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Opera News, June 2004 |
STEPHEN MUDGE |
Verdi: Otello, Paris Opéra Bastille, March 2004
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PARIS - Otello, Opéra National de Paris, 3/20/04
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The last new Opéra National de Paris production to be
conducted by current music director James Conlon for was Andrei Serban’s
staging of Verdi’s Otello. This was the finest Verdi conducting Conlon has
done for the Bastille; the symphonic style of this late-Verdi masterpiece
suits the maestro’s big-boned lyrical approach better than the brutal
ferocity of the composer’s youthful work. Serban’s production was
inoffensive without offering any new insight into the work, and his
concept did not disturb the glorious flow of the composer’s invention. The
producer suggests that Otello is a fatally flawed man, obsessed by his
glory and that his love for Desdemona is an unconsummated passion — even
though Verdi’s sexually charged Act I duet suggests that this is not the
first night the couple have found themselves alone. Serban sees Iago as a
simple catalyst putting a match to an already potentially explosive
situation.
The show began with a magnificently staged storm with reflective black
rainwear accompanied by tempestuous lightning from Joël Hourbeigt, who
later in the act produced a fireside scene that was a veritable towering
inferno. The thin gauze that divided the public scenes from the more
intimate domestic scenes, was reasonably effective, but having Desdemona
receive a blessing from a priest while Iago sang his diabolic “Credo”
seemed an unnecessary underlining of the message. Designer Peter Pabst’s
only aberration in an otherwise conventional set was a hotel-lobby-style
red sofa, which took center stage in Act II, with Iago incongruously
plumping up its cushions. (Somehow such domestic duties are not something
one associates with the character of Iago.) The Act IV climax was movingly
staged with Desdemona undressing in shadow behind a thin veil, later
ripped asunder by Otello, an instance of Serban’s sexual symbolism in
overdrive.
The same artists who had under-impressed in last year’s Chorégies d’Orange
Otello, Vladimir Galouzine and Jean-Philippe Lafont, again sang Otello and
Iago. Galouzine was in better voice at the Bastille on March 20 than in
last summer’s fraught festival performance. This proud bear of a man
fitted well into Serban’s concept and his trumpeting "Esultate" promised
an evening where the big vocal moments were going to be met head on. His
very baritonal sound lacks tenorial brilliance, but there is no
questioning the force of the trumpeting top third of his voice. His
Italian, however, remains clotted and inexpressive and the tenor is
careless in terms of intonation, making simple moments when the vocal
pressure was off something of a trial. Lafont was even more problematic
than in Orange. The role of Iago lies slightly too high for his
bass-baritone; the drinking song was full of gritty, hectoring tone and
his bulging eyed melodramatic approach rapidly palled. An effort at
insinuating soft singing in the dream was welcome, but the management of
long, fluid bel canto lines was left to Barbara Frittoli, a Desdemona of
enormous class and shimmering beauty. Not in her best voice in Act I,
Frittoli quickly settled down to provide a classic reading of her Act IV
scena. This was a light approach to the role, reminiscent of the young
Freni, but the big ensembles stretch Frittoli’s lyrical Mozartian voice to
its limits. Particularly fine support came from Jonas Kaufmann’s Cassio,
who sang with virile tenor tone and made a very positive contribution to
the first act, while Elena Cassian’s Emilia brought off her final
denunciation scene with unbridled mezzo tone.
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