mins.
This may be a DVD, but the performance is about singing, singing and singing. The visuals are primitive, partly owing to the technical limitations of filming live opera (and outdoors at that) at the time, and partly because the acceptable traditions of the era included scary blackface, grotesque costumes, and semaphore for acting. Nonetheless, this is spectacular, thrilling vocalism.
Carlo Bergonzi enters, looking like an accountant dressed as an Egyptian for Halloween, and, in magnificent voice, sings a noble "Celeste Aida," full of both power and shading, albeit without the morendo on the final B-flat he often managed at the Met; grandstanding, not subtlety, is the order of the day at the Arena. The camera director manages to miss the vocal entrances of both Fiorenza Cossotto, as Amneris, and Leyla Gencer, as Aida, focusing for long periods on the wrong character. Never mind -- Cossotto is so vivid vocally that you'll think you can see her, and her voice emerges superhuman in its combination of sumptuousness and power. Conductor Franco Capuana keeps things moving along, but it sounds as if he's rushing Gencer through "Ritorna vincitor," not allowing her to get her vocal footing or to contrast her agitated no-holds-barred opening of the aria with the prayer at the close.
After Bergonzi is joined by the sonorous Bonaldo Giaiotti for a stirring temple-scene duet, we move into Act II, where sparks don't quite fly between the two ladies, despite Gencer's impassioned "Pietà ti prenda del mio dolor." It's a tough duet to pull off on a huge stage, since the point is to make Aida feel trapped. The ensuing triumph scene features some really silly pseudo-Egyptian ballet dancing -- by the Kirov Ballet, no less -- followed by Anselmo Colzani's magnificently articulated Amonasro, in which every word has potency. The vast chorus really shines here, as they do throughout, and Gencer pours out Aida's line with unsparing power, suddenly scaling down for one of her breathtaking pianissimos in the midpoint cadenza.
In the Nile scene, Gencer presents an Aida who is a mistress of the grand vocal and physical gesture, regal rather than vulnerable, formidable rather than touching. "O patria mia" is a strong suit, although her unearthly high-C pianissimo eluded her here (she subsequently makes up for it with two stunning floated high As), again perhaps because the tempo didn't give her the opportunity to prepare. Colzani and Gencer really cook in the duet that follows, and, now pumped up, she greets Bergonzi's arrival at the river with a volley of chest tones worthy of Medea. But it is not long before she melts vocally, floating scores of suspended pianos and joining Bergonzi for Verdi singing of the highest order. The tenor ends the scene with a thrilling, uncharacteristically fearless "Sacerdote, io resto a te."
Cossotto's judgment scene is a force of nature, a volcano of sound. In contrast, the lovers' final "O terra addio" is notable for its refinement. The sound is quite good, the orchestra occasionally too prominent (as is the prompter). Some of it may look funny, but wouldn't we love to hear an Aida like this today?
IRA SIFF
STRAUSS: Capriccio
Te Kanawa, Troyanos; Kuebler, Hagegård, Keenlyside, Braun; San Francisco Opera Orchestra, Runnicles. Kultur DVD D2900, 155 mins., subtitled
Dialogue-heavy, no action, no plot -- Richard Strauss's Capriccio was an experiment that shouldn't have worked. Six characters in eighteenth-century Paris debating the balance of words and music in opera while sipping chocolate in a drawing room? It could have amounted to the stultifying operatic equivalent of My Dinner with Andre. But contemporary audiences have embraced this magical, transcendent work.
San Francisco Opera originally mounted Capriccio in 1990, in a John Cox production that originated at Glyndebourne, misguidedly setting it in the 1920s -- a silly conception at odds with the libretto. For the magnificently cast 1993 revival preserved here, SFO kept Mauro Pagano's original drawing-room set but wisely hired Stephen Lawless as director and Thierry Bosquet as costume designer. They returned the story to its proper time period (1775), and the opera to its original luster.
Te Kanawa had waited to take on the Countess, a role she was born to play, until late in her stage career. Her effortless sound elegantly conveys the character's soignée charm, and she is a visual delight as she glides about the stage, in her pannier dresses, with the grace of a swan. (Her final scene, though exquisitely sung, is marred by Lawless's only directorial misstep -- a decision to have the Countess flirt coyly with her Majordomo just before the curtain's fall.) Troyanos is a voluptuous Clairon. By this time her voice had attained a ravishing contralto richness. It's impossible to believe that she was already a terminal cancer patient, and that her death would follow a mere six weeks later.
As La Roche, Victor Braun had lost much of the beauty in his voice (he was nearing sixty), but he sings the role with great depth of feeling. David Kuebler and Simon Keenlyside, as the verbally-jousting composer and poet, are a virile team, with Kuebler showing a particularly appealing timbre. Håkan Hagegård brings lyricism and style to the Count, and veteran tenor Michel Sénéchal's cameo as the prompter is a special treat. Fluid, responsive conducting by Strauss specialist Donald Runnicles makes the moonlit orchestral interlude before the final scene almost unbearably moving.
In the right hands, Strauss's final opera can emanate the kind of near-mystical glow shared by such earlier successes as Der Rosenkavalier and Ariadne auf Naxos. Performances such as this one helped earn Capriccio a place in the standard repertory.
ERIC MYERS
NOVEMBER ON-LINE EDITION OF OPERA NEWS
Anna Moffo in RAI film of La Sonnambula, 1956; check the fine print on EMI's Rostropovich recital DVD (hint: Vishnevskaya bonus tracks); Teatro Carlo Felice's 2000 outing of Verdi's Jérusalem.
OPERA NEWS, November 2003 Copyright © 2003 The Metropolitan Opera Guild, Inc.