1. Viaggio
I went to Il viaggio a Reims again.
My friend Ub also came. She had a lot on and told me she would be leaving at interval because of an early start the next morning. I was shocked.
I toyed with asking Ub if, supposing she really was going to leave after the first half (I urged her not to), I could arrange for a frugal friend to take her place. It is just as well I didn’t because at interval, enthused, she announced her intention to stay. At the end, exhilarated, she declared: “I feel like I’ve just been at a coronation!” She also said she would always follow my advice in the future, but she was only joking about that.
I still can’t say I found Viaggio as funny as many of the audience seemed to – especially so far as much of the laughter seemed to be in response to the characters from the surrealist pictures. To me, laughing at an extra in a costume is a bit like clapping the scenery. But apart from the odd moment where I felt embarrassed by others’ mirth, I did really enjoy it.
Just a note about standards: notwithstanding a “courageous” High D on the first night (better if a little more cautious on the second), Shanul Sharma is a rising star. I still cannot imagine he is on the same level as Juan Francisco Gatell, who took the same role in this production at the Netherlands Opera (and who so impressed me as Don Ottavio recently in Rome). That’s no skin off SS’s nose – it’s Europe vs the Antipodes.
2 The Marriage of Figaro.
To a revival of the David MacVicar production from 2015. The conductor and many of the cast also returned.
I used to think this my favourite opera. On the strength of this performance I am no longer sure.
I have thought about this since and I think it really comes down to: too fast (other than Barbarina’s little aria and the passage in Act II which I complained about in 2015) and too slapstick. The set for the last act does not help – acres of open space and recitative owing to the excision of the generally-excised arias.
I missed Taryn Fiebig, who has been a bit of an institution for OA as Susanna. Justine Nguyen wrote in Limelight of Stacey Alleume as Susanna that “A magnetic stage presence, the soprano gave a dramatically nuanced portrayal of a character that’s often played as just perky or sassy” but to me perky and sassy are pretty much the first words that come to mind about SA’s performance, though I wouldn’t say just so.
With the slapstick (Paulo Bordogna’s characterization notably broader) everyone was in such a hurry to have a good time that there was an premature outburst of applause in Susanna’s “Deh vieni, non-tardar” (corresponding to 4:52 here) – why wait, indeed? I know that can just mean a few ignorant people but mostly this sort of thing doesn’t come from nowhere.
To me there should be an almost Shakespearian Rom-Com (but more than those two hence the invocation of the bard) emotional turning in a sixpence in this opera. I didn’t feel it – for me the Com drove out the Rom and the extra Bardish bit – maybe you could call it heart.
3. Lyndon Terracini
has had his term as artistic director of Opera Australia extended again, to the end of 2023. Celebratory interviews have been given. This interview with him published in 1998 in The Australian set the tone for Terracini’s public outings long ago: talking himself up by talking others down. I can only guess that the movers and shakers on the OA board don’t notice it because that’s the way movers and shakers are. (This went nowhere, obviously.)
Terracini told Limelight Magazine “I’ll always argue that pieces like West Side Story are much better pieces than something like L’Elisir d’amore.” There is something pathological about his combativeness, even if by “always argue” in this case he means advance a proposition rather than pick a fight. Terracini has also said that in future all new OA productions will be “digital,” which is dispiriting.