Articles by: Julian Sachs

It is the end of September and opera is in the air. New York’s many companies are raising their curtains, offering a huge variety of productions to the city’s different audiences. Subway stations are covered with posters advertising The Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, the first of the German composer’s four-piece mythological saga about the twilight of the Norse gods and the series of events that led to such a dramatic climax. Comprising approximately 15 hours of music altogether, this season will unveil only the first two of the four operas, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre.

Other highlights of the Met season will be new productions of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Verdi’s Don Carlo and La Traviata, Rossini’s Le Comte Ory and Adams’ Nixon in China, together with other twenty-one productions from past years. As usual, an almost endless list of opera superstars will be taking the stage at Lincoln Center.

For the fourth consecutive year, opera expert Fred Plotkin will be helping New Yorkers to not lose themselves in this overwhelming maze by hosting a new season of talks at New York University’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, entitled Adventures in Italian Opera. Fred has treated his public for years by introducing stars from the past, present and future of the Met in the cozy 94-seat auditorium situated at 24 West 12th Street, in the heart of Greenwich Village.

The familiar and friendly environment of Casa

Italiana is ideal for these conversations. Fred and his guest (or guests) are able to discuss freely anything from personal history and anecdotes to fascinating immersions into the difficulties and stress of operatic training. The artists may comment on video and audio excerpts and help to decipher the codes of music, staging and production, while the public takes part in the discussion as well. And of course – as all events at Casa Italiana – these appointments are all free and open to everyone.

In just a few days Fred will host the first special Adventure of this season by celebrating one of the greatest sopranos of the 20th century, Renata Tebaldi, who died in 2004 at age 82, after a 32-year-long career and 1,262 performances. Joining him on stage will be Mezzo-soprano Mignon Dunn, who sang with Tebaldi, artist manager and consultant Ken Benson, and Vice President & Managing Director of Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation Robert Marx. October 7, 2010, 6:30pm.

The second event of this year’s series is also special, for – after having remembered an icon of the past – Fred will introduce on stage three upcoming artists on the occasion of their Met debuts in Puccini’s La Bohème. Maestro Roberto Rizzi Brignoli will be conducting all 17 performances of the opera, while soprano Takesha Meshé Kizart and baritone Fabio Capitanucci will be singing the roles of Musetta and Marcello respectively. October 29, 2010, 6:30pm.

World famous bass Ferruccio Furlanetto will join Fred

on stage while in town to sing the role of Philip II in Verdi’s Don Carlo. He will also be singing the role of Fiesco in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra starting in January 2011. Born in Sacile, Italy, the 61-year-old singer made his debut at La Scala in 1979 and at the Met in 1980-81. Since then, he has sung in all the major opera houses of the world and is seen regularly in the States both at the Met and at the San Diego Opera. November 30, 2010, 6:30pm.

The first guest of 2011 will be Aprile Millo, one of the foremost exponents of the Italian soprano repertory. Millo, an Italian-American and a New Yorker, has spent most of her career at the Metropolitan Opera, although also appearing all over the world. Last year Fred hosted a conversation with another great Italian-American soprano from New York, Catherine Malfitano, as can be seen in the trailer i-Italy has put together for this season. February 22, 2011, 6:30pm.

Irish-American Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato doesn’t

really need an introduction. Every Met-goer or Rossini fan in general has seen her star in the Bel Canto repertoire and will have the opportunity to see her this year alongside Juan Diego Flòrez in Bartlett Sher’s new production of Rossini’s Le Comte Ory, never performed before at the Metropolitan, as well as singing the role of the Composer in Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos. March 30, 2011, 6:30pm.

The title role of Ariadne will be sung by the sixth and final guest of Adventures in Italian Opera, Lithuanian soprano Violeta Urmana, who is a very well known interpreter of some of the towering roles of the Italian dramatic repertory. She will be also singing Tosca in March, alongside Italian tenor Salvatore Licitra and conducted by Met regular Marco Armiliato, another one of Fred’s guests from last season, who, together with his brother – tenor Fabio Armiliato - and sister-in-law – soprano Daniela Dessì – constitutes the clips that were used in i-Italy’s trailer. April 13, 2011, 6:30pm.

Such a list of important personalities present at free events is remarkable and could only be possible inside an institution like New York University. Both opera lovers and those who are curious about the spectacular world of opera should save these dates and come witness these memorable events.

Remembering Renata Tebaldi – October 7, 2010, 6:30pm

A conversation with R. Rizzi Brignoli, T.M. Kizart and F. Capitanucci – October 29, 2010, 6.30pm

A conversation with Ferruccio Furlanetto – November 30, 2010, 6.30pm

A conversation with Aprile Millo – February 22, 2011, 6:30pm

A conversation with Joyce DiDonato – March 30, 2011, 6:30pm

A conversation with Violeta Urmana – April 13, 2011, 6:30pm

What could be better than a rarely performed opera by a great composer, sung by a great cast supported by a terrific chorus and orchestra, in a gorgeous production? All of these things make up the new production of Rossini's Armida at the Metropolitan Opera. Based on episodes from Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, this “dramma per musica” had never been performed before at the Met, also because it requires six Rossinian tenors and a great soprano who can hold the stage for three hours in the title role - the only female voice in the entire opera.

It was opera superstar Renée Fleming who sang Armida, a specialty in her repertoire, supported by

Lawrence Brownlee as her lover Rinaldo, with Riccardo Frizza conducting. The production was by the often criticized director Mary Zimmerman, the mind behind the company's latest versions of Lucia di Lamermoor and the faulty La Sonnambula. But this time she nailed it, giving this magical history a personal touch without either overdoing it or upsetting the work. Of course her somewhat light-hearted approach, which at times tends to border on the farcical, might not be appreciated by those expecting something solemn out of this story of honor, love, loss and deception.

April 2010 also marked the final performances of Zeffirelli's production of La Traviata, which will be replaced next season by a new production by Willy Decker. Angela Gheorghiu starred as Violetta, while Alfredo was sung by James Valenti for his Met debut. Thomas Hampson sang the baritone role of Alfredo's father, Giorgio Germont. As in most Zeffirelli productions, everything is beautiful but overdone.

For its season closer, the Dicapo Opera Theatre staged the 1904 Brescia version of Puccini's Madama Butterfly, or – as stated in their program - “as Puccini originally intended it.” General Director Michael Capasso was the stage director and John Farrell designed the elegant sets. In 2003-2004, the 100th anniversary year of the opera’s premiere, Mr. Capasso had directed all three versions of the opera in one weekend: the La Scala version on Friday, the Brescia version on Saturday, and the standard one on Sunday. This time, though, he concentrated on the Brescia version, and the performance went very well, thanks to brilliant singing by Mihoko Kinoshita in the title role and good quality from the little company’s orchestra led competently by conductor Pacien Mazzagatti.

April also marked performances by two of Italy's most exported classical stars, Riccardo Muti, for his

final concerts with the New York Philharmonic, and pianist Maurizio Pollini, tackling just about everything that Chopin wrote for piano solo in three huge concerts at Carnegie Hall. Muti, who will be taking up the position of Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra next fall, will sadly not be seen conducting other orchestras such as the Philharmonic for a while, although it is very exciting to know that in exactly a year, he will be coming to New York with the CSO for three consecutive nights of concerts at Carnegie Hall, performing Verdi's Otello, Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and Lélio (with Gerard Depardieu as the narrator), and an evening of music by Anna Clyne, Varèse and Shostakovich.

For his final concert with the Philharmonic he led a reduced orchestra in a program consisting of Mozart's Symphony No. 34 in C major, Boccherini's Cello Concerto in D major featuring the orchestra’s principal cello, Carter Brey, and Schubert's early Symphony No. 4 in C minor, known as the Tragic. It would be interesting to understand what it was that prompted the nineteen-year-old composer to label this symphony that way, since the music doesn't really convey “tragedy.” But it was 1816, after all, and harmony has changed its alphabet many times since to express certain feelings. The concert was a huge success, of course, and the Maestro received his usual standing ovations from the public at Avery Fisher Hall. He will be sorely missed next season.

Pollini came to town to do what he does best: play Chopin. The Polish-born composer, who died at

age 39 in 1849, was not only an outstanding piano virtuoso, but invented a whole new approach to the instrument, revolutionizing the basic concepts of rhythm and fingering. Everyone, during his time, was in awe of his skills, and interpreting his works is always a difficult task. Pollini makes it seem easy, delivering three gigantic performances (the third will be on May 9), holding the stage for over two hours, and making it impossible for the public even to breathe or to lose concentration for a single moment.

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During the final two weeks of the Met’s 2009-2010 season it will still be possible to catch two of the year’s most important new productions, Armida and Tosca. The latter will star Daniela Dessì in the title role and Sicilian tenor Marcello Giordani as Tosca’s lover Cavaradossi, in the much discussed Luc Bondy season opener production.

Daniela Dessì will also be joining her husband, tenor Fabio Armiliato, and opera expert Fred Plotkin in conversation for this season’s last Adventures in Italian Opera appointment at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò on May 11. Although Mr. Armiliato will not be performing live in New York this month, it will be possible to see both singers tackle the leading roles of Bellini’s Norma in a 2008 production from the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, conducted by Evelino Pidò, which will be broadcast in High Definition at Symphony Space’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater on May 30.

Two other interesting screenings at the Sharp are La Scala's production of Donizetti's farce Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali, starring Jessica Pratt, on May 9, and a 2008 film version of Puccini's La Bohème, directed by Robert Dornhelm and starring Rolando Villazón as Rodolfo and Anna Netrebko as Mimì, a role she sang at the Met this year.
 

The Bronx Opera Company, founded in 1967, produces two operas every year, one well known and one rarely performed. On May 7 and 8, at the Lovinger Theatre of Lehman College, and on May 14 and 15 at the John Cranford Adams Playhouse of Hofstra University, it will perform Donizetti's Don Pasquale, with a full chorus and orchestra, and sung in English.

For early music fans, on May 3 at Zankel Hall, don't miss the Venice Baroque Orchestra, featuring

virtuoso violinist Giuliano Carmignola, in a program of mostly Vivaldi, with concerti by fellow Venetians Albinoni and Tartini and Tuscan composer Geminiani. The ensemble, founded in 1997 by harpsichordist Andrea Marcon, is recognized as one of Europe's premier ensembles devoted to period-instrument performance.

Last but not least, as mentioned above, pianist Maurizio Pollini will be leaving New York after performing his third and last all-Chopin recital at Carnegie Hall on May 9. The program will center on Chopin's late compositions, written during the last years of his life, while his physical condition worsened. Among other works, Pollini’s program will include the Nocturnes Op. 55 and Op. 62, the Polonaise-fantaisie in A-flat Major, Op. 61 and the Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60. Exactly two hundred years after Chopin's birth, his music never grows old, and there is no better way to explore its poetry than to entrust it to the veteran hands of this outstanding musician.

On February 22 the Metropolitan Opera's General Manager Peter Gelb and Music Director James Levine held a press conference to announce the program for the 2010-2011 season. The main highlight for the season will be the first half of a new Wagner Ring cycle directed by Robert Lepage, but we, of course, are more interested in Italian programs and performers. To begin with, of the seven new productions for next season, two are of Verdi operas (Don Carlo and La Traviata) and one is the Met premiere of Rossini's Le Comte Ory, which will be directed by Bartlett Sher and will star Juan Diego Flórez, Joyce DiDonato and Diana Damrau. The Don Carlo production has already been done in England, as it is a co-production with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet. Roberto Alagna will be singing the title role. The production of La Traviata by Willy Decker was originally produced at the Salzburg Festival and will be conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. 

The new season will also feature reprises of Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos with Fabio Luisi conducting, Rossini's Armida under the baton of Riccardo Frizza, Puccini/Zeffirelli's La Bohème conducted by Roberto Rizzi Brignoli, Donizetti's Don Pasquale and Lucia di Lamermoor, Verdi's Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and Simon Boccanegra, Puccini's Tosca and, for it's 100th anniversary, La Fanciulla del West, with Deborah Voigt and Marcello Giordani, conducted by Nicola Luisotti.
 

But let's not forget that the 2009-2010 season is far from being over. First of all, February offered us an acclaimed reprise of Laurent Pelly's production of Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment, once again with its original star, Juan Diego Flórez, whipping out high Cs as easily as the composer put them in the score, never imagining that someone would actually try to sing them di petto one day. Diana Damrau was fantastic in the title role that had been Natalie Dessay's two years before. Marco Armiliato, in the pit, kept everything (and anything) together, including a slowed-down Argentinian song, La Cancion del Arbol del Olvido, sung by the legendary soprano Kiri Te Kanawa in the otherwise spoken role of the Duchess of Krakenthorp. 
 
While Bartlett Sher's production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia is revived again at the other end of the season (the first performances took place in October and November 2009), what has caught the most attention from the media is the first Metropolitan Opera production of Verdi's 1846 opera Attila, featuring the Met debut of Riccardo Muti. We had the honor of asking him a few questions about the opera and he told us how happy he was with the orchestra and chorus. After the opening night on February 23, we can now say how happy we are with them, as well. Opening night was greeted with standing ovations for the Maestro and the performers, while Pierre Audi's production and Miuccia Prada's costumes were met with a strong round of booing.  
Attila is a fierce, direct opera, not psychologically complex. Verdi had an objective when he wrote it: to stir up the northern Italian patriotic feelings that at the time were muffled by the Austrian occupiers. And it worked! It's an opera that clearly depicts good and bad, noble and barbaric, through its libretto and music. But all of this can be easily lost if the chorus is turned into an abstract group of observers; if the fierce, dynamic characters are locked up in port-holes 20 feet above the stage; and everyone is dressed in futuristic Star-Trek-like garb. How beautiful it is to know that you can close your eyes and immediately be handed Verdi's compass, whose four cardinal points – the superb interpretations by Ildar Abdrazakov in the title role, Violeta Urmana as Odabella, Giovanni Meoni as Ezio and Ramón Vargas as Foresto – are so clearly pointed out by the expert needle of Maestro Muti and his deep understanding of the road he is traveling, that you cannot possibly be lost or confused. 
 

Just five years after Verdi composed Attila, a baby named Edgardo Mortara was born into a Jewish family in Bologna. Having been secretly baptized by his Catholic nurse, at age six he was abducted by the Papal police and brought up in Rome in close contact with Pope Pius IX; he later became a priest. This abduction, which was legal according to Vatican policies of the time, turned into an international case which saw the Church's view opposed by leaders, followers and allies of Italy’s Risorgimento, all of whom took an interest in this example of the Pope's abuse of power. Even after the reunification of Italy, Mortara never returned to his family or to Judaism, but remained a priest for the rest of his days. He died in Nazi-occupied Belgium in 1940 and, according to the Nuremberg Laws, would have been considered a Jew and arrested, had he lived any longer.
 

On February 25, 2010, the Dicapo Opera Theatre presented the world premiere of its first commissioned opera, Il Caso Mortara, by young Italian composer Francesco Cilluffo. The plot is based upon the life of Edgardo Mortara. This was a remarkable event for many reasons – first of all, because it highlighted the seriousness and determination of this small but enterprising opera company, led by its charismatic Italian-American General Director Michael Capasso, who also directed this new production. Secondly, it was important for Italian opera, since this is the first commission of an Italian opera by an American opera company since the Metropolitan Opera commissioned Puccini's La Fanciulla del West exactly 100 years ago.
 

These two factors are reason enough to go and check out Il Caso Mortara, but there's more to it than that. Cilluffo has composed a very interesting score that follows the dramatic events closely, underlining the emotional and political struggles of its main characters. The valiant little orchestra, conducted by Pacien Mazzagatti, struggled as well, but rose to the occasion as best it could in dealing with a new score written in an untraditional idiom. It was clear that the opera could be quite powerful and moving if supported by a larger and more compact ensemble.

The singers, on the other hand, delivered very well in the small but acoustically pleasant 200-seat auditorium. Romanian mezzo-soprano Iulia Merca conquered the stage with beautiful singing and convincing acting in the role of Edgardo's mother, Marianna. The libretto, written in conventional conversational Italian, lacked poetical depth or refinement, leaving everything in the hands of the music, the clever stage direction of Capasso and the simple but effective set designs by John Farrell.

It was a prefect example of how opera can work if the staging is kept simple. Big opera companies should take a look at these smaller productions, every so often, and remember how important it is to cast away, occasionally, whatever is irrelevant to the artistic purpose, because excess may end up obstructing a performance instead of helping it. 
 
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Riccardo Muti is not one to take days off when he's in town, so on practically every night that he won't be conducting Attila at the Met, he will be at Avery Fisher Hall with the New York Philharmonic, conducting two sets of concerts - one featuring Hungarian pianist (but Florentine resident) András Schiff in Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1 (also on the program, Hindemith's Symphony in E-flat), and the other featuring violinist Vadim Repin in Beethoven's Violin Concerto (also on the program, Franck's Symphony in D minor).
 

Apart from Attila, March at the Met will feature the final two performances of Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia and three Italian repertoire revivals: Puccini's La Bohème in Zeffirelli's famous production, conducted by Marco Armiliato and featuring Anna Netrebko and Piotr Beczala; Verdi's Aida, conducted by Paolo Carignani with Hui He, Dolora Zajick and Salvatore Licitra; and Verdi's La Traviata, once again in the Zeffirelli production, with Angela Gheorghiu in the title role.
 
There will also be many other chances to attend Italian repertoire operas in town away from the Met. Beginning on March 19, the New York City Opera will be re-mounting Mark Lamos's Emmy award-winning production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly with Shu-Ying Li in the title role and George Manahan conducting. The composer's Suor Angelica will be performed on March 13 by the Opera Company of Brooklyn, as part of their OCB BYOB AT CFAN series at the Church For All Nations.
 
Verdi's Rigoletto was performed on February 27 at Symphony Space by the New York Lyric Opera and will be repeated at Carnegie's Weill Hall on March 6. Donizetti's Don Pasquale will be staged by the Regina Opera beginning on March 6 under the baton of Matthew Oberstein and with the direction of John Schenkel. The composer from Bergamo is mainly known as an opera composer, having written sixty-nine operas during a twenty-nine year career. So it won't come as a surprise that his Requiem from 1835, dedicated to Bellini, has never been performed in the United States. The Amor Artis Chorus and the DiCapo Opera Theatre Orchestra are putting an end to this absence on March 20, at the Church of St. Jean Baptiste.
 

Another Italian requiem, this time by Florentine composer Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842), will be performed at Carnegie Hall by the Oratorio Society of New York, together with works by Vaughan Williams and Britten. Also at Carnegie Hall, Respighi's Pines of Rome will be performed by the Penn State Philharmonic Orchestra, and Mongolian soprano Saran Erdenebat will give a recital that features selections by Puccini, Verdi and Bellini.
 
The Starr Theater at Alice Tully Hall will host the Voices of Ascension orchestra and chorus performing Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle, preceded by pianists Anna Shelest and Kana Mimaki performing Liszt's Paraphrase Fantasia on Verdi's Rigoletto.
 
Away from the stage, the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU will be hosting, for its Adventures in Italian Opera, conductor Marco Armiliato on March 4, in conversation – as usual – with Fred Plotkin. At the Met Armiliato has just conducted Donizetti's Fille du Régiment and will be conducting Puccini's La Bohème as well as the final performances of Verdi's Attila.

Fred Plotkin is a very well-known New Yorker because of his expertise in his favorite topics, namely opera, classical music, gastronomy, wine and anything related to Italy. He is the author of nine books and is about to publish an update of his popular Italy for the Gourmet Traveler [Kyle Books, 2010]. He is the host of a series of conversations with worldwide opera stars held at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU called Adventures in Italian Opera which began a few years ago and has gained a large following among New Yorkers. We had the opportunity to meet up with him in our headquarters, located at the John D. Calandra Italian-American Institute, and ask him a few questions about the upcoming events and his views on classical music today.
 

How did your passion for Italian music, food and culture in general develop?
The New York Times once wrote about me: “Fred is a New Yorker but has the soul of an Italian”. I have always felt very connected to Italy culturally, spiritually, gastronomically and musically and I get a sense that half of my life is complete when I’m in New York and the other half of my life is complete when I’m in Italy. I hear people all the time talk about how they innately knew something about themselves such as that they wanted to be an actor, or what their sexual preference was, or that they couldn’t live in New York and that they had to live in the country.

I always knew that I had this very deep connection to Italy. My first interest was to study everything Venetian. To me Venice was the other New York, having 118 islands just as New York does. Also, in 1964, when I was eight years old, we had the world’s fair here, and for the 400th anniversary of Michelangelo’s death they sent the Vatican Pietà to New York. I went to see it countless times and my father said “If you want to see more works by Michelangelo, they’re on ceilings, on walls, they’re attached to things so you must go there to see them”. So already by the age of eight my whole focus was about getting to Italy. So I read everything I could, studied the language and culture, and liked the food in my neighborhood which was Italian-American food. Everything that was Italian I went after. I can’t remember a time when Italy wasn’t the other half of my life.

Adventures in Italian Opera at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, NYU is one of the most followed series of talks among the Italian-American community and New York opera lovers. How did it start and what are the upcoming events going to be?

 Stefano Albertini, the Director of Casa Italiana, had me come in a few years ago to do a program about Verdi and food, two of my favorite topics. And I explored for them how food inspires creativity and how creativity folds over in to food. Afterwards Stefano said “you seem very comfortable talking about opera” and I said “why don’t I interview someone and we’ll see whether we can make an interesting conversation”.

And the excellent Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda was in New York and I did a conversation with him and we figured it was time to create a series of conversations with great figures involved with Italian opera. And thus was born in 2007 Adventures in Italian Opera and every year I program four or five artists to come in and talk. They might be Americans, Italians, or from elsewhere. The important thing is the connection to Italian opera.
 

The first event on February 18 features the wonderful, talented, beautiful and dramatically courageous soprano Catherine Malfitano, who is a New Yorker and I believe  the first New Yorker I’ve had in. She’s also the first Italian-American I’ve had in. She’s had a glorious career at the Met and in Europe, appearing in a world-wide live transmission of Tosca as Tosca that was done in Rome in the actual settings and times in which the opera is set. At dawn she jumped off the top of the Castel Sant’Angelo in to a net. Jumping off the top of a castle in Rome is not done lightly.
 

On March 4 we’ll have Marco Armiliato, the conductor from Genoa who basically has become the main stay of the Italian wing of the Metropolitan Opera. This year he’s doing works by Donizetti, Puccini and Verdi. So I’d like to talk to the Maestro about the different styles and how to conduct and communicate with musicians, whether on stage or in the orchestra pit, what he wants from them and how to obtain it.
 

Then on April 13, the night after Armida opens at the Met, we’ll have Lawrence Brownlee, a young tenor who is making quite a name for himself in the Rossini repertory. This year he’ll be the Count Almaviva in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and then he’ll be one of the leading tenor roles in Armida.
 

Lastly, watch out for May 10 or 11. I can’t announce it yet, but I’m negotiating with two great artists from Italy who will be in town briefly and if they appear that will be quite a night.

 
Are you awaiting the Met's new production of Verdi's Attila?
 First of all when one day I die and have a tomb stone there will be a quotation from Attila on my tomb stone. “You can keep the Universe, but let Italy be mine”. This is a very exciting event. The opera has never been done at the Met and it includes the long overdue Met debut of Maestro Riccardo Muti. It has a huge design team and I’m just hopeful that the design won’t overwhelm the story. I really would like the story, the Verdi passion to come through, because that’s the most important thing. It will certainly be in the orchestra pit. I’m going to Attila three times so that I can watch the progress of the orchestra first with Muti and then with Armiliato. So I will get to hear how they sound with a conductor they know in music they would have done with Muti. So that’s a big one. That’s not to miss.
 
 Design teams overwhelming the story seems to be a common problem, today. How do you feel about the debate between new productions and traditional ones?
I don’t want to say that traditional is the word we want to use. I don’t use it. Because traditional implies conservative and I’m not artistically conservative at all. But what I believe in is classical. And what that means is understanding the intentions and the ideas of the librettist and the composer. How you do that is by reading the libretto, and the culture and history behind the libretto, you read the music, you listen to the music and you play the music, because the messages that Verdi or Rossini or Donizetti or anyone else give us come out of the music.

The words are just the launching pad for the composer’s inspiration. But the real information is in the music, which is why I’m not a big fan of titles in operas, because people limit themselves to the meaning of the words and that’s really only about 10% of what an opera is. For example this famous Tosca that opened at the Met in September, which the New Yorker labeled a fiasco. It was not a fiasco. The Zeffirelli production that came before it was visually stupendous but it was dramatically dull.

I think what the Met wanted to do was have a more dramatic Tosca, by having a new cast and focusing on the drama, but the problem was that I felt they didn’t have the courage of their convictions. To me that was a conservative production with boring scenery. The production was tame with a few provocative things. But this is New York, you can see that stuff on the street corner. So to see it inside the opera house didn’t offend me, what offended me was that they really didn’t see it through to its completion.

By contrast the Carmen that many people saw was a magnificent rendering of that opera because they did the work. I want to point out that this is a city with forty opera companies. No other city has in the world has that many and new ones pop up all the time.

What do you think is the state of opera, today?

 I think that opera is always in a state of crisis and if we accept that then we don’t have to worry about it any more, and I would point out that there’s a great deal of artistic creation going on. There will always be great singers. The difference is that opera may not occupy the central place in the culture that it did a hundred years ago. To me the change came when movies arrived. That’s when opera was supplanted. But opera continues to be the great live performing art form and we continue to have great performers.
 

I think that the quality and education of singers is better than ever, while what may be missing today is the personal culture of each singer. You don’t expect a singer to grow up in an environment where he or she would know about history, visual arts, literature. I know singers who were born in the West of the US in rural areas, and yet they’re magnificent singers who acquire the culture. I think we can improve opera by restoring that sense of culture to audiences, singers and especially stage directors.

Many of them don’t have a clue. And I think that’s where the problem is. If you have a stage director who can’t read music and who doesn’t know the language of the opera he’s directing, all he can do is create a concept. A concept is really a place to hide when you don’t do the hard work of studying the culture of an opera. You can take one opera – let’s say Rigoletto by Verdi - and spend a lifetime just on the culture of that opera, regarding the Ducal palace in Mantova, the visual arts of that time, the sexual life of that time, the food of that time, all of which could go in to a production of Rigoletto, and that takes time. There may not be as many tenors as you would like, but I would argue that there may not be as many famous tenors. There are always great tenors that come along. In our time we have seen many great mezzo sopranos. Domingo who is still flourishing at 69 was just amazing as Boccanegra at the Met. The first night was one of the five top opera performances I’ve ever seen and I’ve been to thousands. So the fact that things can still happen and that I can still get this visceral thrill means that opera is very healthy.
 

How about in Italy? Is the classical music scene any different from over here?
I follow it and I’m part of a huge Facebook community in Italy. I think I have at least 1500 Italian “friends”. Facebook has been fascinating in Italy because in a nation that unfortunately has the television networks controlled by one individual, where the printed media are in the hands of very few, Facebook has become the form for free expression. There has been a certain amount of censorship there too and it’s awful, but no one has censored opera, yet. There’s a group in Italy on Facebook that are working to restore and save the lyric theaters of Italy.

I have wondered why in recent years Italy has not produced too many notable singers, but no country in recent years has produced more great conductors. There is just a profusion of young Italian conductors everywhere and they run orchestras in Germany and England, and there must be a reason if Italian conductors have come so far. Yes, there are the two titans, namely Abbado and Muti who fostered a whole generation, and there are other great conductors of an older generation such as Nello Santi and Riccardo Chailly and a few others who have opened the way, but right now we have a flood of Italian conductors and I believe that Italian conductors will be the way to save the theaters of Italy, if they come back. The Teatro San Carlo in Naples has reopened, and also the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari and I’ll be going there in July to have a look at it. You see, these are temples and they’re beautiful, and Italy is second to none in the creation and preservation of these wonderful places, but they’re not empty temples.

They have to be filled with voices and activity. I spend a lot of time in the Marche region, which has more so-called teatri storici than any other region in Italy. Of course you can’t run seventy-six theaters in a little region, but I believe that the Marche could point its way to the future with its wonderful cuisine and culture but also by making each town a destination for a theater. Where I live in Camogli in Liguria we have the Teatro Sociale, whose different box holders can’t agree on what to do with, and it’s been dark for thirty years, now. It was a beautiful theater and now they’re talking about knocking it down and building a parking lot. That is a crime. They have to arrest anybody who would do that, because when you destroy that you’re destroying culture to build parking. It’s the wrong priority.

ADVENTURES IN ITALIAN OPERA
UPCOMING EVENTS
Thursday February 18 - 6:30PM
Conversation with legendary soprano Catherine Malfitano.
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Thursday March 4 - 6:30PM 
Conversation with Italian conductor Marco Armiliato, who is conducting works by Verdi, Puccini and Donizetti at the Met during this season.
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Tuesday April 13 - 6:30PM
Conversation with young tenor Lawrence Brownlee, who is singing in Rossini's "Barbiere di Siviglia" and "Armida".

 Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò
 24 W 12th Street New York, NY 10011