This past April I had the opportunity to write about Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Opus 16 one-act opera “Eine florentinische Tragödie” (a Florentine tragedy), an “eternal triangle” opera based on a fragment of a play that Oscar Wilde never completed, thanks to a video of a performance by the Livermore Valley Opera. My first encounter with this music took place in the late Eighties at the Santa Fe Opera, where it was coupled with another “eternal triangle” narrative, Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Opus 8 “Violanta,” his second opera, written at the age of seventeen. Like “Eine florentinische Tragödie,” “Violanta” was given its first performance in 1916. Furthermore, it is also set in Italy, this time during the Venice Carnival in the fifteenth-century, rather than the home of a sixteenth-century merchant. Finally, the “triangle” itself is realized by a soprano, a tenor, and a baritone (tempting me to make up a walk-into-a-bar joke); but the relationships could not be more different.
Zemlinsky’s opera begins with tenor Guido Bardi, the Prince of Florence, making passionate love (think of the music at the beginning of Richard Strauss’ Opus 59 opera Der Rosenkavalier) to soprano Bianca, wife of the merchant Simone (baritone) in Simone’s own house; and it ends with Simone killing Bardi, only to be given a passionate embrace by his wife. In “Violanta” the tenor is also noble; he is Alfonso, the illegitimate son of the King of Naples. The soprano is (of course) the title role; and the baritone is again her husband, Simone Troval, military commander of the Venetian republic. In this case, however, the relationship is more complex. Alfonso had seduced Violanta’s sister Nerina, who was then driven to suicide. When we first encounter Violanta, she is bent on vengeance and works out a scheme in which Simone will kill him. However, before the opera is over, Violanta has succumbed to Alfonso’s charms and shields his body when Simone draws his sword. As a result, she is the one that is stabbed. She realizes that Simone was her true love while she is dying in his arms.
Michael Kupfer-Radecky as Simone and Annemarie Kremer as Violanta (screen shot from the trailer of the video being discussed)
Santa Fe Opera clearly appreciated how these two bizarrely warped narratives could complement each other. Seeing them performed together made for one of the more memorable roller coaster rides in my opera-going experience. Thus, when Dynamic released a video of “Violanta” around the middle of last month (in both Blu-ray and DVD formats), I could not resist the opportunity to revisit this opera so soon after my Zemlinsky encounter.
The video was compiled from two performances at the Teatro Regio in Turin, which, ironically, was hosting the first presentation of this opera in Italy. The staging for this occasion was directed by Pier Luigi Pizzi, and the orchestra and chorus of the Teatro Regio were conducted by Pinchas Steinberg. The title role was sung by Annemarie Kremer, that of Simone by Michael Kupfer-Radecky, and Alfonso by Norman Reinhardt. As in the Livermore production of Zemlinsky’s Opus 16, the costume and set designs, also by Pizzi, were more contemporary than faithful to the period; but Pizzi’s were far more abstract, particularly with an enormous circular window through which one could see a gondolier guiding his craft down one of the canals.
Pizzi’s major challenge, however, was to negotiate the less-than-logical twists and turns of the libretto Hans Müller had written for Korngold’s opera. Personally, I felt that this 90-minute performance got off to a somewhat slow start, developing context through an excessive number of secondary characters. However, once that action homed in on Violanta, Simone, and Alfonso, Pizzi’s direction deftly negotiated every twist and turn, finding just the right way to capture Violanta’s changing sympathies. Of these two operas that were contemporary with each other, Zemlinsky’s remains my favorite; but I would definitely appreciate the opportunity to see “Violanta” in performance again.
No comments:
Post a Comment