Gioachino Rossini - Tancredi / Barcellona, Takova, Gimenez, Spotti, Frizza, Pizzi (Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino)

Rossini is best known for a delightful long list of Comic Operas; less well known is the Rossini of Opera Seria. Of the several that I've seen, heard on radio or on recordings, Tancredi is on the top of the list. The present DVD recoding of the Florence May Festival of 2005 is a most satisfactory presentation of this masterpiece. Two of the singers are in really good voice and can handle the difficult and complex Rossini line. Daniela Barcellona as a mezzo in a "pants" role of Tancredi handles the music very well and has a deep rich voice to boot. To me the best singing was delivered by Raul Gimenez as Argirio one of the leaders of the Sicilian city of Syacuse and father of Tancredi's beloved Amenaide. All the rest of the cast are quite good. The production is quite modern but very well done and works well with all the scene changes demanded here. It was really pleasant to see a modern stageing work so well after so many recent disasterous productions in the "modern" mode. The orchestra under Riccardo Frizza worked very well with true Rossini verve and delightly lithe Rossini aound. The plot is fairly conventional; little more than a backdrop for the coloratura singing. A very good recording with a true sad, if not tragic ending. One of the most rewarding Rossini operas as far as I'm concerned

We have not had Daniela Barcellona (except for 2 performances of an ill-fated Norma at the Met)in this country. Any fan of Rossini and spectacular mezzo singing will not want to miss this DVD. And the production is spectacular-no Euro trash!

Mosè in Egitto presents at least two problems that seem insurmountable. One is that the plot may be too silly to succeed on stage: the biblical events do not lend themselves to a theatrical representation, and the added non-biblical subplots are comically incongruent with the mood of the biblical narrative, are poorly developed and are unsatisfactorily resolved. The other problem is that this work has an unequivocally religious message, one of salvation of the people of Israel by God, emphatically so in act III, and directors today are uncomfortable with any straightforward expression of sincere religious sentiment (they have no problems with full frontal nudity OTOH). The same problem exists with the ending of Puccini's Suor Angelica and the ending of Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco, where directors often contrive to circumvent or suppress the religious elements, sometimes with bizarre results. Additionally, as in the Bible narrative, the plot portrays the Israelites as the good guys who triumph in a climactic uplifting finale whereas the Egyptians just drown in the sea. Any director who expects to be employed, particularly in Europe...well, let's just say this is not a politically correct material.In the case of Mosè in Egitto there is an obvious temptation to update or comment on "current events in the Middle Yeast." Events in the Middle Yeast are on the news all the time, why would I expect a theater director to have anything to say about them that has not already been argued to death by better-qualified parties in more appropriate forums? In the case of Graham Vick's execrable 2011 Pesaro Mosè in Egitto production it was the "Israeli-Palestinian Conflict." Lotte de Beer, the director of the current production is quoted in the attached booklet as saying that we need to tell the stories of all refugees in the Middle Yeast.de Beer enlisted the cooperation of "Hotel Modern", a Dutch theatre company that was founded in 1997 in Rotterdam, and combines visual arts with puppetry, music, film, and the performing arts. The purpose according to de Beer was to overcome the challenges the work presents in uniting the Biblical with the intimate elements. A "Hotel Modern" technical team in everyday clothes is on stage most of the time, intermingling with the singers or attending to a miniaturized set with small puppets. The puppetry business is being captured by a camera and projected onto a huge sphere that serves as a screen in the center of the​ ​stage set, depicting mostly the devastation of war and the plight of refugees. This is mostly distracting.The decision to place the "Hotel Modern" team on stage creates an additional distraction because they don't have a role in the story and ruin any possibility of suspension of disbelief. They turn the singers into puppets, diminishing their humanity and killing any interest or dramatic credibility that remains in the story.During the orchestral conclusion of the opening chorus the lighting changes, the singers freeze in their postures like lifeless puppets. The "Hotel Modern" team leave their miniaturized, videotaped set and start inspecting the singers until they finally give a sign, the lighting changes back and the singers switch back into action. This completely breaks the mood. The konzept is that​ ​the "Hotel Modern" team are god-like figures who control the action. It's obvious that the konzept came into being as a post-hoc solution to the problem of what to do with the "Hotel Modern" team on stage rather than the other way around. Giorgio Barberio Corsetti & Pierrick Sorin's 2007 Châtelet production of Rossini's La Pietra del Paragone (available on the Naïve label DVD's) also used "televisual superimpositions" of a miniaturized, videotaped set in real time, but there they actually integrated the action on stage with the projected videos in a clever way and they did not make the fatal stupidity of​ ​having the production team​ ​intermingle and interact with the singers.This konzept is applied inconsistently: it is not clear why the singers suddenly freeze into "puppet mode" and the "Hotel Modern" team decides to intervene and move the singers around or shape their postures, other than that de Beer feels that the stage action needs spicing up at certain moments. The projected images are also applied inconsistently, probably for the same reasons - they seem to be employed when there is little action, which usually are the musically richest moments. Our director seems to worry that the audience would lose interest without something visually engaging. When the "Hotel Modern" team go back to work on their miniaturized set and create images that are projected, they are sometimes spotlighted in a different lighting than the singers, creating again a distraction and a confusion with 3 competing focuses: the stage action of the singers, the actions of the "Hotel Modern" team and the projected images on the huge sphere.During the act I duet between Osiride and Elcia the singers are on their own, no "Hotel Modern" team and no projections, thus an opportunity to see how de Beer can actually build a scene with no gimmicks. Elcia is carrying some basket and Osiride is directed to act like he is having an adolescent hissy fit with jerky body motions. Osiride escalates, takes off his jacket and proceeds to empty and spread the contents of the basket (which turns out to be a laundry basket) exactly during his fast coloratura vocal excursions in the (by now) tired cliché, common in modern stagings of baroque operas of excusing rapid passagework (a singer vocalizing up and down a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a) as a comic expression of rage or of madness. We thus go from high drama (this is actually a Grand Opera) to low comedy. When de Beer runs out ideas for this duet the lighting changes to the "Hotel-Modern-lighting" and the "Hotel Modern" team shows up to inspect the singers closely, while talking and smirking to each other and taking notes - while the singers sing; then they leave, the singers are on their own in a stand-and-deliver mode; then the video projections return. The presence and actions of the "Hotel Modern" team create an unintentional comic feel to the proceedings. This was noticed by de Beer and in the following scene, a "Hotel Modern" member inspects Elcia closely while she is singing with increasing disapproval, and reaches out to reposition the singer, who moves away at that exact moment. Consequently, the "Hotel Modern" member loses her balance and falls flat on her face. We now descend into circus antics.So in act I it seems that de Beer has not made up her mind whether to play the drama straight or as send-up. There is no method here, it all has an amateurish, embarrassing quality, de Beer has no idea what to do with this material, which is the real reason why she needed the help of "Hotel Modern."In act II it becomes apparent that de Beer settles into a more consistently comic mode on a high-school production level, which is fine and congruent with Rossini's music cheerful mood. The production's various elements are better coordinated - this is the most successful act. In act III the "Hotel Modern" team provides arresting images of the splitting of the sea, but the production's various elements again do not work well together. The expansive, religious mood, starting with Moishe's uplifting prayer is drowned by the other elements; the video projections depicting the plight of refugees take prominence with confusing results.The cast is ok, but undistinguished. This is not the kind of Rossini singing I want to listen to. Young Croatian bass Goran Jurić​ ​singing Moishe has a nice, resonant, full tone through part of the range, but the voice becomes constricted at the top. Young Italian soprano Clarissa Constanzo singing Elcia is pleasing enough and has some reserves of power, but I expect cleaner execution of coloratura throughout the range. I am not inclined to provide a detailed assessment of the singing, because these are young, budding singers and I have more negative than positive observations. I don't think I'm being too harsh - better early career Rossini singers come a dime a dozen. I mean this in a specific sense - Rossini is the bread and butter of young singers. Pick any Rossini DVD or performance in any provincial venue and you will hear higher coloratura standards and better style. I don't think it's too much to expect from any opera singer an idiomatic, crisp Italian. A reasonably attractive tone throughout the range would also be appreciated, rather than a quacking duck timbre. However, the singers here are good enough to allow the beauty of this score and Rossini's genius to shine through. The sound engineering is much superior to that of the execrable 2011 Pesaro release on Opus Arte: where the voices had no body or resonance there, they have body and impressive resonance here, as well as amplitude (the audio is not compressed), which makes this release somewhat enjoyable. Conductor Enrique Mazzola is considered a Rossini specialist: I heard no evidence of that here, though I have no specific complaints.

Very good 2005 version of very good opera.

How much do you listen to Rossini?What take do you make to using the Bible as a foundation to tell a different story?

This is a very balanced production of Tancredi with excellent singing throughout. The production style is very generic, but artistic and certainly not eurotrash.