Anna Bolena | Edita Gruberova
Giovanna Seymour | Sonia Ganassi
Enrico VIII | Riccardo Zanellato
Lord Percy | José Bros
Smeton | Hagar Shavit
Lord Rochefort | Daniel Kotlinski
Hervey | Andrew Lepri Meyer
Conductor | Pietro Rizzi
Münchener Opernorchester
Münchener Opernchor
Anna Bolena is
very much fresh in the minds of the Viennese, but beyond Anna Netrebko’s
spellbinding performance the opera’s 2011 outing at the Wiener Staatsoper did
not move me much. Further beyond that is my general problem of failing to
square, pace Gossett and artistic maturity, a composer who takes his historical
narrative so very seriously with the formulaic vapidity of the music inspired
by it. The seeds of high tragedy are there in some musical sense but banalities
win out time after time, even when the artistic whole, with the nobly-borne
fate of a self-ensnared victim at its centre, aspires to something considerably
grander than melodrama.
The piece’s promise and shortcomings can add up to a disappointingly
uneven experience: in José Bros, Edita Gruberova has found a Percy who brings
genuine tension to the Henry-Boleyn-Seymour triangle, revealing a skilfully
crafted dramatic arc that any performance would ideally not be without; while
at the end of the opera, equanimity gives way to Anna’s reasoning that in dying
she might as well die a martyr, prompting some nostalgic musing over her
wedding to Henry that rings hollow. Breaking the reverie, a sudden angst-ridden
recollection of Percy – at which the chorus haughtily tuts – sounds less the
stuff of continuing internal conflict than the unoiled cogs of plot mechanics
grinding redundantly onwards. At the point when this very human drama should
reach its height, bathos is snatched from the jaws of poignancy.
But it was the opera’s strengths, more fully realized in
concert than the Staatsoper’s staging, which dominated this performance,
beginning with Edita Gruberova, who was never less than generous with the
artistry that can go some way to redeeming Donizetti’s musical impoverishment.
What she lost by being less firmly committed to the character than Netrebko –
aside from awesomely regal bearing and wounded pride – was entirely to the
music’s gain, outstripping the remarkable technical facility that she preserves
midway through the fifth decade of her career. It has been my luck always to
catch Gruberova at her best and though the E flat she pulled out at the very
end curdled, top notes were otherwise impressive, tuning clean and coloratura
agile, and familiar mannerisms limited to a handful of places. Only ‘Come
innocente giovine’ was characterized by the fermatas she can be fond of
floating with ethereal pianissimo, while the disembodied, asthmatic whisper she
produces nowadays in lieu of chest notes proved oddly effective, with Anna’s low-lying parts
bottoming out in a sinister Darth Vader cameo. Altogether this performance was more
memorable however for Gruberova’s insightful balancing of intensity and expressivity,
exemplified in the tender yet defiant manner she sealed her fate with Percy and,
imparting credibility to the ending, bitterness couched in vulnerability.
Certain Viennese critics have heaped praise on Gruberova at the expense of José
Bros, who cracked the climactic high notes of his big aria, and more generally sounded pinched in the upper reaches unless ascending by step, when his top notes rang out with greater
squillo. His tone and vocal style are rather more oriented towards
nasality than his voice’s naturally bright core, though every phrase dripped with italianità
and his musicality closely complemented Gruberova’s. His ‘Vivi tu, te
ne scongiuro’ in particular was a stand-out bit of ardent singing
underpinned by sensitivity and expressive legato. Sonia Ganassi sang with
fierce conviction and brought almost as much interest to the drama, with her Seymour an insufferably pushy schemer who experiences an apparently sincere change
of heart just as she becomes powerless to intervene. The elasticity she
showed when singing with Gruberova might however have come through more. Riccardo Zanaletto’s
Enrico, a blunt autocrat though never stereotypically so, was sung with about enough
pitch to avoid gruffness but phrased a tad boringly. Hagar Sharvit had passaggio
problems negotiating Smeton but otherwise her character’s wretchedness aroused
sympathy rather than indifference.
The band that gathers for this Munich-based concert promoter
under the name ‘Münchener Opernorchester’ put in a spirited and well-rehearsed
performance under the baton of Pietro Rizzo, with vividly characterful playing
from the solo winds in particular. Missing heft in the bass did Donizettian
harmonic syntax the great favour of concealing to some extent its repetitive dependence on tonic,
dominant and subdominant axes. The Münchener Opernchor were both as limited in number and exemplary as the Arnold Schoenberg Chor.
Though marketed as such this Anna Bolena never felt like a
vehicle for Edita Gruberova but rather a true ensemble effort with great musical
insight and clarity of dramatic purpose.
Image credit from the 2012 Japan Gastspiel: Michael Pöhn /
Wiener Staatsoper
No comments:
Post a Comment