Santa Fe recently debuted Philip Gossett's new critical edition/world premiere of Maometto II in a new production by David Alden. The world's greatest Italian opera scholar schooled the Santa Fe Opera -- including bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni as the lead and soprano Leah Crocetto as Anna -- on Rossini's 1820 tale of a Turkish sultan's siege of the Venetian colony Negroponte, full of slaughter, suicide and everything in between.
Philip Gossett, Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Music, Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago, officially retires tomorrow (they're throwing him a huge bash for him -- so big that Joyce Di Donato and Vivica Genaux are singing in his honor -- more on that later), but in no way is he taking a break from music, thankfully, an expert on Italian opera who has worked decades preparing critical editions from Puccini to Rossini, author of Divas and Scholars, which has just been published into Italian.
He exclusively tells Opera Chic that the Metropolitan Opera, with Maestro Muti, called on his expertise in preparing the critical edition of Verdi's Attila that Muti is using.
Gossett collaborated with fellow scholar Helen Greenwald of the New England Conservatory for a new critical edition of the score. Riccardo Muti and Gossett are longtime collaborators, since Muti's Scala years, and the Italian maestro has been exceedingly helpful and receptive -- enjoying immensely the new treasure. He explained to OC:
"The Attila edition is very nice: this is an opera that was badly re-orchestrated in the late nineteenth century to take out several of its more characteristic elements, and we have restored Verdi's original orchestrations. Under Muti's baton, the orchestra sounds simply splendid: a chamber-music quality everywhere. [...] We make available, for the first time, all the pieces he added to the opera in later years."
One of the world’s most awesome opera professor and musicologist, Philip Gossett, touched down in Milan for a nanosecond to celebrate the Italian translation of his 2006 award winning book, "Divas & Scholars", our go-to reference for everything on Italian opera. And let's face it: What's cooler than a book about Italian opera being translated into Italian? (Alex Ross did it, too, with "Il resto è rumore", although his had noticeably less Donizetti, Puccini, Verdi & Rossini.) The Dive & Maestri launch was organized by Italian publishing house, il Saggiatore, at Auditorium G. Verdi di Milano (photo above) with handfuls of Gossett groupies on hand, young and old.
Gossett was joined by author Franca Cella (who told us how Gossett became ~The Gossett~ that we know & love) and Armando Torno of Corriere della Sera (who read excerpts from the book). Discussed was the importance of critical editions of opera manuscripts, enjoyed by musicians, critics, singer, audiences and conductors. Gossett also insisted that it's in bad faith to hold recordings up as infallible sources, and it's fundamentally flawed to judge singers by who or who didn't reach that high B-flat or C -- because recordings are pastiches set forth by the recording industry, laden with heavy cuts and edits and are nowhere near what the composer intended or actualized with the score. Melba's Lucia, anyone?
We're so digging Dive & Maestri's cover image: a shot from (Opera Chic favorite) Graham Vick's minimalist Verdi's Macbeth for Teatro alla Scala from the late 1990s, originally conducted by Maestro Riccardo Muti. The Italian conductor even used Vick's iconic production to backhandedly smack Zeffirelli in 2006 for his new Aida that opened Scala's 2006/07 season (with the famous Alagna walk-off). He even spoke to La Stampa about it, which OC translated here: "He [Muti] waxes nostalgic about the simple staging of operas. He [Muti] fondly remembers his own Macbeth, directed by Graham Vick, “'where we just had one large cube on the stage, and nothing else.'”
It's sometimes quite difficult to convince an audience numbed by countless Barbieri di Siviglia that Rossini's opera seria is actually what the cool kids are listening to; and more powah to Caramoor's 13th season of Bel Canto series (part of the annual International Music Festival in Katonah, NY) to awaken our purer Rossinian sensibilities with the critical edition of Semiramide, one of the Italian composer's grandest opere serie.
Coupled with Semiramide, Caramoor's 2009 Festival offered Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, another bel canto stunner, conducted by Will Crutchfield and the Orchestra of St. Luke's. But OC was really looking forward to the critical edition of Semiramide, painstakingly studied and prepared by University of Chicago professor & musicologist Philip Gossett (maximum scholar of Italian opera, the general editor of Rossini's and Verdi's critical works, and recipient of the prestigious Cavaliere della Gran Croce). Gossett restored a major cut to Semiramide: the dramatic death scene where the Babylonian princess meets her fate near the finale of the 3.5 hour opera (which was originally added by Rossini for a Paris revival). I mean, after listening to the story about a woman who kills her husband so she can rule as queen and then falls in love with her son, it's nice karma payback.
Through the driving rain that marked the northern pilgrimage to Katonah and the (ew ew ew) muddy floor of the 1700-seat Venetian Theater (really just a glorified, outdoor stage covered by a huge white tent), Caramoor's submissive (and markedly waspy) audience became rather enthused as Semiramide ignited the air and brought all the juicy pathos that we cherish in opera. Via Crutchfield, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, and a cast of excellent singers, the beauties of the score were flawlessly embraced, and the art of bel canto flourished.
The cemeterial, empty worship of dead singers and dead conductors and the adoration for the good old times that might or might not have actually been that good in the first place, together with the YouTube reviewers is one of the most fascinating phenomena in opera -- and probably the creepiest. Historically awesome productions must therefore, to follow the cult of the past, considered de facto lame because, say, Montsy or Claudione or whomever is not there anymore, and the past is always king (for some).
That's why among the more dogmatic Scalagoers the revival of Luca Ronconi's staging of Il Viaggio a Reims was by definition A BAD THING -- because it was once staged with greater musicians on the stage and in the pit.
OC's reaction to all that? She went twice (the premiere before Easter and the seconda rappresentazione after it). And she even liked it more the second time, imperfections and all (because opera is livelier and cooler and, frankly, more alive on a stage than on YouTube or in someone's cranky, possibly unreliable memories)
Rossini's legendary Coronation opera, the last Italian opera he inked (although we hear a revival in Le comte Ory -- one of the four, subsequent French-language operas Rossini stamped before he died), was originally commissioned to celebrate the 1825 coronation of King Charles X in Reims.
Viaggio a Reims is a demanding work, requiring 14 soloists (three sopranos, one contralto, two tenors, four baritones, and four basses culminating in a "Gran Pezzo Concertato" for 14 voices), and to stage coherence amid so many voices and Rossini's sometimes insensitive, comical undertones is a daunting task. There's also the multifaceted chorus, and the entire army of Charles' coronation party. But director Luca Ronconi's direction was sparkling with just one intermission (coming almost 2 hours into the production), and the 3+ hour opera seemed to last only a fraction of the running time.
Ronconi's legendary directorial premiere of Viaggio a Reims was in Pesaro for the 1984 Rossini Opera Festival, which was the first time it was heard with the rediscovered cuts & reconstruction, meticulously prepared by musicologist Janel Johnson & professor/musicologist Philip Gossett in the 1970s. The same production has been resurrected a handful of times: In 1985 at La Scala (again with Claudio Abbado); in the early 1990s at Pesaro & Ferrara for Rossini's bicentennial; and in 1999 for the Rossini Opera Festival (this one boasting Daniele Gatti leading our lamby prince, Juan Diego Florez ). Director John Cox tried for Covent Garden in the 90s, as did James Robinson for the New York City Opera, but none could adequately compete with Ronconi's perpetual exposition...not even Dario Fo's excellent (but politicized & liberally adapted) version for the Finnish National Opera in 2003.
How lucky for O.C. that she didn’t have to travel back
in time and enroll herself in college again just to hear the world’s foremost expert
on Italian opera, Dr. Philip Gossett (Jr, jr) do his thang. So no time travel
in the DeLorean back to University of Chicago, where Uncle Phil currently lectures as the Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor of Music…that is, when
he’s not traveling around the world, researching centuries-old scores in
guarded tombs, compiling critical editions -- we like to call him the Indiana Jones of classical music. And with the possible exception of the latest issue of Vogue Nippon, of Lorenzo Da Ponte's Memorie, and Hans Werner Henze's autobiography, there's no book more often present at Opera Chic's bedside table than Gossett's "Divas
& Scholars".
Milan’s
Conservatorio di musica “G. Verdi” (you know, the ones who didn't accept young Giuseppe because he had apparently flunked his admission test, a slight he never ever forgave, and probably rightly so) wooed the elusive Herr Doktor as oratore for their weekend-long conference, which is the fourth & final
stop of a 6-month touring conference, organized for the 150th anniversary
of Giacomo Puccini’s birthday. The conference circuit spanned from Milan (where he studied and lived for many years and worked) to Lucca (where he was born) to Torre del Lago (where
he lived & built his villa), and brought in experts from every field to
discuss all things Puccini. Philip Gossett treated the audience to a hour-long
discussion, all in Italian language, on his vast work in the critical editions of
Puccini’s manuscripts.
With a Steinway to his back, Gossett highlighted
many musical examples by sight-reading passages with a theatrical flair. Gossett explained all the variables that go into common, accepted versions of scores being passed around, and how even stylistically, alterations to the original scores were done simply to ease certain interpretations, to adapt them into something that's generally considered more agreeable to the ear. One cool example that particularly caught OC's attention? In the opening notes of Puccini's Madame Butterfly overture, for example, the composer noted the violins with much less connectivity and legato, diverse from the way we've come to know it today.
Puccini had different phrasing, implementing a disconnected, staccato notation, which carried a much heavier, drowsier sense -- a sense of doom, of impending disaster. And frankly more modern -- much less "classical" -- to our 21st Century ears. But the legato simply was the way it was marked in the Ricordi version, and thus becomes the standard.
OC deems Philip Gossett a scholar worthy
of his rock star status, as he wooed the audience and panel alike. After his presentation,
he fielded a spontaneous Q&A session, also in Italian language. Young and
old stepped up to the microphone, praising the doctor for his work.
Another highlight of the conference was the work
of Ms. Gabriella Biagi Ravenni, President of Centro studi Giacomo Puccini, who
displayed many of Puccini’s handwritten letters to his family, which were
written in a very curious style. Young Puccini was terribly poor -- a Bohemian, really -- and therefore would only buy postcards to
write to his family so he could save on postage rates. Because of space
confinements, he would actually write his letters in two directions:
first in a normal horizontal way as this post is written, but then he
would write over it vertically.
Today's Corriere della Sera -- not online -- in a review under the headline "The Two Abbados Mesmerize Pesaro With Ermione" -- cheers Roberto Abbado's conducting of Rossini' Ermione at Rossini Opera Festival -- the awesome Pesaro musical institution -- the other night.
Conductor Roberto Abbado earns a "bravissimo" from Corriere's critic and his cousin Daniele Abbado (Claudio's son), the director, adds, in Corriere's words, "a pinch of madness" to the production. Ermione gets relocated to Weimar-era Berlin with a bonus -- a final "procession of masks, a chaotic, Dyonisian humanity". Propsicles to the lead, Sonia Ganassi, to Marianna Pizzolato and the unsinkable Gregory Kunde ("even if he has shown signs of fatigue towards the end", writes the paper).
Opera Chic -- a Rossini lover who could easily spend the rest of her life without going to see another Barbiere -- Marinuzzi's old veto still makes a lot of sense -- has a weakness for Rossini's opera seria, and it's really lame that such a genius of tragedy has been sentenced by Fate to be remembered as opera's silly funnyman -- it's a shame that many works, written in Italian, that gave scholars a better understanding of Rossini's opera seria achievements -- works, among others, by the essential Bruno Cagli and by Paolo Isotta -- have never been translated into English.
Anyway, patriotic as always, OC is happy to report that the USA answered to this Italian invasion of Rossini scholarship with an all-American heavy hitter -- thank heavens for our dear Uncle Philip Gossett aka Il Professore aka The Dark Knight Of The Critical Editions -- he's Cavaliere di Gran Croce of the Italian Republic, yo. His "Divas And Scholars" latest book is a constant -- as authoritative as it is massive -- presence on Opera Chic's desk, right next to her pile of magazines (the latest issues of Vogue Nippon and Russian Elle & vintage copies of Egoïste for reference), her framed portrait taken by Terry Richardson, her Pettinaroli personalized stationery and her MacBook Air.
Anyway, enjoy one of OC's favorite Ermione, the smoky Bulgarian sultriness of Alexandrina Pendatchanska:
Big hugs to our dear Uncle Phil, aka Cavaliere di Gran Croce Philip Gossett, Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Music and in the College at The University of Chicago, whose new critical edition of La Forza del Destinohas just been shown to the public for the first time in a semistaged tryout, with dear Takesha Meshé -- an Opera Chic discovery, bYoptches! -- as Leonora.
