The joys of outdoor opera in the summer
It works at the Arena di Verona, and it could work here as well
Bad boy. I missed the opening of the Lanaudière Festival, if not for the first time, then for the first time in a long time. But I was outdoors listening to music last Saturday, at the Arena di Verona, probably the most famous outdoor opera setting in the world, and a formidable stimulus to summer hotel prices in this northern Italian city (don’t ask).
The arena is an AD 30 Roman relic at the centre of town, differing from the Coliseum in having an intact interior seating structure. (Albeit an even more attenuated external shell: Only one standing fragment of pink limestone remains, the rest having been toppled by an earthquake and/or quarried by the not-so-enlightened citizens of post-imperial times.)
Like so many structures built by ancients with no training in the exquisite modern science of acoustics, this one sounds great. Opera was given here unamplified to the multitudes (the contemporary maximum capacity is about 15,000) from 1913. Some gentle reinforcement was reportedly introduced last year.
Either way, there is not much impact: Leonard Cohen will need a major boost when he sings here on Sept. 24. But the tone was firm and balances were true. You knew the orchestra was doing spirited work under the Italian conductor Fabio Mastrangelo, that the Polish soprano Aleksandra Kurzak was robust if not indefatigable as Juliette and that the Midwestern American tenor John Osborn was strong and smooth as Roméo.
Verdi’s Aida is the big item here, year after year, but as you might have surmised, I saw Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, an opera whose rationale in fair Verona is rather obvious. The Caesar-size production is made of high grids on which the characters (some voluminously costumed) can climb and perch themselves.
Young singers have an easier time of it in Verona, for they must sprint to and fro in the vast arena, where lions once gave chase to gladiators, or vice versa. One fascinating point is that the arena (unlike Lanaudière) has not gone digital with giant screens giving a close-up of the bead of sweat dangling from the tenor’s nose.
Nor are there any surtitles. You do it the old-fashioned way in Verona: Either you listen to and understand the words or buy a libretto, this readable for only the first act in the twilight. The sun dictates the schedule. The first note sounded about 9:15 p.m. and the show ran to 1 a.m. Plenty of restaurants stay open to serve the postopera crowd.
All very nice, but to get to the point: Would something similar be possible in and around Montreal? Lanaudière is not quite the forum for opera it was in the days of Father Lindsay. There is no opera this summer, a disappointment after that wonderful night in 2011 featuring Heinrich Marschner’s proto-romantic Der Vampyr.
Of course, there was plenty of vocal- ism at the opening, in Berlioz’s Requiem, and Friday’s program with I Musici de Montréal offered Marie-Nicole Lemieux singing Rossini. And we get a whack of Italian opera choruses on Sunday afternoon, along with Puccini’s Messa di Gloria. There is a faint feeling, however, of beating around the bush. An opera would be nice next summer. Maybe it would persuade me to stay put.
Thinking positive: There are operatic options elsewhere. Bizet’s Carmen was given on Friday in the Church of St. Eustache with CBC announcer Julie Nesrallah coming out of mezzo-soprano retirement to sing the title role. (This McGill grad did not respond to a request for an interview. Given my published point of view on the new Radio 2, who can blame her?)
Orford presents Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in concert (and with students) on Aug. 4. The Canadian Vocal Arts Institute, which trains hopefuls every August on the grounds of the Université de Montréal, promises us Poulenc’s comic Les Mamelles de Tirésias in a staged production with two pianos on Aug. 15 at 7:30 p.m. at Salle Claude Champagne, along with master classes by Deborah Voigt (Aug. 14) and Dawn Upshaw (Aug. 16) at McGill’s Redpath Hall.
The big in-province operatic event of the summer, however, is the premiere on July 26 of a new production of The Tempest, a 2004 opera by the well-known British composer Thomas Adès, in the Grand Théâtre in Quebec City. This Robert Lepage staging under the auspices of the Festival d’Opéra de Québec is billed as a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera (which will present it in the coming season) and the Vienna State Opera (which will present it in 2013-14). Another offering of this festival is André Gagnon’s Nelligan. Visit festivaloperaquebec.com.
Cornelius Meister, a 32-year-old Ger
man conductor, has been mentioned in print as the next Generalmusikdirektor of the Hamburg State Opera, where Simone Young will play out her contract in 2015.
Why should you care? Because Kent Nagano, who exits the Bavarian State Opera in Munich next summer, was rumoured to be in the running for this job. A contributor to Norman Lebrecht’s eminently readable website Slipped Disc claims that Nagano has made this statement through his European agent:
“For the moment my definite plans for the next several years are to follow the invitation of the OSM – which I am very committed to – to extend my contract beyond the season 13/14 and to focus on my very rewarding work with the Bayerische Staatsoper and Staatsorchester and some individual special projects. There are no other plans at this time.”