Death in Venice, Life (?) in Scala Death in Venice (yesterday its second positive after a first spun off as smooth, to judge by listening to Radio 3) is the quintessence of musical theater that never, never could and could not justify the existence of gallery (deadline to be considered in the anthropological sense and do not register; the type curves football stadium, so to speak).
Not even the wildest imagination could imagine the emergence - on the subject: how to interpret Britten? - factions of supporters and relatives of those even remotely fierce and snarling that have until recently tackled on the pavement in front of the Piermarini. Can you imagine a debate between those who praise the purity of the declamation of ' Aschenbach on duty (16 or 18 or 34 notes ... no indication of length) and who complained that the director did not reveal with the fullness of aesthetic putridity channel of Venice? The relief in fact given by newspapers, websites and blogs is that, in sport, reserved to a horse show (maybe with commentary by Albert Joy , riding-cap on his head, at the time) or a polo match ( smile! ) Yet it is an absolute debut at La Scala opera ...
Where the public (last occupant no more than 75% of places available, and what surely must say something ... ) has been listening in silence, applauded only after the officer opened the lights switch the electricity of the theater - otherwise how do you know if the act è finito? – e ha dato mostra di aver gradito lo spettacolo con applausi durati parecchi minuti (anche perché i solisti del coro di Casoni e le altre comparse – decine di persone – si sono presentati alla spicciolata, smile! ) Poi se n'è tornato a casa – non pochi anticipando il rientro già all'intervallo, per la verità - come dopo una messa dei morti, felice per aver fatto un fioretto quaresimale e con lo spirito sollevato perché la prossima messa sarà celebrata solo fra un mese o più ancora. Domanda: quanti rinnoverebbero l'abbonamento, se il cartellone prevedesse 10 opere di questo tipo?
These results bring the progress. Oh yes, because listening to the infamous Tosca, anyone who can not nestle in the head at least three vulgar agreements that open the work, and then reconnect them to the vulgar Scarpia, because every time I return regularly sbifido Sicilian hovers nearby. And never mind if one ignores the fact that extreme between the notes of these three agreements is the distance of diabolus ... With Britten's Death in Venice it is a bit more difficult. Because even here there is - to say, and is just one example - a leitmotif main (if you can call it) work, but deciphering non è propriamente facile, meno ancora riscoprirlo nel seguito, per collegarlo ad eventi, stati d'animo e così via.
Compare per la prima volta accompagnando il verso d'esordio del Viaggiatore , che è il primo di sette diversi personaggi interpretati dallo stesso cantante ( basso-baritono ); personaggi che rappresentano in qualche modo le forze dionisiache che dapprima intaccheranno, quindi mineranno e infine distruggeranno l'apollinea irreprensibilità di Aschenbach. Il viaggiatore misterioso è in realtà un serpente tentatore (nel racconto di Mann, nemmeno parla) che stuzzica la curiosità e poi l'irrefrenabile desire dell'attempato writer with the promise of wonders revealed ( Marvels unfold ). The sing along RE-DO-RE-MI # :
Who Aschenbach, after trying to ignore the stranger, instead falling prey dell'irresistibile desire ( sudden desire for the unknown ) who would like to keep hidden from the public (who must ignore the inspiration of the artist ) but that shines mercilessly by his own hand, precisely borrowed from that of the traveler, RE-DO-RE-MI # :
(Just to complicate things, recited above can be cut - Britten willing - and is cut in this production). The theme actually has something mysterious, is not at all reassuring. In fact, the wonder and the unknown soon manifest themselves for something very wonderful and very sadly little known: the cholera ! It is the music - just search with patience - to explain it clearly, through the tube, which sets the theme ( DO-RE-MI-Eb ) at the beginning of the second act, after the barber has missed the truth; and soon after by the horns, which rise to a major third (F #-G #-MI-SOL) and after a minor third (MIB-FA-SOL-FA #) on the questions of puzzled Aschenbach:
And yet listened to the words on the theme that Aschenbach, wandering around Venice, Act Tagblatt , RE-DO-RE-MI # :
Cases of cholera ! And poor writer, who sees the epidemic as a possible threat to its proximity to the adolescent Tadzio (or, alternatively, is hoping that dry face everyone, except himself and his love ) you want to convince the auto-reverse, singing Ugh! rumors, rumors, rumors ... but right on the notes (transposed) of our theme: first LA-SOL-SI-Bb and then (slightly changed) DO-SI-RE-Db! Final confirmation comes from the accompaniment of low concern and the concern that the epidemic report by the employee of the travel agency, still RE-DO-RE-MI # :
But all this is nothing yet, as we should in the meantime had discovered that the true disease is one that lurks in 'deep I of Aschenbach, and is far more insidious (and just as deadly) epidemic. That's why the theme appears subtly in other circumstances, for example towards the end of the first act, after the writer has given up, helpless, to approach Tadzio and reflects on the fatal desire : So longing passes back and forth Between life and the mind. Different heights (LA-SOL-SI-LA #) points out the reason (in horns, harp and viola) own words life and mind, reality and the spirit, the two polarities (Dionysus-Apollo) including struggles' s I of Aschenbach. And then we hear him again, the same tools, but a semitone lower, while Tadzio passes close to the writer dazed and smiling (!) Finally stripping of all its Apollonian (and hypocritical?) Defenses and throwing it into meal to Dionysus. The issue comes back to bite, just changed at the beginning of the second part, the accompaniment of the piano, when the protagonist notes and rationally / aesthetically tries to justify to himself that his I love you in the last bars of the first part was addressed to Tadzio. Then again, in the tubes during the Dionysian orgy dream, and always in the tube at the time when the adolescent polacchino soccombe al rude coetaneo Jaschiu nella zuffa sul bagnasciuga che precede l'epilogo.
Di questo passo potremmo anche scoprire che di una certa malattia dell'Artista aveva già trattato qualcuno, in un'opera musicale, addirittura 30 anni prima che Thomas Mann venisse al mondo: mettendo in parole e musica baccanali chèz Venus e severe tenzoni canore in quel di Turingia . E comunque, con tutto ciò avremmo solo esplorato la punta di un iceberg , figuriamoci! Aggiungiamo poi che parecchi interrogativi e lati oscuri dell'opera si possono chiarire solo dopo aver letto la novella di Thomas Mann which inspired Britten-Piper, for example, that homosexual pedophiles implications of the affair - although they are so dear to the composer (as the Supreme Luchino ) and employed by theatrical marketing to excite the morbid curiosity of the viewer towards a Final sex tourism - are only one, and perhaps even the most important components of the drama, and that the fund Death in Venice - as Der Tod in Venedig - instead there is a bit of trouble nothing, philosophical and aesthetic-existential, as old as the world.
Considerations for anything new, these means, and in a much more structured product and the theater program, but one should look good for the first to go to the theater instead of scroll quickly in 5 minutes prior to the street, or in the 10 range .
About hall programs, the occasion is distributed to 70% plagiarized - courtesy - from what was commendably produced in 2008 - and is available in web - the Fenice in Venice . Included with the translation of the libretto Renato Pontiggia , but without the valuable exegesis of Daniel Carnini (a pag.41 del citato programma) che qui viene indicato, come revisore del testo, con il nome di Davide Carnivi (ma è solo un imperdonabile errore di stompa , o c'è dietro qualcos'altro?)
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La produzione viene da Londra (E.N.O.) dove nel 2007 ottenne un successo (non incontrastato peraltro) di critica. L'allestimento di Deborah Warner prevede scene minimaliste, ma proprio per questo assai adatte a gestire i frenetici andirivieni Lido-Venezia; ci sono abili giochi di luci per trasmettere sensazioni ed emozioni; efficaci i movimenti delle masse e dei singoli; encomiabili i danzatori della scuola dell'Accademia Scala and all of the Tadzio Alberto Terrible. Personally I feel instead of criticizing the excessive caricature of Aschenbach, presented from the outset not only as an individual plagued by doubts and vague fears of an intellectual nature of the crisis of artistic inspiration, but also as a character in a state of permanent crisis epileptic, always suspicious, surly and at war with everyone and everything. In other words, is so lacking that dramatic crescendo that characterizes the path of the writer towards the 'abyss .
John Graham-Hall (except the aforementioned questionable characterization and actor) showed very well the role of master on the voice: clear and effective expression and depth of sound. On the contrary (it seemed) Peter Coleman-Wright , excellent in offering the seven roles - and diverse - in which it is committed, but a bit 'less vocal on the floor, where he struggled to penetrate the spacious Piermarini. Better than he did the Apollo Iestyn Davies. Among the other performers minor cite Jonathan Gunthorpe, effective use of the travel and Anna Dennis, the woman selling fruit. From the chorus of praise unconditionally Casoni, which is called here, as well as to sing, too to give body and face different humanity that circulates in the hotel and town.
Edward Gardner must be one that knows how to manage an orchestra, judging by the applause arrivatigli the theater, but even more by hole!
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