The Montpellier Festival remained true to form this season in seeking out rarely heard repertoire for its concert presentations. This year's festival opened on July 13 with the French premiere of Bellini's Zaira. Written to a libretto by Felice Romani and based on a tragedy by Voltaire, Zaira is the fifth of Bellini's ten operas. Like many bel canto works, the piece needs great singing to lift the music off the page. Montpellier cast the opera carefully, with rising soprano Ermonela Jaho in the title role, and the Montpellier orchestra and the Latvian Radio chorus under the sure and energetic baton of Enrique Mazzola.

After a rather slow-moving first act, the work comes to life in its second half, with timeless cantilena reflecting the composer's consistent quest to express drama through bel canto lines. It is puzzling that the work has not found contemporary champions. The story of the Christian Zaira, her love for Sultan Orosmane, a Muslim, and the ensuing political and emotional struggles would surely be grist for the modern stage director's mill.

Jaho remains problematic in this repertoire. Her grand style and her molding of the bel canto lines is admirable, the coloratura clean and the top of the voice constantly secure, but there is an invasive vibrato in the middle of the voice and a growing stridency at the top of the staff when under pressure. That said, she carried the evening with authority, and the festival audience gave her the ovation she deserved.

Her colleagues were admirable, notably the exciting young mezzo Marianne Crebassa in the role of the confidante Flavia. Also welcome were the warm and plangent tones of Varduhi Abrahamyan as the heroine's brother Nerestano, who has one of the best arias in the opera. The sultan Orosmane brought an extraordinary performance from Wenwei Zhang, a baritone who is barely thirty and already has masterful command of his considerable voice. Tenor Shalva Mukeria offered good work as the vengeful Corasmino: his security at the top of his voice was impressive in a difficult virtuoso role. A CD of the performance is to follow.

Ezio was one of Handel's least successful opera serias: it was produced in London in 1729 and performed just five times before being withdrawn. The public in London at the time preferred magic to Metastasio's methods, and were no doubt disheartened by the lack of action in what is essentially a psychological drama, performed in a language they did not understand. In the 1970s, a staged performance by the Handel Society brought about a new interest in the work. The strongly cast performance at this year's Radio France festival under the baton of Attilio Cremonesi was the French premiere of the opera.

Ezio is a somewhat austere opera: it has no ensembles or chorus, but there are concentrated arias revealing human weakness or strength. In the vast unloving space of the Corum in Montpellier it was difficult for the cast of this Ezio concert to create much theatrical atmosphere: a semi-staging in the opera house would have transformed the evening.

The cast was led by Lawrence Zazzo, whose Ezio was a towering performance. The victorious general has some of the best music in the score, and Zazzo's countertenor sounded large and impressive at all times, with a very muscular dramatic approach and impeccable, stylish singing. Verónica Cangemi sang the role of his beloved Fulvia, with whom — after suitably Baroque tribulations — Ezio is eventually united. Her sweet soprano is at its best in soaring moments of elegiac poetry; she did not equal this achievement in moments where a more forthright approach was required, but her big Act II aria was magnificently sung and brought the warmest applause of the evening.

Mezzo Sonia Prina's earthy tones brought genuine dramatic involvement to the Emperor Valentiniano: she seized on her recitatives with dramatic thrust. More score-bound contributions came from the placid but smooth-voiced Kristina Hammarstroem as Onoria and the clear voiced baritone Vittorio Prato in the low tenor role of Massimo. Antonio Abete's bass sounded uncomfortable in the virtuoso role of Varo: his music unfortunately became an ocean of aspirates.

Cremonesi led the excellent Kammerorchesterbasel in a sensitively paced performance but one which lacked crisp attack: there was too much soft-grained articulation, and an obstinately determined bass line did not help bring the performance to life.

The festival ended with streamers and confetti, and a concert performance of Franz Lehár's Friederike, conducted by Lawrence Foster, the new permanent conductor of the Orchestre National de Montpellier. Aside from his Lustige Witwe, the Lehár canon has little currency within the world's opera houses: this 1928 work, based on the love of the poet Goethe for a simple pastor's daughter, is one of the vehicles that Lehár created for the matinée-idol tenor Richard Tauber, who sang the role of Goethe opposite Käthe Dorsch's Friederike at the premiere. The work was never appreciated by the German critics, who balked at seeing one of their cultural icons portrayed as an operetta hero. Lehár was an admirer of Puccini: Friederike has moments of lushly Puccinian romantic orchestration and a bittersweet mix of tears and sentiment, underpinned by the melody of "O Mädchen, mein Mädchen," made famous by Tauber.

At Montpellier, the leading role was taken by Marius Brenciu, whose cleanly focused tenor and keen legato brought authentic style to the music. His metallic timbre is not the most attractive weapon in his arsenal, but his clean projection and articulation were ideal. Equally admirable was tenor Yves Saelens in the secondary role of the luckless Lenz. The women were almost equally good, with Mirjam Neururer as the charmingly spoilt Salomea, and the glamorous Nicola Beller Carbone in the title role of the country girl who sacrifices her love for Goethe to allow the poet pursue his higher artistic destiny. Her soprano rises to an exciting top, but possibly too many heavy roles have made the operetta style more difficult for her to master. All in all, this was a joyous end to the twenty-fifth edition of this valuable festival.

STEPHEN J. MUDGE

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