Opera takes a back seat on La Scala’s opening night

Opera takes a back seat on La Scala’s opening night

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norman lebrecht

December 11, 2017

From my front seat at La Scala:

The annual carnival that dances round La Scala’s opening night on December 7 has very little to do with the art of opera. The date was fixed by Saint Ambrose, 4th-century bishop of Milan, and it is a public holiday so the general populace either heads for the ski slopes or mills around waiting to see if anything is going to happen on the giant screen in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele.

Getting to the opera house is a bit of an ordeal. An anti-capitalist demonstration blocks half of the piazza under the slogan People Before Profit. Fireworks burst in the air. Hundreds of police maintain a 100-metre security cordon around La Scala, demanding to see tickets and identity before they let me through. The main doors are choked with paparazzi, snapping away like toy dogs at anyone who wears an air of celebrity. Superannuated journalists jabber non-stop on live television, accentuating the artifice of existential hypertension.

Inside, a tall woman in a mink-and-satin cape displaying the 1900 Tosca playbill vies for attention with the likes of Donatella Versace and a few dead-eyed blondes who look as if they have turned up with a bald hedge-funder in tow from one of Silvio Berlusconi’s bunga-bunga parties. A soprano, Silvia Colombini, walks around with ‘Rinassi della dignita’ (rebirth of dignity) inscribed in pink lipstick on her chest. Dignity is not the first noun that sprang to my mind.

 

All this and opera, too, and with high stakes to play for. Riccardo Chailly, the music director, has discarded the big guns – Rossini, Verdi, Puccini – in favour of a pistoletto that has never won a firm foothold in the repertoire. Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chenier stands or falls on the calibre of its tenor. Pertile, Gigli, Del Monaco and Corelli once owned the title role. But between Corelli in 1960 and José Carreras in 1982 the work was not staged here at all and it then vanished once more for the next 32 years. Chailly himself conducted the last Scala performance in July 1985.

He has brought it back both as a matter of personal conviction and as a launchpad for Yusif Eyvazov, an Azerbaijan tenor famed for his marriage to the Russian diva, Anna Netrebko. Eyvazov has never sung before at La Scala. Netrebko is here to support him in the heartbreak role of Madeleine de Coigny, an aristocrat who goes to the guillotine, unable to live without her poet, Chenier. There is more than one head on the block in the already sulphurous atmosphere of a Scala opening night.

First blood goes to the baritone. Luca Salsi is formidable as the rebellious major-domo Carlo Gerard who wrecks the nobility’s party with a rant against oppression. Beside him, the poet Chenier looks undernourished, as poets should. Eyvazov, in long sideburns and a high collar, could pass for Elvis Presley, just out of the army, still to regain his swagger. In the tug for Netrebko’s love, Salsi appears the more credible contender on stage. Eyvazov lacks enough physical authority until the heart-rending march to the scaffold. As for Netrebko, she is immaculate as ever, her voice deepening gracefully to lower, darker registers. A suspicion dawns that she has been slightly down-staged in Mario Martone’s traditional production to give Eyvazov his best chance to shine.

Happily, there is no need to craft a review when an independent measure exists to assess operatic merits. The distinguished newspaper Corriere della Sera has taken to giving Scala artists the same marks out of ten as it does for the footballers of Inter Milan. In its first-night ranking, Chailly scored a 9 for his ‘profound analysis and forceful communication’, Netrebko and Eyvazov scored 8 each and Salsi came up short with 7.5. Eleven minutes of applause was adjudged a triumph. Eleven million Italians watched at least a few minutes of the opera on Rai-uno. Against such numerical verdicts, criticism is redundant and context is all that remains to discuss.

Chailly, at the end of his first year as music director, has changed the pecking order at La Scala. The chorus and orchestra were the true stars of Andrea Chenier, exemplifying the horror of mob rule with a gloss of refined, all-too-persuasive logic. Principal cello Sandro Laffranchini should have received a curtain call all to himself for four exquisite solos. In the past La Scala was a domain for divas set inside a bear-pit. These days, the company has raised its game in every department.

I heard mutterings about Chenier being unworthy of a night when Italy expects a masterpiece. There is some justice to the claim. At just over two hours, Chenier is a stand-up espresso. The score, apart from five big arias, is humdrum and the libretto – by Luigi Illica who, the same year, wrote La Bohème for Puccini – has all the literary finesse of Google Translate.

Still, Chailly is right to stick to his pistols and keep challenging expectations. The success or failure of one tenor or another is irrelevant to the survival of opera. The quality of La Scala’s performance is, however, quintessential. Chailly, who spent his teens in the house when his father was artistic director, grasps that priority better than any living maestro. Fashionistas may come and go on opening night. La Scala is forever.

Comments

  • Ungeheuer says:

    Not sure how to interpret this review. A tepid evening? A raising of orchestral and choral standards at La Scala, but not of operatic singing? A triumph? A let down from the principals, which is perhaps why the loggionisti were kept in check by Cahilly in advance of the performance? Whatever the case, for me, Eyvazov sang better (and healthier) than Netrebko. Netrebko has massive low notes, almost contralto-like, but at what cost? Strange sounding and, well, strange, as if from a separate body. Overall, it was more of the same with her, no special nuances and everything in her usual stand and deliver, generic mode. It should be mentioned that her singing is increasingly sloppy and wobbly and the intonation keeps deteriorating to the point of severe discomfort. My 3¢.

    • Ungeheuer says:

      Make that Chailly

    • Sanity says:

      She does mix the voice because she doesn’t tilt her larynx. She does tilt her larynx because her jaw is always somehwere around her knees. How lower range is all on the chords.

      I found it very bad indeed. He was not much better. He shouts and pinches and struggles to pitch properly.

      Languages from both were bad. Chailly was continually having to cover for their sloppy phrasing.

      • Sanity says:

        *does NOT mix the voice.

      • Ungeheuer says:

        Netrebko reminds me more and more of Guleghina. And we know how that turned out.

        • Sanity says:

          Yes, she does. Russians sing often with the soft palate down, which means the larynx can’t tilt. It’s a function of their native language. Which means they have to force the upper register through. The spinto repertoire takes a horrible toll on the voice if you sing this way.

          Now, take a singer like Eva Turner. She sang in spinto repertoire for THIRTY YEARS. I knew her pretty well, as a child. She made no great claims for herself; but she could do this as well in her fifties as she had in her thirties…

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v85Z9CM6ltI

          • Ungeheuer says:

            Fantastic. What more can be said of the great Eva Turner? By the by, did you hear the “In questa reggia” travesty from one Tamara Wilson during yesterday’s Richard Tucker gala?

          • Sanity says:

            No, I didn’t; but I’ve heard her elsewhere. You can’t sing that repertoire remotely unless you blade the voice. You should be able to hear that 1st (octave) ‘Partial” ringing above the note. I helps the singer pitch; but, more importantly, it allows the voice to literally slice through the orchestra.

            Price’s 1st partial was so strong it was almost like she was singing two notes at the same time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-W–M_VMIY

            And you’ll notice, even in her lower register, the head voice is really prominent. Not like Netrebko’s.

  • Jonathan Sutherland says:

    Interesting and colourful review but was Eyvazov the legitimate successor to Corelli and Carreras or not???

    • ricci says:

      of course he was not but neither was Carreras who was a nemorino singing a spinto role.
      Chailly’s tenor was decent, honest delivery, musical but it didn’t grip me or gave me goosebumps as Del Monaco, Tucker or Corelli did….but as said before neither does Kaufmann. On the other hand i have no idea how Chailly’s tenor sounds in the theatre, i’m judging from the video only…Salsi was very fine but no Bastianini, Sereni or Warren either, but then who is today.
      And Chenier is a much better opera than Norman thinks it is and was at one time very much standard repertoire…

  • Nik says:

    Salsi, not Salsa.

  • John de Jong says:

    Interesting to state that Saint Ambrose fixed the opening night of La Scala….

    Actually, the 7th of December is the date at which Saint Ambrose who is the patron saint of Milan and Lombardy. being a pagan till one week before, was consecrated bishop in 374. He didn’t fix the date.

    • Fred Plotkin says:

      For at least a century–perhaps more–opening night at La Scala was 26 December. It was changed to 7 December in 1951 by Victor de Sabata, who was then the chief conductor in the theatre.

  • Alex Davies says:

    If you’re going to level criticism at Silvia Colombini at least get the spelling right: “Rinasci dalla Dignità”. Only three words and not one spelled correctly! I’m also not sure about the accuracy of the translation. Doesn’t “Rinasci dalla Dignità” mean something more like “You are reborn from Dignity” or “Be reborn from Dignity”? (Parsing “rinasci” as 2nd-person singular present indicative or imperative.)

    • Nik says:

      Reading in the Italian press the intended meaning was “you are reborn from dignity”. She wanted to remind women that true love never exists without dignity and to raise awareness of violence against women, which occurs in the second act of the opera in the form of an attempted rape. And yes, Norman has made a colossal dog’s dinner of both the Italian statement and the translation.

    • Nicola Cattò says:

      Definitely imperative, in this case

  • been here before says:

    A well known Milanese tailor told me that an opening night at La Scala is more of a social event and not to take it too seriously.

  • Dennis says:

    So, La Scala dates back to the 4th century, and St. Ambrose set the date for its annual opening night?

    Did you get this from Wikipedia, Norman, or has someone just been pulling your leg?

  • Peggy Sweeney says:

    I have no way to judge the merits of your “review” but, as an editor, I find it incredibly well written and a delight to read!

  • DESR says:

    Norm, could you just review the bloody show already?

  • Robin Worth says:

    50 years ago you could have seen both Claudia Cardinale and Francoise Hardy in the briefest of miniskirts
    Nothing has changed, and a good thing too
    No-one ever went to the Sant’Ambrogio for the music, although it could be a bonus

  • Nicola Cattò says:

    However, the Italian sentence is “Rinasci dalla dignità”, which means “Revive yourself through (from) dignity”.

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