![\"Aida](\"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/aidaAnGif.gif\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
By ANDREW POWELL SALZBURG \u2014 Qualitative upticks at the main festival here have heralded Markus Hinterh\u00e4user<\/a>\u2019s installment as Intendant<\/em> after a shaky two-summer void. The priority, it appears, is music itself over theater or opera, as might be expected from a boss who is also a professional pianist. Hinterh\u00e4user is retaining the Ouverture spirituelle<\/em>, a costly 2012 innovation of predecessor Alexander Pereira<\/a> that ensures a big window for sacred music, and he is returning strength to the chamber-music slate. In a newly staged Aida<\/em> and a fresh take on La clemenza di Tito<\/em> this month, the pleasures were musical alone.<\/p>\n Riccardo Muti<\/a> prepared and led the Verdi, heard at the Gro\u00dfes Festspielhaus<\/a> fortuitously on Aug. 16 when Anna Netrebko<\/a> and Daniela Barcellona<\/a> faced off as the princesses \u2014 graduates of Donizetti and Rossini, respectively, and both rich of tone, secure, unstinting, and able to wield the Italian text to exact expressive purpose, generating sequences of actual drama.<\/p>\n One such occurred in the first scene. Barcellona\u2019s Amneris hurled out the imperative Ritorna vincitor!<\/em> with enough power and point to spin all of Act I around these two words. Muti\u2019s forces \u2014 the Vienna State Opera Chorus<\/a> and the Vienna Philharmonic<\/a> \u2014 emblazoned the mandate with thunderous intensity, leaving Netrebko\u2019s Aida to wanly echo it not as some affront, as many do, but as reason to fear. Her scena<\/em> rose naturally from the thought, shaped with clear words, dark rumination, ravishing high notes, wondrous floats \u2014 this was a steadier performance than for the Aug. 12 video-stream \u2014 culminating in a Numi, piet\u00e0<\/em> that would have melted the heart of the stoniest deity, before she promptly vanished, ovationless, as Verdi instructs.<\/p>\n Barcellona\u2019s own brilliant highs and roundness of sound in the middle octave produced exciting duets and ensemble work. A tall actress, she regally commanded her scenes yet managed to convey vulnerability, and in Act IV she slid poignantly from bitterness to remorse \u2014 a woman, never the fire-eater \u2014 so that the dwindling string parts seemed to trace her<\/em> fate as much as those of Aida and Radam\u00e8s, closing the opera perfectly.<\/p>\n Probably the credit belonged with Muti for that last feat, and certainly the sensitive legato in Francesco Meli<\/a>\u2019s work as Radam\u00e8s suggested keen preparation, an improvement on his Manrico here two summers ago (when Gianandrea Noseda<\/a> conducted). Meli sounded best after Act I, his heady metallic timbre acquiring plushness as the action progressed, but he sang with elegance of line all through.<\/p>\n Luca Salsi<\/a> exuded fatherly authority as Amonasro, sustaining long phrases on a single breath. Dmitry Belosselsky<\/a> summoned requisite thrust for Ramfis, a stern but precise capo dei sacerdoti<\/em>, aptly gruff of tone. Most impressive of all, measure for measure, was the true Italian basso<\/em> of Roberto Tagliavini<\/a> singing the R\u00e8 d\u2019Egitto. Tall like his Amneris, he projected clarion words and mellifluous, weighty tones, apparently without the slightest effort.<\/p>\n After Netrebko\u2019s plea and the brief scene investing Radam\u00e8s for war \u2014 that is, after Act I \u2014 the maestro from Molfetta took a full intermission. He had paced this unit of the opera slowly on the whole, at 44 minutes, but had built into it latent strengths, enforcing piani<\/em> and saying something new with each measure, even in the chanting and dancing, so that Nume, custode e vindice<\/em> packed more punch than usual and the act could fully balance, not just precede, the one following. An intermission for combat felt only logical.<\/p>\n Out in the lobby, by Caf\u00e9 Tomaselli<\/a>\u2019s (welcome) ice-cream cart, a none-too-sanguine-looking Mariss Jansons<\/a> engaged in animated chat. The whole crowd in fact seemed stirred if not shaken by the rancor in Memphis. But Aida<\/em> reverts to human dimensions the moment it has proclaimed its context, and Muti in the next scene elicited the lightest, most mercurial textures for the attendants\u2019 and slaves\u2019 music, choral and orchestral, as if tracing the thoughts of Amneris \u2014 leaving Barcellona to gamely play these out on Netrebko.<\/p>\n The conductor supported his singers\u2019 breathing throughout, tending to encourage beauty of phrase and expression. He executed pristine shifts of tempo, tending to inject urgency and sharpen contrasts. He remembered to dance: to honor rhythmic impulses on the instant and ripely characterize them. Best of all, he erred on the side of dynamic restraint, permitting but never urging high decibels.<\/p>\n So this was an Aida<\/em> on the composer\u2019s terms, nowhere more virtuosic than in its second Thebes scene. Muti finely shaded the women\u2019s and priests\u2019 interludes in the opening Gloria all\u2019Egitto e ad Iside<\/em>. In the marcia trionfale<\/em>, what looked like the meter-long, straight, single-rotary-valve C trumpets Karajan used \u2014 in place of Verdi\u2019s trombe egiziane<\/em> in A-flat and B-natural \u2014 rang out with immaculate intonation and thrilling antiphony across the gaping stage. The ballabile<\/em> had infectious rhythm. Salsi\u2019s smooth, obsequious Ma tu, R\u00e8, tu signore possente<\/em> offset neatly Tagliavini\u2019s grand edicts. The tutti<\/em> after the priests\u2019 rejection of clemency made its ominous impact, and the Finale\u2019s last section unfolded with tautness.<\/p>\n Each time he entered the pit Muti magnetized attention, and when he trod out it was with the bearing of a mortician, as people roared approval in vanity-stroking counterpoint. But he properly took the remaining three scenes without a formal break, returning in Act III to the stately speeds of the opera\u2019s first two scenes. Netrebko rose to the stipulated dolce<\/em> high C to conclude O patria mia<\/em> after conveying that aria\u2019s sense of reflection with exquisite tones, and she and Meli blended tidily for O terra, addio<\/em>. Barcellona dominated Scene I of Act IV before injecting genuine grief at the close, as noted, to cap a proud Salzburg Festival<\/a> stage* debut.<\/p>\n Italians in four of the lead roles in this hard-to-cast opera; expert choristers (aided by their confinement to the staging\u2019s Brutalist box structures and by stage-direction prescribing little movement); and Vienna\u2019s orchestra playing with more abandon than for opening night (Aug. 6, as broadcast by BR Klassik) or the video-stream \u2014 negating impressions of a musically stilted, dramatically aloof presentation, though these had borne out Muti\u2019s 38-year hiatus from the score and the hiring of a stage director who is really a photographer \u2014 reinforced the belief that Salzburg is the one place where ingredients of such quality can come together.<\/p>\n Teodor Currentzis<\/a> led a vigorous, aurally colorful, not especially elegant traversal of Mozart\u2019s Roman opera Aug. 17 in the Felsenreitschule<\/a>, with tight support from the Choir and Orchestra MusicAeterna<\/a> of Perm Opera, or, more precisely, the Choir and Orchestra of Teodor Currentzis. His cast toiled diligently. Golden-toned Golda Schultz<\/a> acted credibly but sounded overparted as Vitellia in this venue. Marianne Crebassa<\/a> made a compelling but hyperactive Sesto, not especially sumptuous of voice. She was much cheered after Parto, parto, ma tu ben mio<\/em>, for the obbligato<\/em> to which Perm\u2019s clarinetist slunk around her on stage. Reprising a title role he sang at the Met five years ago, Russell Thomas<\/a> projected his voice with focus and musical authority. The smaller roles of Annio (Jeanine de Bique<\/a>), Servilia (Christina Gansch<\/a>) and Publio (Willard White<\/a>) were adequately sung. At curtain, Currentzis drew wild, really quite bizarre applause, louder than for any cast member.<\/p>\n Neither of the two stagings will be much welcomed going forward. Shirin Neshat<\/a>\u2019s scheme for Aida<\/em>, another essay in lens-obedient, firm, gray surfaces that bathe in any light and reflect any color but take us nowhere, features stiff, contrived action hampered and dwarfed by the box structures. Our engagement hinges on costumes, lighting, and initiatives by the singing actors. And Salzburg\u2019s safety curtain more closely evokes Pharaonic Egypt than the commissioned sets. Peter Sellars<\/a>\u2019 realization of Tito<\/em>, conversely, has too much fluidity and parades a number of old clich\u00e9s, many of them Sellars\u2019 own. The idea of intravenous infusions for a bedridden emperor proves especially irksome.<\/p>\n [*She and Netrebko sang I Capuleti e i Montecchi<\/em> at the festival in 2004 under Ivor Bolton, but in concert. Her career is evolving. October, for instance, brings Schumann and Brahms songs at La Scala.]<\/span><\/p>\n Photos \u00a9 Monika Rittershaus (set; Meli with Netrebko), Marco Borrelli (Barcellona; Barcellona with Netrebko), Franz Neumayr (Muti and Netrebko at curtain call)<\/p>\n Related posts:
Published: August 30, 2017<\/span><\/p>\n
\nMuti the Publisher<\/a>
\nMuti Casts His New Aida<\/a>
\nNitrates In the Canap\u00e9s<\/a>
\nVerdi\u2019s Lady Netrebko<\/a>
\nMastersingers\u2019 Depression<\/a><\/p>\n