Italy Gala Verdiano: Eleonora Buratto (soprano), Clémentine Margaine (mezzo-soprano), Gregory Kunde (tenor), Michele Pertusi (bass), Coro del Teatro Regio di Parma (Chorus master: Martino Faggiani), Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini / Omer Meir Wellber (conductor). Broadcast live on OperaVision from Teatro Regio di Parma, 10.10.2023 and available until 10.4.2024. (JPr)
Programme:
Verdi – Overture (I vespri siciliani); ‘Già nella notte densa’, ‘Dio! Mi potevi scagliar’ (Otello); ‘Patria oppressa!’ (Macbeth); Scena, aria and cabaletta ‘Che mai vegg’io, Infelice!… E tuo credevi, infin che un brando vindice’ (Ernani); Chorus ‘O Signore dal tetto natio’ (I Lombardi alla prima crociata); Overture, Chorus ‘Gli arredi festivi’, Chorus ‘Va pensiero’ (Nabucco); ‘Già i sacerdoti adunansi’ (Aida); ‘Ella giammai m’amò’, ‘Tu che le vanità’ (Don Carlo)
A 210th birthday is an odd one to celebrate but it was all in a worthy cause and anyway, Giuseppe Verdi is so revered in his homeland of Parma and Busseto that music lovers there take every opportunity they can to pay him homage. In 1851 Verdi moved into a large stone building – which he had built in the hamlet of Sant’Agata di Villanova in Emilia Romagna – along with Giuseppina Strepponi, the opera singer with whom he lived prior to their 1859 marriage. She died there in 1897 and Verdi had lived there for almost fifty years when he died in 1901. ‘Villa Verdi’ as it is known is owned by descendants of Verdi’s younger cousin, Maria Filomena Verdi, whom Verdi and his wife brought up as a daughter. Part of the house is a museum, where music lovers can see many objects which belonged to the composer, including a collection of artworks, a piano and his personal library.
However, the collection’s future – and that of the villa itself – is in doubt as it has been put up for sale. The Italian government want to stop the villa falling into private hands and have offered some funds but nearly not enough yet it seems, so the Ministry of Culture has launched the ‘Viva Verdi’ project attempting to raise enough money to acquire and renovate, what is currently, a rather dilapidated house. Proceeds from this Verdi gala was earmarked for this cause as one of a number of such fund-raising events. So, thanks to Parma’s Festival Verdi and OperaVision the wonderful Gala Verdiano is available to see until April next year and I am sure there will be ways to donate to ‘Villa Verdi’ if you feel able.
With a number of sepia-looking photos projected atmospherically behind the soberly dressed singers, chorus and orchestra, we are taken on a tour of the villa as it was but mostly as it is now. What we see included aspects of the villa itself, its gardens, a lake, a monument to Verdi’s Maltese dog, Lulu, some wine barrels, Verdi’s carriage, armchair, desk and piano, as well as a famous photo of Verdi taken in the grounds of the villa in the year before he died.
The programme has something for everyone who like Verdi’s music without entirely dispelling the notion that he engaged in some musical ‘recycling’ over his long compositional career. Four remarkable soloists are involved: American tenor Gregory Kunde, French mezzo-soprano Clémentine Margaine, Parma-born bass Michele Pertusi and Mantua-born soprano Eleonora Buratto. Conducting the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini (also based in Parma) and the chorus of the Teatro Regio di Parma is Israeli conductor Omer Meir Wellber, music director of Teatro Massimo di Palermo. Ever supportive to his singers throughout Gala Verdiano, Wellber certainly whips his virtuosic musicians through their moments in the spotlight which are the overtures from I vespri siciliani and Nabucco. Both feature the orchestra’s marvellous brass whilst the Nabucco includes an eloquent solo contribution from cellist Pietro Nappi one of several he makes to the gala’s music. The I vespri overture – Verdi’s longest – is rousing, if overwrought, whilst that of Nabucco is a potpourri of themes from the opera including the ‘Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves’ which adds poignancy to it and which is, of course, heard later in this concert.
Gregory Kunde is – like me – in his seventieth year and I would not normally write about someone’s age and only do so on this occasion because the freshness of his lyric tenor voice is remarkable and a miracle given the many performances he has given. The love duet from Otello with Eleonora Buratto radiant as Desdemona is alternately tender or rapturous. ‘Dio! Mi potevi scagliar’ is well-acted by Kunde and sung with obvious feeling and pent-up sorrow. Equally grief-laden is the chorus’s first contribution, ‘Patria oppressa’ from Macbeth, as they lament the loss of their homeland. Michele Pertusi sings as Silva from Act I of Ernani and is in commanding voice for the aria and cabaletta ‘Che mai vegg’io, Infelice!… E tuo credevi, infin che un brando vindice’. The chorus impresses again in the plaintive ‘O Signore dal tetto natio’ (or ‘Chorus of the Crusaders and the Pilgrims’) from I Lombardi and when mourning the loss of their ‘festive furnishings’ in ‘Gli arredi festivi’ from Nabucco. Clémentine Margaine is joined by Kunde for a scene, ‘Già i sacerdoti adunansi’, from the fourth act of Aida when Azucena asks Radamès to deny the treachery he is accused of. The two singers crank up the emotional tension almost unbearably with Kunde at his most impassioned and Margaine using her dark, expressive mezzo-soprano to pronounced effect. Pertusi gives a masterclass in great singing with his heartachingly sad rendition of King Philip II’s soul-searching ‘Ella giammai m’amò’ from Don Carlo and particularly his cavernous low notes add gravitas. The test of any Elisabetta in the same opera is her demanding, emotion-laden ‘Tu che le vanità’ in Act V and Buratto brings the Parma’s venerable opera house down with her very moving singing of an aria which clearly foreshadows the composer’s equally sad ‘Willow Song’ for Desdemona in Otello.
How would the gala end? Well, it was never in doubt that we would hear ‘Va pensiero’ which has long been adopted as Italy’s unofficial national anthem because if its cry for freedom. Sung by lamenting Hebrew slaves yearning for their homeland as they await their fate at the hands of Babylonian tyrants. With the backdrop of Giovanni Boldoni’s famous 1886 portrait of Verdi, as so loving sung by the chorus, it is tenderly prayerful. Finally, all the soloists and even the chorus master, Martino Faggiani, join them – and the audience too, I suspect – in encoring ‘Va pensiero’ to bring Gala Verdiano to a euphoric conclusion.
Jim Pritchard