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OPERA REVIEW
Early Verdi, A Baritone Takes Command
November 24, 1999
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By Joseph Kerman
Nabucco, the opera that catapulted young Verdi to fame and fortune, in 1842, gave birth to Italy's greatest patriotic chorus and endowed the world of opera with three choice roles. Two of them are excellently sung in the new San Francisco Opera production, which opened last Wednesday, Thanksgiving Eve. This matters much more than the sotto voce limpness with which the Opera Chorus delivered "Va, pensiero, " At least from where I was seated, front right in the orchestra, the chorus lacked body even when they were singing full force. Conductor Nello Santi's tempos were often too slow.
We are first introduced to Roberto Scandiuzzi as Zaccaria, High Priest of the Temple His rich, entirely even basso is admirably equipped for the grandioso style of Zaccaria's entrance aria in Act I, "D'Egitto là sui lidi," a splendid number cut from the same cloth as "Va, pensiero," as Julian Budden has remarked. Luminous in the high register, Scandiuzzi also pitched his ritardando low cadences below the a capella chorus perfectly.
It is a lovely sound though this singer does not bring much drama to the role. Perhaps he shouldn't, portraying a figure who may be an overworked prophet in the Bible, but in the opera fills a more institutional role. Perhaps he should contrast with the more dramatic Nabucco.
Still, one has heard other artists interpret Zaccaria with more fire.
With Paolo Gavanelli we meet a singer who takes instant command of the stage, both gestural and vocally. He plays the tyrant Nabucco much more broadly, I should think, than some of his other roles such as Rigoletto or lago (I did not see him as Rigoletto in our 1997 season). He flails and flaunts and staggers and thrusts; when struck by a thunderbolt, he hits the ground even faster than gravity dictates. But, there is no trace of exaggeration in his singing, which is marvelously musical and true. Nor is there ever a sense of strain throughout the clearly focused baritone range,
Like Rigoletto, and unlike certain other Verdi baritone roles, Nabucco must convey many moods, and Gavanelli made a powerful first impression as the blasphemous warrior, molding his line vividly, and bringing to life his every word. After leading off the canonic Act Il finale "S'appresan gl'istanti," he remains as a burning presence while the other voices come in above him with the tune. Gavanelli dealt movingly with the pathetic ravings of the mad Nebuchadnezzar, and earned special applause with his final aria, the humble "Dio di Giuda! , sung as the king returns to his senses. This is a highly ornamental piece, and Gavanelli pored almost meditatively over its every melodic twist turn: an elegant performance which almost persuaded as tough a nut as Joshua Kosman of the genuineness of Nabucco's conversion. (I'm not so sure. Verdi seems to have nodded here. He ordinarily gives us much more than ornament to articulate major turning-points In his dramas.) Verdi's librettist invented a non-Biblical antagonist for Nabucco in Abigaille, the prideful and vengeful slave who passes as his daughter, deposes him, and very nearly gets to kill his true daughter Fenena along with the Children of Israel whom she has recently joined for romantic reasons. Abigaille is a frenetic role--the least successful, in my view, of all the prime donne in Verdi's early operas; so Andrea Gruber, making her San Francisco debut, has my sympathies, Hers was a creditable performance, but she is not heard to advantage against this Nabucco either as regards beauty of tone or dramatic presence. Another debutant, the Welsh tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones, did well in the comprimario role of Ismael.
The sets are from the Teatro Bollini, Catania, and they are sets that would overpower a less emphatic opera, They certainly overpower my capacity for description; what comes to mind is a monstrous nightmare after eating too much crackerjack at a movie about Mussolini, in the Paramount Theater. We first see (an enormous and enormously intricate back wall, demarcating a shallow playing area. The wall can break down into great columns or open up to reveal various smaller posterior spaces. Whatever we think of this decor, at least it projects grandiosity, as befits the royal apartments and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Only the end of Act IV made me distinctly queasy, when the wall yielded up a suitably immense gold idol, in beefcake style, waiting to he smashed (rather too neatly) at Nabucco's command. Lotfi Mansouri's staging is of the simplest, which must be right for opera of this kind, especially when played in front of such daunting sets,
Roles, production: what about the opera itself. Let's not have any talk here about turkeys. Still, Nabucco is certainly a very raw piece. It pushes very hard. I was moved, this time, by what must be its quietest number--not even a number, just a 28-bar rounded arioso, lightly orchestrated, Which introduces the massive a-cappella hymn of the last Finale, "Immenso Jehovha." (sic!) After all the shenanigans and the tos and fros, the temple-burnings and the idol-smashings, the cabalettas and the rinky-tink marches, we share Nabucco's simple, unornamented, heartfelt relief at the happy outcome. Paolo Gavanelli conveys still another mood. Nabucco, we realize, has learned something about God and also about himself over the bumpy course of this not altogether fragile drama (Joseph Kerman, the musicologist, is Professor Emeritus at CAL. He wrote his first music reviews for the college newspaper at a campus now long defunct. He pays his respects to early Verdi in Write All These Down [University of California Press, 1994]. His latest book is Concerto Conversations [Harvard University Press, 1999].) ©1999 Joseph Kerman, all rights reserved |
