by Roberta Pedrotti
The production of Puritans for the Modena Belcanto Festival it stimulates reflections on the role of conductors and directors in this repertoire, on the importance of understanding and reproducing its language.
Read Irina Sokina’s review: Modena, I puritani, 05/12/2024
What is meant by Belcanto? Strictly speaking, Belcanto is a style, an aesthetic about whose precise definition a discussion can also be opened, but whose historical heart can be understood with a certain tranquility around the work of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti and which has as reference, in vocal technique, to the approach codified by Manuel Garcia jr. In a broad sense, in the common imagination, the term has ended up absorbing a large part of opera, especially Italian, and therefore the passion for voices, a singing that can only be beautiful (and Garcia’s technique, in fact, is valid for the entire repertoire). Celebrating Bel Canto with a Festival, especially in the hometown of Mirella Freni and Luciano Pavarotti and after the UNESCO recognition of Italian opera singing as a cultural heritage of humanity, can become a celebration of melomania in its broadest sense. And that’s fine. In fact in Modena with The Puritans and the encore of “Suoni la trumpet and intrepid” cannot be said to have been enjoyed, although there is no shortage of other reflections, as is right for a festival to arouse.
However one wants to understand the word bel canto, if we are talking about singing, voices are not a problem. On the contrary. Even without having stars and superstars, today it can be easier to stage an opera like The Puritans compared to a few years ago. The new generations are now accustomed to including the needs of Belcanto in their educational background and if once upon a time these qualifications (let’s also think of Guillaume Tell) were accessible to few tenors and often on condition of cuts and adaptations. Today the alternatives to propose without too many compromises the legendary parts written for Rubini or Nourrit exist and not only within the reach of the largest and richest theaters. We see him in Modena, where we meet Ruzil Gatin, a young man trained at the Rossini Academy in Pesaro, already appreciated on various occasions, understandably cautious on his debut as Arturo Talbo, especially in the more heroic passages, but certainly reliable. We also see it in a soprano with a more lyrical than virtuosic background like Ruth Iniesta, who excels in the cantabile but also solves the coloratura passages. She also convinces Alessandro Luongo, a sanguine Riccardo without being vulgar, and Luca Tittoto’s Giorgio is splendid for his class and velvet tone. In short, a very respectable cast, proof of the fact that today we set up The Puritans it is possible, perhaps more than a few years ago, when perhaps to enjoy Devia’s unrivaled Elvira it happened that one had to digest improbable Arturi.
The problem today is another, and we are not talking here about the various social, educational, political, administrative, economic and advertising issues that affect the world of culture and art. Let’s think about what is brought to the stage when we talk about Belcanto and the role of the concertmaster and director in this repertoire.
First, the text. Of the Puritans there is a critical edition edited by Fabrizio Della Seta and published by Ricordi in 2013, eleven years ago. It is an instrument for musicians, not an inviolable table of law in theatrical contingency; if anything, it should offer the indications and materials to be able to make informed choices. Instead we still find ourselves listening The Puritans “like it used to be”, with dated materials and all the traditional cuts. The slow tempos of the trio of the first act (“Se il destiny a te m’invola”) and of the duet of the third (“Da quell dì che ti mirai”) are missing, just as the final cabaletta is missing (“Ah niente, o mio bell’angelo”, for soprano and tenor in the usual Parisian lesson, for soprano only in the Neapolitan version, of very rare performance). They are pages with a precise musical and dramaturgical function, they do not only serve to pay homage to a form, but in this form they express a content. It’s about giving Arturo the chance to process his farewell to Elvira, to give a crucial moment of the opera a depth that cannot be taken lightly; it’s about broadening the clarification between the two lovers and making the protagonist’s return to reason more sensible and gradual; it’s about not hastily closing the curtain but giving Elvira and Arturo the natural jubilation after so much pain.
Present The Puritans with these substantial cuts, it means highlighting the still urgent problem of understanding the bel canto language, which, like the baroque one, cannot be equated with a dazzling hypertrophy of theatrical conveniences among which to move with anarchic ease. The margins of freedom certainly exist, but they require knowledge and mastery of a logic and a vocabulary that cannot be ignored. From this point of view, evidently, there is still a long way to go, first of all by starting to consider the opera director – and bel canto opera director – not as a passive accompanist, a guardian of tradition who just needs to make ends meet. the accounts without disturbing the voices (and, indeed, if the accounts in the hole don’t add up, the important thing is that everyone on stage can’t be too annoyed). For Bellini, for Donizetti, for Rossini, quality conductors are needed, who understand the language and actively collaborate with the orchestra, choir and soloists. This was seen in Modena, where the apparent traditional tranquility of Alessandro D’Agostini’s concertation, the apparent facilitation of cuts also materialized in a separation of tempos divorced from the logic of the articulation of the text and the phrase, from the logic of voice and bel canto. It’s not just about speed, mind you, even if the mechanical excitement of “If you’ll see a ghost in the dark” is much less tense and pressing than reasonably more singable scansions; it’s about coherence and internal sense, as can be felt in Riccardo’s cavatina, which perhaps seeks the art of rubato, but rather seems to clumsily get stuck in agogic.
A similar argument can be made for the other fundamental reference of an opera production: the idiom of Belcanto must be understood, loved, valorised by conductors as well as directors, in this case Francesco Esposito. And this has nothing to do with the choice of setting or dramaturgical style, since each interpreter has every right to choose and submit his own path to the judgment of others, be it a more literal narration or a more radical rereading, of historical or translated context. In any case, however, care is required in acting, an attention to detail that cannot be replaced by the ostentatious and uncritical repetition of the past, if this does not renew it, does not relive it, but only follows it. Swords drawn and aimed at the sky for every combative phrase, arms outstretched, an Elvira who does not seem so much like an innocent and naive girl broken in spirit by unexpected, extreme and opposite emotions, but rather like a childish fool who suddenly begins to rave: it’s a good service, this, ai Puritans, to their theatricality, to the passions it expresses? I doubt it. It would be better, instead, to explore its logic, embrace it and communicate it with conviction, exactly as the director should do. Just as the need for each musical element in relation to the action must come from the podium, so on stage we must understand why each character acts and expresses himself in a certain way, without limiting himself to arranging everything in the most easy, reassuring and harmless.
Until it is clear to everyone, directors and directors first and foremost, that Belcanto – whether understood in a narrow or broad sense – is not an exhibition of vocal virtues that can be assembled at will according to the whim of the moment, but rather musical theatre: theater and music which have their own logic, their own meaning, their own codes. The Renaissance of this repertoire undertaken for decades now is leading to generations of singers who are increasingly aware in this sense, even without being virtuoso stars. We also have conductors and directors who have demonstrated and demonstrate that they have acquired the tools to truly interpret these texts in their completeness and complexity. And yet, it is still not enough, we see. There is a mentality that still needs to change and Festivals can also serve this purpose, but it also concerns the artistic directions of the regular seasons, whose role in society also entails cultural duties. The passive adherence to the stereotype, the simplification that replaces the in-depth analysis does not only concern the restitution of an operatic repertoire, but also a richness of thought. Understanding why a cabaletta or a cantabile is necessary in the logic of an opera is ultimately not too different from understanding why punctuation or the subjunctive are necessary for a more complete and articulated verbal communication. It’s not just a matter of a few more or less minutes of music, but a reflection on the meaning of what is expressed and how it is done.
