By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
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Los Angeles Opera: Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia (The Turk in Italy)
Saturday, Feb. 19, 2011 • Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Next performances: Feb. 27 and March 13 at 2 p.m. March 2, 5 and 10 at 7:30 p.m.
Information: www.laopera.com
When James Conlon became Los Angeles Opera’s music director in 2006, his goal was to make the company an internationally respected Verdi and Wagner house. Who knew that it would also make its mark with Rossini — and not with the composer’s most famous opera, The Barber of Seville or even the opera with the name everybody knows but almost no one has seen, William Tell, but with a work that languished for nearly 100 years before being revived in 1950: Il Turco in Italia, or, as LAO has consistenly called it in its publicity, The Turk in Italy?
Nevertheless, that’s what the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion will become for the next four weeks after Rossini’s “opera buffa” opened last night. It proved to be an evening that validated the late, great comedienne Anna Russell’s succinct comment about grand opera: “You can do anything as long as you sing it!” And sing it this cast of artists can certainly do, although they’re not the only reason to recommend that you make a trip to downtown Los Angeles. There’s also a zany, madcap production by way of the Hamburg Opera and Conlon leading the LA Opera Orchestra (in excellent form, as usual) and the cast in a sparkling performance.
However, as Conlon told the preconcert lecture audience, bel canto opera succeeds only if it’s sung well and this uniformly strong cast delivers the goods, beginning with soprano Nino Machaizdze, who sailed gloriously through the runs, trills and numerous high Cs as Donna Fiorilla. She’s also the sexiest femme fatale to hit the Pavilion stage in many a moon.
Baritone Paolo Gavanelli made a strong company debut as Don Geronio, Fiorilla’s cuckolded husband. Others in the cast were mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey as Zaida; baritone Simone Alberghini as the Turk, Selim; tenor Maxim Mironov as Don Narciso; tenor Matthew O’Neill as Albazar; and baritone Thomas Allen, who nearly stole the show in the role of Prosdocimo, the Poet.
Christof Loy, who designed the production, and director Axel Weidauer used sliding walls to create a set that moved the action to contemporary Naples without any damage to the story. There were elements of the Marx Brothers throughout, particularly in the opening moments, and the effects included a flying carpet and a innovative scrim that separated the first two scenes. Herbert Maurner (who, along with Loy, Weidauer and lighting designer Reinhard Traub, was making his company debut) designed the atmospheric sets and costumes.
All of their efforts and the English supertitles had the audience in full-laugh mode throughout the evening, even if the supertitles occasionally anticipated the words being sung in Italian — few, if any cared; we were having too much fun.
Like Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, Rossini’s story is a convoluted tale of interlocking relationships between the sexes. If you got to the end of the first act not knowing exactly where the story had gone, you weren’t alone, but that didn’t detract from the enjoyment, and everything untangled by the end.
Hemidemisemiquavers:
• The opera runs 3:15 with one 25-minute intermission.
• Conlon delivers a somewhat different, but nonetheless, erudite preconcert lecture an hour before each performance. He’s worth hearing but, contrary to his admonishment, read the synopsis (LINK) carefully before you arrive to further your understanding of the action. Conlon also has an interesting article in the program and HERE.
• In 1964, Conlon was working backstage in New York when he saw Il Turco in Italia for the first time. Until last night, he had not seen a production of the opera since.
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.
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