Opera Chic

Veni[ce], Vidi, Vici: Going for Baroque in La Serenissima with Olivier Cavé

Swiss/Italian pianist Olivier Cavé, class of 1977, was in Venice last week to play J.S. Bach concerti/capricci under Teatro La Fenice's gilded Sale Apollinee, hosted by the Associazione Culturale Italo-Tedesca Venezia and the Goethe Institut.

A decade ago, Cavé's first DG CD dropped with Beethoven, Schubert, Scarlatti and Schumann and he's since flipped to Aeon with two CDs -- D. Scarlatti's Naples echoes and Clementi's footsteps across Rome. For his third, Cavé throws la Serenissma a curveball -- J.S. Bach's Italian moments musicaux called, “Nel gusto italiano – Concerti, Capriccio e Aria”.

After Tiepolo-&-Tintoretto-tinted dreams, we met Olivier Lexa, the young artistic director for the Venetian Centre for Baroque Music, who gave us a tour of the ornate Sala della Musica at the chiesa dell'Ospedaletto/Santa Maria dei Derelitti (above).

We visited Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore with its il Veronese masterpiece in the Cenacolo Palladiano (above) and its insane, new library (below), a former residence hall of Benedictine bros.

In retracing Wagner's footsteps across the city, we headed to Palazzo Fortuny for an exhibition on the German Romantic conductor's influence in visual art (like the Antoni Tapies oil on canvas below), which runs through April 8.

Lastly, we kicked our library fetish into high gear with a visit to the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana Venezia where Cavé navigated facsimile scores of D. Scarlatti's harpsichord sonatas and Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea lovingly cradled in red grosgrain cushions.

 

*Pulls back hair, unzips Chanel, kicks off YSL Tributes* Now why don't you join us beneath the cut for more of OC's personal photos? 

Dresden to Venice: Bach to Bach with Olivier Cavé

 

OC returned from Dresden to Milan just long enough to repack her LV duffle and polish her Hermes riding boots for Venice (indispensable under Dresden’s pure snow and now under Venice’s grey rain). After a week of Wagner’s rich Romanticism (and his sparkling Donizetti-lite/bel canto splendor of Palermo-set Das Liebesverbot), we craved a dose of Baroque and found ourselves last night at Teatro la Fenice’s Sale Apollinee for a warm, intimate piano recital – Olivier Cavé in a well-rounded program of J.S. Bach (and a Scarlatti bis) in the Vivaldi and Marcello brothers transcriptions.

The Italian-Swiss pianist, in a well-cut Dolce & Gabbana dark grey suit (we plied him about Scarlatti with a side of Italian men’s fashion, post-recital), narrated an evening of Bach’s life (in fluent Italian) and half a dozen concerti, a soloist-as-tour guide.

Under such an opulent setting of pistachio, gold-leaf and twinkling chandeliers, it’s difficult not to fall in love with such polished fingerwork and warm, round, sonorous phrases. Bach’s precision has a great underbelly of romanticism and needs an interpreter who doesn’t exploit the sentimentalism.

Cavé’s Bach moved along at sparkling paces, driven and elastic through arching legato, but was never muscular. Bis, x3, was Cavé’s old friend Scarlatti – a modified tempi turned the Neapolitan composer’s sonata into a lullaby, which recycled through our head as we drifted over Venice’s canals and bridges in a post-recital haze. Cavé’s been dedicated to Scarlatti for more than a decade after launching a 2004 DG disc Reflexions with Scarlatti (and Beethoven, Schubert & Schumann) and the Scarlatti lullaby was all heart & homage.

Today we’re off to explore more of this magical, marshy city’s Baroque treasures – Vivaldi and Mozart with a side of Bach.