Tag Archives: gatti

Orphée as love triangle

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Gluck’s Orpheus opera; in either Italian or French guise, is usually presented as a short and cheery “love conquers all” with an uncomplicated happy ending.  Pierre Audi in his production of the 1774 Paris version of Orphée et Euridice, recorded at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2022 takes a different tack.  Here Amour, who is on stage 100% of the time, forms a love triangle with Orphée and Euridice and while she’s happy to work to reunite the lovers Orphée gets in a snit in the last act when he realises that her interest isn’t entirely altruistic and comes close to violence when the two girls show more interest in each other than in him!

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Elegant 1930s Tosca

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Puccini’s Tosca was recorded for video last year at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in a production by Massimo Popolizio.  It’s set in the 1930s but other than sets and costumes appropriate to that period it’s played dead straight.  Although there’s some kind of mafia/fascisti vibe it’s not really explored and one really experiences it as a “traditional” Tosca.  The 30s aesthetic though certainly suits Vanessa Goikoetxea who comes over as very glamorous.

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Oedipus Rex

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A video recording of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex is a bit of an oddball really.  It’s quite short (55 minutes) and it’s an oratorio rather than an opera.  I guess it could be staged but the version recorded at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2022 isn’t.  It’s a concert setting, in concert dress, with music stands.  There’s not even minimal blocking.

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Spare and compelling Tristan

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I’m rarely disappointed by a Pierre Audi production and his Tristan und Isolde for Teatro dell’opera di Roma, recorded in 2016, was far from that.  It’s a bit of a slow burn but then so, really, is the work itself.  It’s starkly simple.  The sets contain few elements and no fuss.  Costuming is almost drab but the direction of the singers is compelling and it builds to a brilliant staging of the Liebestod with Isolde silhouetted, motionless in a kind of frame and absolutely nothing happening which, paradoxically, is riveting.

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Finding the Holy Grail

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Yesterday’s Met Live in HD broadcast of Parsifal was one of the best I’ve seen.  The production is highly effective, the starry cast lived up to the hype and the video direction was sensitive and true to the staging.  Any reservations I have about the experience are due to the work itself but that may be matter for another day.  It certainly reinforced my belief, consolidated by seeing Tristan und Isolde twice recently that these big Wagner operas are high risk, high reward.  When they come off they are incredible.  When they don’t it’s six hours of one’s life gone missing.

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Full of sound and Furies

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When I first encountered Richard Strauss’ Elektra as a teenager I found the music almost unbearably harsh.  The more I listen to it the more erroneous that judgement seems.  It has its “tough” moments to be sure.  How could an opera about Elektra not?  But it is also full of lush romanticism and there are some really quite lovely passages.  In the 2010 Salzburg Festival recording Daniele Gatti explores both sides of the music in a rather thrilling reading of the score aided and abetted by the Wiener Philharmoniker and a pretty much ideal cast.

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