Disse-me um passarinho...

... que está para breve este triplo lançamento!

En attendant Boulez (?) !

(Pierre Boulez)

Em entrevista recente ao Le Monde, Boulez declarou:

«Que s'est-il passé avec l'opéra ? Il y a eu un projet avec Jean Genet, Bernard-Marie Koltès, puis Heiner Müller... Plus récemment, on a parlé d'"En attendant Godot", d'après Beckett... Il y a un nouveau projet, mais cela arrive sans doute trop tard. Quand on écrit pour la première fois pour la scène, il est rare que ce soit un chef-d'oeuvre. J'ai peur de ne pas être à la hauteur. Il faudrait aussi pouvoir créer un lieu spécifique et mener une réflexion sur l'espace comme pour Répons ou Rituel.»

Bayreuth - III - Tannhäuser (as fotos)

(Sebastian Baumgarten)

Eis algumas das fotografia do Tannhäuser de Baumgarten, este Verão apresentado em Bayreuth.

Bayreuth - II - Tannhäuser

Absolutamente pervertido, o Tannhäuser de Sebastian Baumgarten foi apupado do princípio ao fim! Segundo consta, a liberdade da encenação confundiu-se com uma obra grotesca, nos antípodas da concepção de Wagner.

Perversão metafórica em Bayreuth, evidentemente, mas não só... Para detalhes mais sórdidos, sugiro uma leitura atenta da critica de Mark Ronan, como segue.

«What a reception! The production team were booed to the rafters with not a single handclap, and Venus was so roundly booed she didn’t return for her second curtain call. Such a relief to cheer the chorus, along with Michael Nagy’s beautifully sung Wolfram and Günter Groissböck’s powerful voice and presence as Hermann the Landgraf.

Bayreuth is celebrating its 100th festival, delighting management if not its audience by opening with another extraordinary production, this one by 42-year-old Sebastian Baumgarten. His concept — and directors’ concepts are of the essence here — is that Tannhäuser is a huge experiment, reflecting a notion that the hero experiments with excess and its subsequent rejection.

An audience on stage observes everything, and apparently Baumgarten wanted to run the opera without intervals. When the caterers objected, he settled for the stage audience staying put while the real audience left and the experiment continued.

The Venusberg is a cage with ape-men and animals, including three giant tadpoles — could these represent the three Graces who intervene to halt the ever more frantic proceedings? When it descends below stage, we see three huge chemical processing plants in red, green and blue. Bold colours and big designs by Joep van Lieshout, but one is soon lost in the details.

The Act 1 shepherd in yellow trousers and white shirt is drunk, reappearing in a similar state at the Act 2 song contest, where scantily dressed girls in knickers and stockings, with holsters on their belts, occasionally enjoy caresses with one another, and the pregnant Venus comes to watch proceedings.

From high gantries Tannhäuser douses the other singers with water before embracing Venus, and the lovely Elisabeth slashes her wrists. Then in Act 3 Wolfram accompanies Elisabeth to the huge BIOGAS cylinder and locks her in.

“Kinder schaff’ Neues” (Children do something new) said Wagner, but did he really mean them to alter his dramas in this way? Elisabeth represents a pure type of love, and Wolfram adores her, yet he apparently murders her and sings his evening star song to the pregnant Venus, whose baby is passed round among the female chorus at the end.

Words and music remain Wagner’s, and conductor Thomas Hengelbrock gave us thrilling crescendos in the prelude to Act 3. Production concepts notwithstanding, Lars Cleveman in his many costumes sang strongly as Tannhäuser, and Camilla Nylund made an attractive Elisabeth, with Michael Nagy and Günther Groissböck as Wolfram and the Landgraf giving the performance real vocal heft.»

Disse-me um passarinho...

A Lulu de Petibon e a Lucia de Dessay!

What else?!

Destinos Dissolutos

Por motivos de agenda, as deslocações da família Dissoluta à Casa Mãe encontram-se suspensas. Para mais, odiamos furacões, que são uma grande maçada!

Desta feita, dada a excelsa qualidade da nova produção de Don Giovanni (encenação de Carsen), no alla Scala, aí vamos nós, para uma récita de sonho, a 16 de Dezembro de 2011.

Aos que desejarem, endereço convite para partilharem o nosso camarote!

Afinal de contas, juntar, numa produção, Terfel, D’Arcangelo, Netrebko, Filianoti, Frittoli e a direcção de Barenboim...

Vão-se as pratas, fiquem os lingotes de ouro!

Cinemateca - Setembro de 2011

Com a cara lavada, o site da Cinemateca Portuguesa anuncia a programação de Setembro, depois da habitual ausência estival. Feliz pela rentrée que se aproxima, regresso à Barata Salgueiro, ao virar da minha casa, já no dia 1!

Narciso Ceausescu

(Nicolae Ceausescu)

A Autobiografia de Nicolae Ceausescu é um notável documentário de Andrei Ujica, integralmente concebido com imagens da propaganda romena.

O filme retrata a ascensão e queda do regime liderado por Nicolae Ceauscescu (1918-1989). Tendo início com a morte de Gheorghiu-Dij e transmissão do poder ao seu sucessor “dinástico”, culmina com o julgamento sumário de Nicolae e sua mulher, Elena.

Recordo a morte do deplorável ditador e respectiva concubina, numa manhã de final de Dezembro de 1989, era eu um jovem adulto. Por ocasião do filme, temi que as impressionantes imagens do fuzilamento do casal fossem exibidas. Na época, correram mundo e chocaram-me profundamente.

Percebi que o gesto grotesco – a exibição dos troféus de caça – correspondia a uma prova fálica do triunfo, porventura reclamada por um povo oprimido e desejoso de vingança.

Inteligentemente, Ujica não embarca neste dificilmente resistível cliché!

Sempre nutri interesse pela personalidade de Nicolae Ceausescu. O seu despostismo (quase) ilimitado intrigava-me sobremaneira. Por esta razão, num movimento impulsivo, acorri à sala do Monumental, assim que soube da estreia do filme, hoje mesmo.

Evidentemente, a figura do ditator é omnipresente. O retrato que se observa é de um homem absolutamente fundido com o poder, reclamando em permanência gratificações narcísicas – a aclamação por parte do objecto (povo, colegas de ofício, nomenclatura, etc.), diante da sua suprema glória edificante (assaz megalómana), é transversal a toda a obra.

A personagem que as imagens reais revelam enferma de um narcisismo patético e caricatural, que a todo o instante exige do outro um reconhecimento das suas excelsas capacidades.

De permeio, deparamos com uma criatura profundamente desinteressante, roçando a rudeza. Embora frugal em público, no racato, a película revela um sábio culto aburguesado do ócio e demais prazeres capitalistas, sempre na companhia de Elena e restante séquito.

Imperdível!

A Autobiografia de Nicolae Ceausescu

«É um filme invulgar, invulgarmente inteligente. Sobretudo porque acredita na inteligência do seu espectador. Que inteligência? A de que olhar o mundo não é contemplar uma "reprodução" neutra ou automática. E que as relações entre as imagens estão para além do alarmismo generalizado dos telejornais ou do jogo de escondidas dos "apanhados" e seus sucedâneos.»

João Lopes dixit.

Bayreuth - I

À semelhança dos demais festivais líricos – quiçá por força da crise – os ecos de Bayreuth escasseiam!

Contudo, a abc faz uma síntese do desastroso Tannhäeuser (nova produção), cuja encenação bordeja o lixo. Já no tocante a Lohengrin, outro galo canta, apesar da rataria…

«Wagner fans take note: if you like your opera pure, two productions at this year's Bayreuth festival are not for you.

But come, if you have a love of the experimental. While Tannhaeuser fails in attempts to move from the traditional to the trendy, Lohengrin makes that leap of faith. And both productions reflect directing and staging audacity, even if only Lohengrin succeeds in being both bold and believable.

Tannhaeuser is the bigger buzz this year — less because it's a new production, more because of its audacious directing and stage effects that relegate the opera to a supporting role.

Already torn between the quest for carnal pleasure and platonic love that will prove his undoing, the bard Tannhaeuser must deal this year with the additional challenge of his backdrop, compliments of director Sebastian Baumgarten and stage designer Joep van Lieshout.

Instead of the serene pasture or noble hall, the production seen Monday plays out on a factory floor of tanks and connecting pipes depicting a closed cycle of sustenance at its most banal; food, alcohol — and the excrement produced which then is used to fuel the system.

It's enough to drive a person to drink — and extras dressed as factory workers do, occasionally tapping the big red alcohol tank. Some of them earn their keep in the performance seen Monday as members of the choir.

The others just clutter an already messy stage.

In a further challenge to the audience, the love nest where Tannhaeuser trysts with Venus between excursions to the "other woman" — the virginal Elisabeth — is bedlam in a cage that occasionally rises from the factory floor.

Tannhaeuser and Venus rub shoulders with mating ape-like creatures, and giant tadpoles spawned in their cesspool slither and wiggle across the stage. The point seems clear — yuck!

But at the end, Venus bears Tannhaeuser's child, muddying Wagner's original message that virtue triumphs over vice.

All in all, "too much, too much!" — Tannhaeuser's words reflecting his disgust at this orgiastic lifestyle also apply to the oversize liberties taken by Baumgarten and van Lieshout that scuttle this production.

But not all that is modern is maudlin this year at Bayreuth.

Lohengrin, another Wagnerian tale of medieval tragic love, gets yanked into the 21st century by director Hans Neuenfels and stage designer Reinhard von der Thannen — and is more interesting for it.

Instead of knights in armor, man-size rats with glowing red eyes populate the stage, an experimental laboratory where minders in scrubs and face masks prod and push characters on and off stage.

Irritating at first, the conceit works by meshing with Wagner's opera instead of conflicting with it. The rodents are a rat-eat-rat horde — like the medieval men at arms in the original version whose loyalties shift with every development.

And instead of muddying the plot, like Baumgarten, Neuenfels advances it. Over the more than three-hour staging, the rats slowly turn into humans, transformed perhaps by the aura of Lohengrin, the knight blessed by god, who defeats evil, but is ultimately defeated by the inconstancy of Elsa, his beloved.

A visual and intellectual pleasure — accompanied Tuesday by singing that ranged from sub-par to superb.

Astrid Weber, a last-minute stand in for Annette Dasch, failed to convince as Elsa, Lohengrin's paramour. While powerful, her voice had no center and lacked in range, forcing Weber to glide into the top notes. Her vibrato was irritating and her enunciation fuzzy.

Klaus Florian Vogt was in brilliant contrast as Lohengrin, effortless in delivery and diction, his voice so fluid and natural that it almost seemed untrained — no overreaching, no straining.

Petra Lang as Ortrud was another highlight, using her powerful mezzo and considerable dramatic skills to convincingly portray Elsa's evil counterpart, whose scheming ways lead to Elsa's doom. Also good: Georg Zeppenfeld as King Heinrich; Tomas Tomasson as Telramund and Samuel Youn as the Herald.

Conductor Andris Nelsons and choir leader Eberhard Friedrich provided powerful orchestral and choral backing to the soloists, masterfully balancing Wagner's imperatives of musical totality.

For Tannhaeuser, best were Camilia Nylund, a vocally and visually striking Elisabeth and Guenther Groissboeck as her father, Hermann, whose demeanor and supple bass were ideal for the gravitas called for in this role.

Michael Nagy was convincing as Wolfram von Eschenbach, as were Lothar Odinius as Walther von der Vogelweide and Thomas Jesatko as Biterolf. Lars Cleveman as Tannhaeuser shone dramatically but occasionally struggled to make himself heard.

For the most part seamlessly blending or carrying the voices as called for by the score, the orchestra, under Thomas Hengelbrock, sometimes lagged in tempo, unnecessarily slowing the pace of already languid musical sequences.

But even the generally satisfying musical renderings cannot redeem the visual transgressions of this Tannhaeuser.

The opera was booed at its first Paris performance, prompting composer Charles Gounod to proclaim: "God grant me a failure like that!"

He did not see this year's production.»

Disse-me OUTRO passarinho...

Disse-me um passarinho...

... que está para breve a comercialização destas pérolas metropolitanas :))) Atente o leitor na qualidade dos elencos!!!

Em degustação...

Os Monstros

Descobri este lingote numa cave, em frente ao Met. Farrell e Tucker - dois monstros Metropolitanos -, em Verdi, tocam as estrelas: a pujança dela funde-se com o lirismo dele, qual lava incandescente...

Em nome do Pai

Uma obra maior, repleta de poesia, com um grau de depuração que roça a perfeição.

Para além da grandeza estética e poética, o olhar psicanalítico detecta uma trama complexa, onde se cruzam conflitualidades de vária ordem: amor vs ódio, sadismo vs masoquismo, a par de culpabilidade vs desvio, num contexto eminentemente paterno (Divino e terreno).

Memorável – também – é a transição subtil que se opera entre o universo da idealização – infância pueril e imaculada – e a realidade, mais brutal e profundamente marcada pelo conflito identificatório, perda e ruptura.

Salzburgo - II

Desta feita, chegamos a Salzburgo via Verdi. O Macbeth conduzido por Muti enfermou, acima de tudo, de uma mise-en-scène deplorável, segundo consta...

«Leaving home at 5am and spending nine fraught hours travelling to a sweltering Salzburg may not have put me in the best frame of mind for this new production of Verdi’s Macbeth, but I trust it is critical impartiality that leads me to judge it a disappointment.

It wasn’t all bad. How could it be, when Riccardo Muti was conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in an interpretation which he has developed for over 30 years?

He is less fiercely driven with the music than he was as a younger man: the translucency of texture and the precision of ensemble remain constant, but the phrasing has become more expansive and there is more relish of the score’s meditative aspects.

Watching him in the pit, one was aware of his economy of gesture, his close attention to the singers and his damping of any irrational orchestral exuberance. The result was a sombre Macbeth marked by introspective intensit,y rather than visceral excitement.

Muti made you realise that at this point of his career, Verdi was a far more sophisticated composer than is commonly recognised, but I do wish that the last two acts had been more fired up. The inclusion of the normally excised ballet music as a prelude to Act 3 was an error, I think, even if it allowed the amazing Vienna Phil a chance to frolic: it slowed the drama down when it ought to be hurtling.

You don’t hear sloppy singing when Muti is in charge and Zeljko Luˇci´c and Tatiana Serjan gave vocally admirable performances in the leading roles: Luˇci´c has the power and richness of tone of the true Verdi baritone, while Serjan was impressively accurate, and as forceful in piano passages as she was at forte. There was exemplary work from Giuseppe Filianoti (Macduff) and Dmitry Belosseslskiy (Banquo), too, and the Vienna State Opera chorus was stunning.

But oh dear me, what to say about Peter Stein’s staging? I know we all get fed up with clever-clogs post-modernist updatings, but mere mechanical dullness is not the answer either. Devoid of imagination or insight, it looked like a dud episode of Robin Hood and His Merry Men, with a battle scene and ghostly effects straight out of Monty Python. One simply cannot take this sort of thing seriously.»

Salzburgo - I

(Anne Schwanewilms, em A Mulher sem Sombra - Salzburgo, Agosto de 2011)

Terá sido da minha vista, porventura menos fina e atenta, mas a crise mundial parece ter afastado a imprensa dos festivais de Salzburgo e Bayreuth!

Até à data, apenas encontrei duas notícias consagradas ao festival austríaco! Quanto a Bayreuth, NADA! Dado que não domino o idioma alemão... Mesmo assim, mantenho a tese da crise famigerada, bode expiatório de todos os dissabores do mundo actual.

Posto isto, dado que me habituei a seguir os ditos festivais, aqui vão as novas. Desta feita, não recorro a critério algum, no tocante à divulgação dos eventos. Com tamanha escassez de divulgação...

Eis, assim, a crítica de A Mulher sem Sombra (Strauss, R.).

«Strauss and Hofmannsthal envisaged Die Frau ohne Schatten (“The Woman without a Shadow”) as an exotic fairy-tale, in the style of the Arabian Nights, embedding in it an allegory of the role of children within marriage (the shadow being a symbol of female fertility).

But in his extraordinary new production of this vast and complex work, Christof Loy strips the libretto of its coat of fantasy and re-clothes it in more modern dress. In a hall in the 1950s, a recording of the opera is being made. The singers are confronting their roles, which echo their own off-stage psychodramas: in particular, the naïve young soprano singing the childless Empress faces an education in human nature.

I don't altogether understand what Loy is getting at and judging from his waffle in the programme (“the self-recognition of the characters also signifies to me that the past and the future must be considered so as to dervive from them worthy ways of acting in the present”), neither does he.

His conception doesn't hold water logically, and he resorts to all sorts of contortions ­ sudden dream sequences, arbitrary comings and goings - to paper over the cracks. One basic problem is his failure to find a metaphor for the supernatural agency on which the plot hangs.

But although I was often baffled and exasperated, I was never bored. The set is stunning, the acting mostly brilliant and the sheer audacity of it all exhilarating. Far better this, in any case, than the drearily predictable version of Macbeth which I'd seen the night before.

No such ambivalence attaches to Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic. Both the score's thunderous tumults and its sweetness, stillness and simplicity were realised with unfaltering clarity and authority one wondered whether this music can ever been played better.

Anne Schwanewilms made a rather droopy Empress, pure in tone but cloudy of diction, and the stage was dominated by Evelyn Herlitzius, slight of figure but thrillingly heroic of voice, as the Dyer's Wife, and Michaela Schuster as the scheming Nurse. Wolfgang Koch was a sympathetic Barak, and Stephen Gould kept his dignity as the Emperor. Great careers loom for some of the excellent younger singers in smaller roles.

It's a measure of the performance's overall power that I came away in the certain knowledge that this is Strauss' greatest opera.»

Quatro anos depois

Guillaume Tell

Disse-me um passarinho, atento e sábio, que o Guilherme Tell (Rossini), d'áprès Pappano, é um portento. A crítica, em uníssono, aclama-o, como segue:

«You couldn't see the Lone Ranger for dust - and I doubt we've ever heard the most famous gallop in music despatched with such fleet-footed (or should that be hooved) panache.

But there are another four or so hours to this particularly story and to hear the whole of Rossini's epic operatic swansong William Tell played and sung by an Italian orchestra and chorus - the Academy of Santa Cecilia, Rome - who not only have it entirely under their fingers and in their voices (the live EMI recording is in the shops and online now) but articulate it with such elegance, charm, and excitement under perhaps the greatest operatic stylist of the day, Antonio Pappano, is no more, no less, than you would expect from the opening weekend of the Proms.

Then there is the piece itself which, for all its great length, whizzes by on a tide of zippy choruses, stirring ensembles, and some ferociously difficult and affecting arias. The big surprises here come from the new ground that Rossini is constantly breaking with the piece. His evocation of the natural world, namely the Swiss Alps - a veritable symphony of horns echoing across the gallery of the Albert Hall - is ambitious; then there is the winning personality of the pastorales and divertissements (deliciously nimble woodwind playing throughout) which Benjamin Britten liked so much he plundered them all. But the biggest revelations are to be found in one or two of the big ensembles and an act two trio which portends Verdi to a quite uncanny degree.

Casting was worthy of the Royal Opera's music director. In the title role we had the quietly authoritative Michele Pertusi whose famous third act solo imploring his son to keep absolutely still for the crucial crossbow shot was a miracle of breathless tension between solo cello and voice. Malin Bystrom's Mathilde demonstrated limpid phrasing and a third act aria (often cut) where despair is vented in ferociously difficult roulades and awkwardly placed top notes.

Speaking of which, the notorious final act aria for the tenor Arnold was nailed by the American John Osborn whose singing above the stave (the tessitura in this number is evil) achieved a weightless intensity without recourse to falsetto. There's nothing more difficult for a tenor than high and soft in full voice and this one stopped the show and put Swiss liberation on hold for a good couple of minutes.»

Em breve, ver-se-á se assim é!

Orange Verdiana :)

(cena de Aïda)


(Grigollo e Ciofi, como Duque e Gilda - Rigoletto, Orange'11)

Orange está para França, como a Arena di Verona está para Itália: ambos os espaços apresentam récitas de óperas populares, evidentemente dirigidas às massas. Mas, em ambos os locais, as massas comportam-se à altura dos acontecimentos. Tomara a burguesia mais adiposa e lustrosa que frequenta o São Carlos ter a disciplina que impera nos citados espaços!

No passados, Orange correspondia a um local de culto para os melómanos franceses, sobretudo para os mais letrados. Recordo, por exemplo, que Nilsson, Vickers e Böhm interpretaram um inesquecível Tristan und Isolde, em 1973. Ora, Wagner e o povo nunca combinaram muito bem...

Acontece que, desde a direcção de Raymond Duffaut - iniciada em 1982 -, as Chorégies d'Orange passaram a dirigir-se a um público mais alargado. O certo é que as receitas de bilheteira de Orange cobrem 85% dos custos, facto único no mundo lírico!

Bref, este ano, contámos com uma reprise de Aïda e um notável Rigoletto!

«(...) une reprise de la production d'Aïda mise en scène en 2006 par Charles Roubaud. A l'époque, Michel Plasson était dans la fosse. On se réjouit qu'en 2011 ce soit le jeune et talentueux chef ossète, Tugan Sokhiev, lequel faisait pour l'occasion ses débuts de chef lyrique à Orange à la tête de son excellent Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse. Une direction soignée, lyrique, précise et inspirée, aussi prompte à la pompe guerrière qu'aux tourments intimes : l'amour interdit du jeune capitaine égyptien Radamès et de l'esclave éthiopienne Aïda, la jalousie de sa maîtresse et rivale, Amnéris, fille du roi d'Egypte.

Ceux qui déploraient l'absence du Radamès de 2006, Roberto Alagna, la regrettent encore. Ils durent se contenter du ténor uruguayen, Carlo Ventre, bien piètre candidat tant à la gloire militaire qu'à l'effusion sentimentale, dont les aigus poussés et vibrionnants, la ligne de chant pâteuse, n'ont pas donné au personnage le moindre relief.

On n'en dira pas autant de l'Américaine Indra Thomas (déjà tenante du rôle en 2006) dont la présence scénique rappelle celle de sa compatriote, Jessye Norman. Las, la voix non. Dotée d'un timbre agréable et d'une belle musicalité, la soprano a eu tendance à couiner ses grands aigus, peinant à soutenir le haut médium (intonation hasardeuse et vibrato d'instable). La Russe Ekaterina Gubanova, en revanche, n'a pas déçu, Amnéris d'une grande sûreté vocale confortable pour l'ouïe. Quant aux (très) nombreux choeurs, ils auront fait face à une partition foisonnante, ne concédant que quelques (et inévitables) décalages à la spatialisation.

Pour être du genre péplum hollywoodien - mais que faire d'autre dans un tel espace ? -, la mise en scène de Charles Roubaud conduit sans vulgarité ni complaisance excessive (hormis la représentation du harem dans le genre loukoum ou le ballet des esclaves éthiopiens du style Saga Africa) les conflits entre l'Egypte et l'Ethiopie, tels que le librettiste français de Verdi, Camille du Locle, les anticipa en 1871 puisque, nous dit Roubaud, "l'Ethiopie au temps des pharaons n'existait pas et que l'unique guerre égypto-éthiopienne qui ait jamais existé eut lieu en 1975, (...) quatre ans après la première représentation d'Aïda à l'Opéra du Caire". Une mise en scène sans surprise pour un opéra prémonitoire ? C'est cela aussi la magie des Chorégies d'Orange.»

«À commencer par le chef. Le Milanais Roberto Rizzi-Brignoli, pour sa première participation aux Chorégies, ne cède pas à la tentation pompière qu'appelle le décor naturel. Conscient qu'il vaut mieux lutter avec le vent que contre, il force l'écoute du public et offre des sonorités riches de caractère, privilégiant les nuances et la transparence des timbres. Il est admirablement épaulé par les musiciens de l'Orchestre national. Ces derniers connaissent le lieu pour l'avoir pratiqué une trentaine de fois. Des tutti (redoutable partie de cuivres de l'ouverture) aux soli (flûte ductile de Philippe Pierlot, hautbois sacrificiel de Nora Cismondi), ils feront preuve d'un bout à l'autre de la partition d'une rare finesse d'interprétation, et d'un bel à-propos. Tant et si bien qu'un spectateur leur lancera, même au début du II, un «bravo l'orchestre !». Auquel ils répondront d'une seule voix, sonore et guillerette: «Merci !»

Le vétéran et l'ingénue

De Rigoletto, le grand public connaît surtout deux airs, reconnaissables entre mille mais d'une jovialité trompeuse: La Donna e mobile et le chœur Duca, duca… Mais l'œuvre, de filiation hugolienne et cruelle de cynisme, n'en a pas moins une puissante portée dramatique. Le metteur en scène, Paul-Émile Fourny l'a bien compris. Pour son second Rigoletto à Orange , il a conservé la même idée directrice que lorsqu'il avait monté l'ouvrage en 2001. Un parti pris plein de bon sens: faire de Gilda, fille sacrifiée de Rigoletto, le cœur de l'ouvrage, loin de l'ingénue tête de linotte qu'on dépeint souvent. Et bien que la scénographie ne convainque pas franchement (le décor, un monumental carrosse renversé surgissant de terre tel un drakkar, prête plus à sourire qu'il n'inquiète) et que certaines chorégraphies semblent parfaitement inutiles (notamment la danse détournée des parapluies, plus proche des Parapluies de Cherbourg que des ombrelles chinoises), les chanteurs, eux, lui rendent pleinement justice.

Ainsi, à 69 ans, le vétéran Leo Nucci, 450 fois Rigoletto, n'a pas toujours la projection suffisante pour fustiger le vent jusqu'aux plus hauts gradins. Mais quel acteur, réellement émouvant lorsqu'il erre tel une âme en peine dans son premier air de l'acte II ! Le public lui rendra un vibrant hommage à la fin de son duo Tutte le feste al tiempo, qu'il bissera sur-le-champ avec une visible exaltation.

Le jeune Vittorio Grigolo confirme quant à lui qu'il est l'un des grands ténors italiens en devenir. Il est un Duc de Mantoue décidément bravache et jouissivement frivole, même s'il manque de gravité pour camper un personnage bien inquiétant. Mais la grande héroïne de la soirée, ce sera sans nul doute Patrizia Ciofi. Sa Gilda, toute de retenue, offre dans l'aigu une palette de nuances qui captive, dès son grand air du premier acte et jusqu'à son abandon final, où elle apparaît comme transfigurée. Elle qui confiait à propos du Théâtre antique avoir la sensation de ne pas pouvoir s'y faire entendre ! Elle y aura réussi… et de la plus belle des manières.»

Aix '11 - IV - O Nariz (fotos)

Nota: para aceder à totalidade das fotos da produção, clique aqui.