The OTHER Catholic European Country That Begins with an "I"

It may be Saint Patrick's Day, but an Italian friend of mine posted on Facebook that it is also the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy! I know they say that everyone is part Irish on Saint Patrick's Day... but the rest of the year, I am 0% Irish and 25% Italian.

In honor of my heritage, and so that this significant anniversary does not pass by overlooked, here is "Va, pensiero" (The Hebrew Slaves' Chorus) from Verdi's Nabucco, which became an anthem for the Risorgimento patriots.

Sentimental Irish songs like "Danny Boy" don't make me cry, but when I hear Verdi's big crescendo on the line "O mia patria, si bella e perduta!" (O my country, so lovely and so lost), it gets me every time.



Performed by the Metropolitan Opera Chorus, 2002. I remember watching this production on TV when I was in high school!

"Trovatore" at the Ballpark: A Distanced Viewing

Saturday the 19th, my friend Chanelle and I went to AT&T Park, where the Giants play, to see the live broadcast of San Francisco Opera's Il Trovatore. The ballpark atmosphere was relaxed and convivial, despite the chilly San Francisco night. Chanelle and I sat in the bleachers above third base and shared chicken tenders, garlic fries, and an ice cream sundae while waiting for the opera to start.

Trovatore has a famously nonsensical plot, and I'm not even talking about the whole "throwing the wrong baby on the fire" business, because Stephanie Blythe was so good at portraying a deranged Gypsy woman that you believed she could've gone into a delusional trance and killed her own child. No, what bothers me is how the characters must behave in increasingly illogical ways in order to prolong the plot, when a simpler solution is often staring them in the face. Act I ends with Manrico and Count di Luna dueling beneath Leonora's window. In the next scene, Azucena asks Manrico, "Why didn't you kill Luna?"

"Yeah, why didn't he kill him?" I said to Chanelle. "Oh, that's right. He can't kill him because then the opera would be over."

"Maybe it's because killing him would've been too dangerous," Chanelle suggested. "Manrico is already a wanted man and if he killed a Count, he'd probably be in even more trouble."

But unfortunately, Chanelle's explanation is far too logical for an opera like Trovatore. Instead, Manrico sings, "My sword was poised above Luna's throat--and then I heard a voice from Heaven say 'Do not kill him!'" Talk about a deus ex machina!

A similar problem crops up at the end of Act II. Leonora is about to enter a convent and Luna arrives with his soldiers to kidnap her--only to discover that Manrico and his band of Gypsies have also arrived to bust Leonora out of there! There is a clash and Manrico's group wins, so as the curtain falls, we see Luna surrounded by Gypsies who point guns and knives at him. But in the next act, with no explanation given, he's free, back with his own soldiers. I wish that the staging of the Act II finale had shown how Luna escaped from the Gypsies. Otherwise, it's just another lapse of logic.

Other than that, I thought the production (directed by David McVicar, seen at the Met last season) was OK, if not dazzling. Updating the era from medieval times to the early 1800s respected the opera's Romantic/melodramatic atmosphere, while also making the costumes more flattering and less laughable than medieval doublets would be. The Anvil Chorus, despite the presence of bare-chested men with big hammers, even managed to avoid campiness.

It was a solid cast, too, especially on the female side. I already said that Stephanie Blythe made a terrific Azucena. Sondra Radvanovsky (Leonora) reminded me a bit of Marcia Gay Harden, looks-wise--a "handsome" woman, not a flighty young girl. Her voice is well-controlled and (at least as broadcast in the ballpark) loud; unfortunately, she was totally upstaged during her Act I aria by a little boy who slipped under the ropes surrounding the baseball diamond and started running around the field, quite agilely evading capture. Marco Berti's acting did not illuminate any hidden depths in the character of Manrico (he stuck to typical "Romantic Opera Hero" poses) but his voice navigated the challenges of this role. As for Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who played Count di Luna, I can't decide whether I'm glad he resisted the temptation to act like a Snidely Whiplash villain, or whether he should have taken a less subtle approach. I'm inclined to say the latter, though--the story is so melodramatic that old-fashioned stage villainy would fit right in, and besides, since Hvorostovsky is much handsomer than Berti, the audience needs a clear reason to hate him!

All the same, I'm not describing these performers with as much detail as I sometimes would--and that's because I still don't feel like I saw the opera. Overall I found Opera at the Ballpark a frustrating experience--my vision constrained by the shots and camera angles that the director of the broadcast chose; my ears uncertain whether these singers would really sound this way in the theater; and, though the screen was indeed as big as advertised, I was sitting much further from it than I would typically sit from the stage of the opera house. I've seen opera broadcasts on TV and even once in a movie theater and been cool with that, so I wasn't expecting this experience to frustrate me so much--but somehow, perhaps because of the sheer number of people in the ballpark and my extreme distance from the screen, it did. (Furthermore, with the Sonnambula broadcast last spring, my reaction was "Cool, I get to see something that is happening 3000 miles away!"--whereas Trovatore provoked the question "Why am I watching this as a broadcast? It's happening only two miles away!")

Maybe this speaks more to my own personal issues than to anything else, but I have recently been fetishizing the immediate experience--and Opera at the Ballpark, obviously, is a heavily mediated event. Sometimes I feel like I am wandering through life in a fog (ok, I live in San Francisco, so I literally wander through fog on a regular basis--but you know that's not what I meant)--I fret that I intellectualize things too much, that I see things through the prism of books, that I am too guarded and cynical, that I do not live life to the fullest or allow life to permeate and astound me. Big, idealistic words, I know! But I can't help feeling that it would be easier to be astounded if I were seeing the performance live. Our reactions in the ballpark felt muted: though we cheered after the big arias, our applause never lasted as long as it did in the opera house. We were sheepish; the people who were there in person were moved, transported, enthralled.

Chanelle said she liked being able to watch opera in a relaxed, unpretentious environment, junk food at the ready. But I have never been one of those people who is uncomfortable with formality; rubbing elbows with wealthy opera patrons doesn't intimidate me, and if anything, I like the opportunity to wear a nice dress! Then I tried to think of Opera at the Ballpark as a throwback to Rossini's or Mozart's time, where opera audiences ate and chatted throughout the performance. But then, when I did talk during the opera (engaging Chanelle in that conversation about why Manrico didn't kill Luna), our neighbors shushed us! This seemed to me like the worst of both worlds: you couldn't experience the opera as well as you could in the opera house, and yet you still had to be on your best behavior.

I don't want to make it sound like I hate Opera at the Ballpark or think it should be discontinued. I recognize its utility and would certainly recommend it for people who want to learn more about opera or introduce their kids to it, people who can't afford tickets, and/or people who are put off by opera's "high-culture" trappings. But at the same time, for someone like me--who already knows she likes opera, and can afford to buy tickets, and doesn't mind putting on nice shoes and going to the opera house--it is not so useful.

Images from San Francisco Opera. Top: Manrico and Azucena. Bottom: Leonora pleads with Count di Luna.

Natalie Dessay in "Traviata": A More-Than-Viable Violetta

Two years ago, when I was starting this blog, and dressing up as La Dame aux Camélias for Halloween, and discovering the amazing talent of opera singer Natalie Dessay, could I have possibly imagined that I'd get to see her in her first run of performances as Violetta Valéry--my favorite soprano taking on this iconic character? No, I wouldn't have dared! But yet--un di felice!--I did just that on July 24.

The role of Violetta, Dessay has said in interviews, is at the edge of her range as a singer, normally sung by women whose voices are a little heavier and more dramatic than hers is. It also gives her an opportunity to move beyond playing the virginal ingenues that are the stock-in-trade for her voice type. She is debuting it at the Santa Fe Opera, a smaller, friendlier opera house, in a new production directed by her frequent collaborator Laurent Pelly.

What I liked best about Pelly's production is that it worked around the limitations of the Santa Fe Opera House (outdoor theater, no fly space) and proved you don't need ostentatious Second Empire décor to effectively produce Traviata. That's not to say that every moment was perfect. The emotional impact of the finale to Flora's party was completely undermined when the chorus started swaying side to side in what looked like bad community-theater choreography.

But when Dessay burst onto that stage at the top of Act I, dressed in a magenta tulle concoction and fishnet stockings, leaping between the different levels of the set, screaming in wild exhilaration, and doing her trademark "be hoisted by the male chorus" thing, nothing could dim her luster. She played the opening scene feverish and manic and very, very drunk. Her flaming orange hair wasn't particularly flattering, but it fit her portrayal of Violetta as someone trying too hard to hold onto her giddy party-girl lifestyle.

At the end of Act I comes Violetta's great soliloquy, from "Ah fors'e lui" through to "Sempre libera." I was curious to see Dessay's take on this piece because it has so much subtext, so many pitfalls for the actor. In most opera arias, the character fervently believes whatever he or she is singing about. But in "Sempre libera," Violetta is trying to convince herself that she believes what she's singing, while stifling her deeper instincts, which are telling her the opposite thing. At first the aria may sound bubbly and lighthearted; but I think that underneath it is really quite angry.

And Dessay got that. She rolled the "r" in the word "gioir" and snapped it off with vicious determination, showing us that Violetta is willing herself to "gioir" (have fun, live it up). She hit the final E-flat loudly and in tune, but it wasn't exactly a pretty sound. Yet in the context of the aria and the character, it worked. It was Violetta screaming out one final time in defiance of her fate, not Natalie Dessay trying to hit a high note.

Alfredo gets his big moment at the top of Act II, but I was not too impressed with the singer, Saimir Pirgu. Some of his high notes were flat, and Dessay upstaged him during "De miei bollenti spiriti" by swinging her feet back and forth as he sang. I thought this was a bit rude of her; then again, a tenor ought to have the presence and acting skills to draw the focus to himself during his big aria!

Fortunately, Dessay had an excellent scene partner in Laurent Naouri, who played Giorgio Germont-- and, offstage, is her husband! He had the most powerful voice of any of the singers, and a memorable stage presence: already much taller than the petite Dessay, his ramrod posture and silk top hat made him even more imposing. Knowing that Naouri and Dessay are married in real life, my greatest fear was that they'd have the wrong kind of chemistry--it would not be appropriate for Violetta and Germont to look like they want to jump in bed together! But they remained perfectly convincing and in character: Naouri the bourgeois father-figure blind to his own failings; Dessay vulnerable, childlike, clinging to his lapels. Yet Naouri was not merely stern and stentorian: he sang a beautiful, tender "Di Provenza."

The best singing in the second half of the opera--and a moment I hope never to forget--was Dessay's "Addio del passato." She hunched on the bed, no longer trying to amaze us with acrobatics or big gestures--just intensely felt, intensely focused, piano singing. She held the final note for an astoundingly long time, and the audience held its breath along with her; when it was over I could sense the whole theater exhaling and taking a brief moment to say "Wow" to ourselves before we burst into applause.

Certainly, I could see how Verdi probably intended some of his more dramatic outbursts to be sung with a fuller, juicier voice than Dessay's small-but-precise instrument. Nonetheless, she was always perfectly audible, and scoring a knockout "Sempre libera," duet with Germont, and "Addio del passato" is a triumph for any soprano--so does it matter if she couldn't declaim a few passages with the proper strength?

Most importantly, Dessay's performance made me realize something that had never occurred to me despite my familiarity with this story. La Traviata is not just about how piteously Violetta coughs or how pathetically she dies; it's about how hard she fights, every moment along the way. Fighting with herself about whether to accept love (Act I); fighting to hold onto the love she has won (Act II); fighting to keep her dignity (Act III); and finally, most nakedly, fighting for her life (Act IV). At every turn, she is defeated, but there is something heroic in the struggle. From what I've read of Natalie Dessay, I get the impression that she sees herself as a fighter--crusading for better opera productions, pushing herself to be a better actress, struggling against the limitations of her own voice. Perhaps she drew upon this quality when creating her interpretation of this musically and dramatically challenging role. And--unlike Violetta--she was not defeated.

All photos Ken Howard, Santa Fe Opera.