Opera Chic

Seniority Rules at Opera di Roma's Falstaff

 
(Above: Renato Bruson as Falstaff at Opera di Roma's Zeffirelli production)

Verdi's last opera, Falstaff, was his last opera for a good reason: old dude was in his 80s when he wrote it and he died less than a decade after its premiere (in his regal suite at Grand Hotel Et De Milan).

So it's actually quite fitting that Opera di Roma launched (this past Friday) their 2010 season opener with a Falstaff manned by men in their twilights. The opera house resurrected Franco Zeffirelli's (he's 87-years-old) classic & beloved production, which had already been used nine times since it premiered in 1956.

On the podium, Israeli conductor Ascher Fisch needs to keep track of his star Sir Johns for the run. The lead is being split between four singers: Renato Bruson (at 76-years-old), Ruggero Raimondi (at 69-years-old), Juan Pons (at 64-years-old), and the youngest, Alberto Mastromarino (who ironically doesn't divulge his age).

Renato Bruson sang the premiere with Myrto Papatanasiu (Alice), Carlos Álvarez (Ford), and Laura Giordano (Nannetta). Too bad Leo Nucci is currently here singing in James Conlon's unforgettable Rigoletto for Scala..he coulda been a contender! 

(Above: Bruson with Carlos Álvarez)
 
 

Rome's Traviata (2007) With Gheorghiu, Vittorio Grigolo, Bruson: Good Times

A few clips from that memorable drama-llama "Traviata" in Rome, 2007, when Angela Gheorghiu first got pwnd by Renato Bruson (who, as Germont, brought the house down and gave an encore  -- she, Violetta didn't because the audience didn't seem to want one from her); then Angela, badly dissed by critics, promptly left town (more here).

Renato Bruson: 150 Times Scarpia!

All hail the awesomeness of maestro Renato Bruson who, tomorrow night at Teatro Greco di Taormina, will be Scarpia for the 150th time in his career: the 72-year-old veteran still has it -- replacing the obvious loss of vocal sheen and power with depth, and intelligence, and a charisma rarely matched on today's stage.  

Frengo's "Happy 150th Birthday" To Giacomo Puccini: Martina Serafin Is Tosca, Exactly 108 years After The Original "Prima".

Opera di Roma is about to debut the new Franco "Frengo" Zeffirelli production of Tosca, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Puccini's birth.

Next Monday, Jan. 14, (a super-anniversary: on Jan. 14, 1900, Tosca had its prima assoluta in Rome's Teatro Costanzi) all eyez on Frengo, on conductor Gianluigi Gelmetti, Martina Serafin (Tosca), Marcelo Alvarez (Cavaradossi), and maestro Renato Bruson (Scarpia). (In the photo above, courtesy of Opera di Roma, Serafin and Bruson at the press conference)

Opera di Roma GM Francesco Ernani pointed out in a press conference earlier today that "Since that January 14, 1900, Tosca  has been staged  all obver the world: it is only fair that she comes back to Rome  to start the celebrations for Puccini's 150th birthday".

Maestro Glemetti said that Tosca "is for me a great adventure, Tosca is an icon, with a life of its own, beloved by Italians, Germans, Brits, Americans, Japanese, without distinction of nationality. Tosca truly belongs to all humanity -- she belongs to our hearts".

Tru dat.

All U Evere Wanted To Know About Angela's Walkout, Or Something

This morning, Opera Chic woke up and found her mailbox overflowing with reader's questions about the Angela Gheorghiu Roman fiasco (the electronic mailbox we mean -- the actual mailbox downstairs is overflowing with invitations to fabulous parties, Centurion black AmEx bills, Costume National invitation-only sales, gallery show openings, packages with rare LPs bought on eBay, wine tastings, marriage proposals, etc. [j/k j/k about the Centurion black AmEx.])

The only semi-rational decision, then, is to answer most of the interesting ones here (and the ones we can answer without going to jail), instead of answering privately all our readers who took the trouble to write.

Here we go:

• DID ANYBODY SEE A SECOND GUNMAN FIRE AT JFK FROM THE GRASSY KNOLL?

ha ha/ just playin'. fo'reals starts below vvvv

• WAS BRUSON'S ENCORE  (THE REASON FOR GHEORGHIU'S ANGER & SUBSEQUENT CANCELLATION)  REALLY PLANNED IN ADVANCE?

Ah, the usual question: conspiracy or not? Just like it happened for the Alagna fiasco at la Scala (the question then was: did the loggionisti plan their protest in advance?)! Our (educated, after asking around) guess is this: the applause for Bruson is genuine, the man is very popular, and his long career and his stature are key to the standing ovation he enjoyed. So, the very long ovation is congruent; so many great singers enjoy them here in Italy and elsewhere: it really seems genuine.

But, in all fairness, Gheorghiu's main points -- that 1) encores just aren't done, period, especially by a singer who's not the main character of the opera, and 2) that Gelmetti should have gone ahead with the score instead of leading the orchestra in the dreaded (by Angela) bis -- do indeed make sense. And it's obvious that, had Gelmetti decided so, the encore just would not have happened. Instead, we know for a fact that Gheorghiu received a big surprise there. Having said this, it's highly unlikely -- and frankly way too Machiavellian -- to imagine that Bruson and Gelmetti devilishly egged her on just to make her lose her plot and leave the production. It certainly wasn't the most polite gesture, and complaining about it afterwards, even forcefully, would have made perfect sense on her part. Going so far as to leave her already very short commitment in Rome (just two shows) is, of course, entirely another. As we wrote yesterday, Gelmetti is not big on coddling divas anyway.

• WHY IS THE OPERA DI ROMA SWEEPING THE INCIDENT UNDER THE (RED) CARPET?

Because they don't have anything -- repeat: anything -- to gain from starting a very public beef with Gheorghiu. The production had already lost Alagna and Filianoti, the big emphasis was on Zeffirelli's production anyway (the essentially very traditional -- if a bit tacky -- staging has actually been met with very high interest by other opera houses around the world, so expect to see Frengo's 8th Traviata in an opera house near you very very soon; after all Zeffirelli is still the go-to-guy, even at 84, whenever a General Manager does not want to push the avant-garde button too much and wants to give a classic, old-skool, crowd-pleasing staging to his or her audience).

Gheorghiu -- and this is a paradox, of course -- at least gave them the chance to milk a lot of additional press for la prima. They've been better off with one Angela than no Angela: she knows it, the management knows it. Neither is raising a stink about it -- except of course for the audience who's been showing up the other night expecting Angela and finding another singer instead. Gheorghiu's been smarting enough not to storm off the stage in the middle of a scene the way her husband did in Milan  -- hence ensuring no lawsuits, no worldwide attention. Did she ruin her standing in Rome? Of course. Not that she particularly cares. Are other opera houses around the world worried that her tantrums are getting worse? Of course they are. And that's what leads us to the next question.

• WHAT'S GOING ON AT LA SCALA? SHE'S SUPPOSED TO APPEAR THERE IN TRAVIATA ON JULY 3rd, RIGHT?

That she is supposed to do, yes: it'd be her debut in an opera at la Scala. On May 4 the tickets for that show -- and the replicas -- will be available at la Scala and on their website. Is she going to show up? The good ones (i.e., the ticket scalpers who'd get stuck with a bunch of no-Angela tkts if they buy them in bulk and then she doesn't show up) are probably going to bet against it, at this point. And la Scala, only a week ago, has hired another soprano, Elena Mosuc -- there will be three of them (the third one's Ilvina Lungu, who replaced Angela the other night in Rome, it's a small opera world).

The situation here is very different from Rome: this Traviata, unlike Rome's, has simply not been hyped by la Scala -- whose big sellers, this season, have been the Chailly/Zeffirelli unlucky Aida, the Gatti/Lenhoff Lohengrin, the Harding/Bondy Salome, Barenboim's Eroica and his forthcoming piano recital, the forthcoming Jenufa, and the many Gergiev, Temirkanov, Boulez philharmonic concerts. The Traviata is a July show with a strong cast already (Alvarez, Nucci, Kauffmann), a strong director (Liliana Cavani), a strong conductor (Maazel), strong costumes and sets (Ferretti/Pescucci). The show can take the "hit" of a Gheorghiu defection.

And if, as we all think will happen, the loggionisti will send her a message for her husband, since he didn't leave them the time to, last December, well, la Scala can take it. On the one hand, Gheorghiu -- a tough, tough lady, mind you, certifiably capable of charming the socks off of many men if she decides to amp up the sexy, but whose well-developed contemptous gaze can curdle milk in a few seconds -- is hardly afraid of the loggionisti, that unruly bunch (even if she lacks Callas's superhero-like ability to simply stare them down into submission with that steely gaze of hers). But she may very well decide that it just isn't worth the effort. Especially since a certain Mirella Freni was literally booed off the stage in this theatre when she dared show up and sings "Maria's role". Most people at la Scala we spoke to think that she appreciates the challenge. They also doubt she'll show up.  Officially, nothing has changed: she's committed to the show, and she's supposed to appear sometime in mid-to-late June for rehearsals.         

• WHY U SUCH A H8R??? ANG3LA RAWKS!!!111

Opera Chic is *so* not chugging on the Angela Haterade it isn't even funnay -- we've just been telling our readers what various friends, contacts (one of them called Angela's 1994 turn in the London Traviata "an apparition", so we're not asking Angela-haterz here) and acquaintances have explained to us about her walkout and general behavior, in Rome and elsewhere. OC herself has paid good money last year to see Angela in her la Scala recital, which she has enjoyed (well, not that much, it was just ok). OC thinks Angela is the less talented half of the family, too. But the problem is her behavior AND her recent decline in vocal performance -- in a pretty ruthless business such as opera, you cannot sustain both for long. Just ask Kathy Battle (a much superior artist to Angela to begin with), whose antics were endured by conductors and opera house management as long as her voice remained crystal clear -- as soon as she started to have problems, her behavior became suddendly reason enough to cut her, and she's been (sadly, for us fans) spending time with the rapidly decomposing corpse of her career ever since (we have an awesome Battle Tantrum story we'll share some other time, it's too good to waste as an offtopic aside).

• WHO R U RILLY?

im opera chic. warship me.

There She Goes Again: Why Angela Left

Simply put, she left because she didn't really want to be there in the first place.

Because she felt humiliated by Renato Bruson's encore, an encore that she considers a setup, conductor Gianluigi Gelmetti repeating the aria way too quickly, refusing to either let the applause die down and go ahead from there or simply to barge ahead with the score, using the orchestra to force the applauding crowd into submission. Instead she thinks Gelmetti allowed Bruson to run away with the show.

And because, really, she can leave just like that, with a doctor's note, the way she so often does.

She left because she can and because there was no way she'd go back up there last night singing opposite Bruson, conducted by Gelmetti (who, in fact, does indeed have a reputation for not suffering tantrums lightly).

She's left important productions in important venues for much less, after all.

She stormed off Ravenna Festival's stage, almost ten years ago, a few minutes into her first Pagliacci rehearsal with Riccardo Muti (she had already clashed with Night Porter director Liliana Cavani, a woman of otherwise Vedic calm) -- because Muti corrected her, and suggested Angela did more work on the score. She felt humiliated, and left. Her husband left the production too, just a few days after her, blaming health problems. Riccardo Muti, who prepared the alternate cast in record time, ended in the emergency room -- via ambulance -- just a few hours before la prima, K.O.'d by a renal colic that for all these years people close to the maestro have blamed on the stress caused by the couple's behavior (note to singers felled by random mystery illnesses: Muti asked for a painkiller shot, rested for a few hours in the hospital, then went on to the Teatro Alighieri where he conducted Pagliacci as per his commitment. He never worked with the Gheorghius again).   

Back to Rome's Traviata: her husband -- who, if you listen to the inside talk, in Rome and at la Scala, is the reasonable half of the couple, not to mention the nicer half -- had at least the good sense to cancel without bothering to show up -- well, not exactly: he at least had the good manners to tell Zeffirelli that he'd be available only for two shows, giving Zeffirelli the chance to say no thankx in a relatively painless manner;  then of course Zeffirelli found himself stuck with a Gheorghiu who waited until the last moment to let him that she'd be available only for two shows, too.

At that point Zeffirelli and Opera di Roma management had to suck it up: firing her would just be nuts, they had been hyping the show as a star-heavy production, very likely the 84-year-old maestro's last new staging of Traviata -- this is his eighth! -- and you just don't pull that off in an emergency with a no-marquee-name, young cast, however talented they may be (and indeed Myrto is a talented young singer). Zeffirelli can pull off awesome stuff like his still powerful flower-children Romeo and Juliet, but this Traviata's concept was much different, and it was impossible to shift the staging's focus. They needed Angela, even for two nights only. For her name and for the hype (and yes, her husband's tantrum at La Scala in a way helped -- bad publicity, no publicity etc), and to their credit at Opera di Roma they're not exactly crying crocodile tears -- they pretented to play along with the "Oh, too bad, I'm sick!" thing. They're just like matches: you play with the Gheorghius, you get burned.

Same for la Scala: they cast her knowing fully the extent of her self-admiration and her cancellation-prone record (they hired two alternate sopranos, just in case); it'll be her first opera there (she only had one recital, last year, and of course there was no way she'd appear at la Scala during Muti's Musical Directorship) and la Scala will happily gather the hype (as much hype as you can get in July anyway) that comes together with her name (and her husband's).

Will she pull another stunt? Well, we hear that it's unlikely she'll sing opposite Leo Nucci anyway -- what if la Scala's audience asks him for the encore he never gave in a 40-year splendid career?  (I mean, they love him so much he already led them in a singalong there, wtf!). It'd be the Bruson/Rome fiasco all over again, only 10x worse. So the talk is, she'll sing -- if indeed she'll be there -- opposite the less dangerous Roberto Frontali. And let us hope dear Lorin Maazel keeps his good humor!

Anyway, long post, I know: she left Rome because she knows she can do Traviata in her sleep, at this point. It's her signature role. And she really thinks she sung better, last Friday, than she actually did. Because all those recitals with their yummy fees are taking their tolls on her voice.

Her husband said she cried when he explained her why they called them "the Bonnie and Clyde of opera" -- she hadn't seen the movie.

One hopes she has seen All About Eve , at least.

Gheorghiu Pulls An Alagna, Leaves Rome In A Huff: "Imattahere!!!"

*BREAKING NEWS*

Angela Gheorghiu, royally pi$$ed for the loud ovations awarded by the audience to baritone Renato Bruson, and even more pi$$ed by the historic encore given by Bruson at their Traviata premiere last Friday, has left Rome.

Her commitment for last night's show has been fulfilled by one of her replacements, Irina Lungu.

Her latest tantrum is seen not only as disrespectful toward the audience, Rome's Opera and her colleagues, but especially as a slap in the face to her director, Franco Zeffirelli, who is said to be "appalled but not surprised" by her "childish" behavior.

Sources close to the Roman opera house -- who is spinning Angela's cancellation as due to an unspecified "illness" -- are ominously predicting a bleak future for Gheorghiu's -- and her husband Roberto Alagna's -- careers "if they keep up this primadonna act -- they just don't have the talent to support it".

The name of crash-and-burn Kathleen Battle is being mentioned quite often.

All hell, obviously, is breaking loose.

vvvUPDATE from excellent opera blogger PARSIFAL vvv

Parsifal's has published ruminations on the developing situation here. Also, the always erudite fignaz had mentioned the drop-out in comments here.

Another Angela Smackdown: Gheorghiu and "Uneducated Palates"

Say you're the critic for the nation's leading daily newspaper, and say you really don't like an overhyped singer and you have to review the opera she's appearing in.

What do you do?

Most people would simply pan the unfortunate singer and get it over with.

That, of course, would be the easy way out.

And, in a way, panning -- or better yet, savaging -- a singer who usually gets a lot of hype can become a twisted form of PR, adding to the opera house's hype (no such thing as bad publicity, etc).

What Corriere della Sera did to Opera di Roma's Traviata is instead an example of almost Zen-like serenity: the critic simply explained that, since the main cast is made for "uneducated palates", he has reviewed the alternate cast's show (same conductor, obviously, but Angela Gheorghiu and Renato Bruson replaced by Myrto Papatanasiu and Dario Solari).

 

"With his (ed: conductor Gianluigi Gelmetti) vision, and with the cast I have chosen to listen to, a different one from the cast that appeared at la prima last Friday, made for uneducated palates, Rome's Traviata is important.
(...)
Gelmetti has instincts, and chooses rational, exact tempi, exact in strictly musical sense and in their relation to tradition; he has a tendency to adopt a fast pacing but also the rare ability to give room  to the voices...
(...)
I have chosen a cast that I appreciate, made of young artists instructed by the conductor, of excellent quality. The baritone, Dario Solari, appears even to be excellent ... The tenor Vittorio Grigolo has delicious diction and timbro: he needs to work on his tessitura acuta; the soprano Myrto Papatanasiu has a pleasantly tart timbro, a wide flow, beautiful colorature and balance in the use of vibrato.

So give it up for Myrto!

Ouch!

And what about Angela? Ask this guy!

There are of course some more pictures from the Zeffirelli production (slammed by Corriere della Sera): you can find them below.

Some Guys Get All The Encores, Some Girls Just Don't: Bruson vs Gheorghiu

After Opera di Roma's historical Traviata we can only bow our heads in appreciation for the two great artists who graced the Roman stage with their presence, and show our readers two examples of their extraordinary talent.

Singer no. 1: Maestro Renato Bruson (you know, the one who last night got all the standing ovations and the requests for an encore and he granted them, not the other one) in Ravenna's 1991 Traviata, showing the world how you sing "Di Provenza il mar, il suol" -- diction, emissione, color, acting. Like, everything.

Download the .mp3 file here (link expires in a week)

A rapidshare series of links for the files that compose the (very lo-fi, it's VHS transfer) DVD is here, courtesy of the always tasty La Tertulia Del Foyer.

Singer no. 2: Gheorghiu singing some Rumanian pop song with a Stefan Banica, jr., which we found via the blawg of our carissimo amico Parsifal, Greek's hottest export since la meravigliosa signora Elena Suliotis (whom we'll post about very soon -- Suliotis, not Parsifal, he has this post already). 

The answer, of course, to our dear readers: who would you rather ask an encore from, 1 or 2?

Renato Bruson: All Hail the Eighth King of Rome; Angela's pi$$ed; Zeffirelli's revenge?

If Rome's Traviata were a videogame -- and frankly, why not -- we'd say that Renato Bruson 0wned Angela Gheorghiu at Halo using just the keyboard -- Angela was all made up with big hair and all, fresh from a diet that made her as svelte as mean ol' Frengo likes his leading ladies to be, and she was all like, "here's my big titanium wi-fi prototype remote controller my hawt husband (may i introduce you to my hawt husband?) got me in Tokyo, made to measure on my hand's plaster cast measurements".

And then old gray glum Bruson shows up with an old grody Atari 1981 joystick that falls apart immediately so that he has to use a Commodore 64 keyboard and there are some keys missing to boot, and he still PWNS her big time, and it's 'game over' before she even realizes what hit her.

All those people standing up, screaming "Bis! Bis!", asking for an encore at the top of their lungs. And Bruson -- grudgingly lol -- giving that encore, as Angela watched the horror unfold in front of her eyes.

He didn't waste time spelling it out, but Bruson's encore was a very clear way to say:

"I am an old baritone in Rome, and you're not. I give encores at Opera di Roma, and you don't."

//we like him, unsurprisingly.

We don't mind Angela; Angela needs a cookie: here's a cookie:

 

Anyway.

What was I just saying? Oh yes, the old-skool: because that's how the old-skool works: the new kids have all the hype and DVDs and recitals lined up until 2035 and the sycophantic journalists and the classical music record executives (who cannot distinguish the sound of a viola from that of a harpsicord because they used to work for a cellphone company). And that's, you know, Angela.

Then the old-skoolly-old singers like Bruson show up, and they don't l00k so hot now, and their voices have seen better times: but they have the skillz of a lifetime of hard work and hard study. And they've sung opposite all the greats, the ones that singers of Angela's generation only listen to on CDs on their Bang & Olufsen sound systems.

Next week, it'll be the 45th -- yes yes...forty-fifth -- anniversary of Bruson's debut at Opera di Roma,  in a 1962 Puritani. Coincidentally, and the irony is too delicious to behold, we're told that Angela's actual birthdate (the official biographies say she was born in 1965) is really 1962.

So this old cranky dude actually debuted there when Angela just a baybay -- or wasn't even (barely) born!

No wonder that he let her belt out a few choice arias, and then when the second act was going at full steam, right before Angela's huge arias of the third, tragic act, he decided to crank up the awesome just a little bit. And swiftly went for the kill.

We're told Angela really never knew what hit her.

We also hear that Opera di Roma is probably going to rename the opera Germont.

It's pretty easy:

ANGELA GHEORGHIU RENATO BRUSON IS TRAVIATA GERMONT

Looks good to me!

//(more on Zeffirelli's revenge later: it's the weekend & we're also redesigning the blawg, and you're not)

^^^update^^^

Rome's Il Messaggero writes that Angela didn't start very well, and neither did Grigolo in a lackluster first act:

Destava però qualche perplessità la limitata potenza della voce: quattro anni fa, quando la Gheorghiu debuttò a Roma, al Teatro Argentina, nello stesso titolo, sembrava più grande.

The translation: The limited power of her voice was somewhat perplexing: four years ago, when Gheorghiu debuted in Rome, at Teatro Argentina, in the same opera, (her voice) appeared to be bigger.

But then after Bruson's triumph in the second act things warmed up, and the third was the best, thanks to the voices and Gelmetti's conducting. Flowers and bunnies and ovations and all.

Angela Gets Pwnd: Applause For Gheorghiu, But Bruson Gives The Encore

This just in: crazy cheering in Rome for the premiere of Angela Gheorghiu's Violetta in Traviata (the eighth staging of this opera in Zeffirelli's career) at Opera di Roma.

But the triumph is for oldskool baritone Renato Bruson, who got cheered so wildly, for several minutes, in a standing ovation by the entire theatre after his "Di Provenza", that OMGOMGOMG he decided to pull a Juan Diego & give an encore to the crowd that at that point totally lost its pewp, drunk with Bacchanalian joy.

Less thrilled, apparently, was Mrs. Alagna herself.

But after all, even if 71 year old Bruson's voice is obviously quite spent, he remains -- in Opera Chic's humble view -- one of the greatest Germont ever, certainly the greatest of the last 30 years (and Opera Chic is a HUGE Cappuccili and Nucci fan). But Bruson's ability in creating a Germont that is a monster of ambiguity and cynicism and hypocrisy -- a character of Shakespearian proportions -- well deserved the recognition (right after last year's recital at la Scala, Bruson got almost buried under an avalanche of flowers raining down on him -- an honor that left the famously grumpy baritone visibly moved).

So give it up for Maestro Bruson and, hells, for Giuseppe Verdi and Francesco Maria Piave.

Oh, I almost forgot -- Angela Gheorghiu was there, too.