Mercoledi Musicale (A Day Late)

In all probability I will be waxing lyrical about Venice in the next few days - I've been working on several posts - but in the meantime I thought I'd share one of my favourite artists singing the lyrical praises of one of my favourite cities.

One of the things I miss - amongst so many things - about living in Italy is the opportunity to hear singers like Anna Caterina Antonacci (left).  I was fortunate enough to see her on three occasions during my four years in Europe.  The first was in a searing portrayal of Medea in Cherubini's opera which opened the season in Torino in November of 2008.  Though I had reservations, serious reservations, about the production about Antonacci herself I had none - I loved her.

The second was a semi-staged performance of Gluck's Alceste with Gregory Kunde in Athens the following October.  My dear Fotis had insisted I fly over for it and as well as it being an opportunity to see him and visit my beloved Greece it allowed me to experience another facet of Antonacci's art.  Her grasp of the French style was masterful and the gentle nobility and sacrifice of Alceste - which can often seem, if terribly admirable, also terribly dull dull - had all the doubt and anguish that bargaining with death for the life of a loved one would draw from a human.  It was a remarkable evening made more so by the perfect interplay between Antonacci and Kunde.

It was made even more remarkable because Fotis led me backstage to say hello and congratulation both Mr Kunde and - gasp! - Anna Caterina - her ardent admirers often refer to her as AnnaCat, but as much as I adore her I can't bring myself to call her that.  Now I have a history of being less than tactful when meeting famous opera singers - I still have nightmares about the Marilyn Horne episode in 1986 - and this meeting was no exception.  In my stumbling efforts to say something other than "I adore you!" I muttered  that I really hadn't liked Hugo D'Ana's production in Torino - not her mind you but the production, which it turned out she liked very much!!!!  But Signora Antonacci, ignoring my awkward attempts at retrieval,  flashed me her wonderful smile and said that she would make it up to me by adding me to the guest list for an upcoming private concert in Rome at the American Academy.

And so I found myself wandering the beautiful grounds of Villa Aurelia on the Juniculum Hill on a cool but pleasant December evening; having coffee and chatting about Rossini with Philip Gossett , one of the leading authorities on 19^th century opera; and sitting with him and 40 other people in the gilt and white grand salon listening to Anna Caterina accompanied by Donald Sulzen in Echi della Belle Époque, a programme of songs by Fauré, Tosti, Cimara, Toscanini, Respighi and Zandonai.  It is an evolving programme that she and Sulzen have now presented in Europe and North America including a rare and much heralded appearance at New York's Lincoln Centre last month.  The programme had been well-thought out and beautifully performed with the Tosti English songs and Resphighi's Cinque canti all'antica as the highlights.

Anna Caterina Antonacci and Donald Sulzen after their concert at Wigmore Hall.
  Sulzen is a brilliant accompanist much in the Gerald Moore vein. At a reception
after the concert he talked a bit with me about how they had chosen the programme
- it was very much a collaborative effort.

The concert had opened with Fauré's Cinq mélodies de Venise so there was a taste of La Serenissima but it wasn't until a few months later that she added Reynaldo Hahn's Venezia cycle.  Of the two I realize that the Hahn is perhaps the more frivolous which is not a word I can ever imagine applying to Antonacci.  However she add a touched of perfumed erotica - and tongue in cheek tartness when needed - to Hahn's postcard-picturesque tales of moonlit nights on the lagoon.
I have only been able to find five of the six songs posted by yukio84 on YouTube; they are taken from a concert in Firenze this past March.  It may seem like quite a few videos but believe me they are worth it - I only wish that Primavera, the final song was available.

Sopra l'acqua indormenzata - Asleep on the water

A young lady is invited to accompany her lover on a gondola ride on the lagoon in the moonlight.  Her inamorata  is afraid that the moon will be jealous of her beauty - a beauty that is only enhanced by the gentle movement of the waves.  But he does warn her that "Tears will come soon enough, so now is the time for laughter and for love."

La barcheta - The Little Boat

Another lovesick swain takes his Ninetta out in the evening air in a gondola piloted by the silent, and obviously discreet, Toni. So discreet that the lover assures his beloved Ninetta that should the evening breezes cause her veil to lift and reveal her lovely breasts, that Toni is much too intent on plying his oar to pay any attention. Why he tells her, its almost like we are along here and anything could happen!

L'avertimento - The Warning

The lovely Nana has obviously broken the singer's heart.  Ah yes there are roses in her cheeks, her breasts are milky white and her voice gentle and sweet "but.. but.. but.. the lovely Nana has the heart of a tiger!"

La Biondina in gondoleta

As their gondola glides across the lagoon the lover rhapsodizes over the beauty of his "blonde" as she lays sleeping, her golden tresses floating in the water.  But he arouses her - from slumber and in other ways also it would appear as he declaims "God what wonderful things I said, what lovely things I did! Never again was I to be so happy in all my life."

Che pecà! - What a shame!

The gentleman assures the still-lovely (and one feels perhaps loved?) Nina that his days of seeing only her are long since gone. After all she is only a woman - and a fickle one at that so who really cares? But all the same "what a shame!"

That big sigh you heard was me - Anna Caterina and Venice!  Two of my treasured memories! 

10 May - 1849: Astor Place Riot: A riot breaks out at the Astor Opera House over a dispute between actors Edwin Forrest and William Charles Macready, killing at least 25 and injuring over 120.

Mercoledi Musicale

When the great castrato Giovanni Carestinti first sang the role of Ruggerio in Alcina he was not pleased with the aria Handel had written for the Crusader hero in Act 2.  Charles Burney recorded the singer's displeasure and the composer's reaction:

Verdi prati, which was constantly encored during the whole run of Alcina, was, at first, sent back to Handel by Carestini, as unfit for him to sing; upon which he went, in a great rage, to his house, and in a way which few composers, except HANDEL, ever ventured to accost a first-singer, cries out: "You toc! don't I know better as your seluf, vaat is pest for you to sing? If you vill not sing all de song vaat I give you, I will not pay you ein stiver."

It is a deceptively simply aria, basic ABA, with very little opportunity for the florid ornamentation that Carestini was famous for.  But its very simplicity makes it a challenge for any singer.  I first heard it on a recording - I think possibly the first LP I ever owned - issued by London Records back in 1962.  Looking back now I realize it was a pioneering effort as very few of Handel's operas were consider saleable quantities at that time.  No doubt London recorded and released it at the insistence of Joan Sutherland who was one of their brightest stars in what was one of the starriest list of  operatic voices on the planet.  London was not stingy when it came to casting the other roles - Monica Sinclair, Graziella Scuitti, Luigi Alva, a very young Mirella Freni supported the slightly droopy - not many consonants in sight - Australian diva and as Ruggerio the incredible Spanish mezzo Teresa Berganza. I fell in love with Berganza from very first listening and my favourite track was "Verdi prati" - I'm sure I drove my mother up the wall playing it over and over again.

A rehearsal photo of Teresa Berganza as Ruggerio in the 1978 production of Alcina at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.  I found it while going through a box of old programmes that had been in storage.

Sutherland sang Alcina on stage in Venice, Dallas and London but to the best of my knowledge Berganza only appeared in it once - at the 1978 Aix-en-Provence Festival.  It was a banner year for Aix and I saw Janet Baker in Dido and Aeneas conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras; Don Pasquale with Gabriel Bacquier; and  Christane Eda-Pierre, Ann Murray, Valerie Masterson and my beloved Teresa in Alcina led by Raymond Leppard.  The weather that year was perfect, Aix was at its most festive, the food was incredible and the music...   as I said it was a banner year.  And if it had been sixteen years since Berganza recorded "Verdi prati" the passage of time had only enriched her performance.  Fortunately it was preserved on video for French Television and I am able to relive that magical experience.

Ruggerio, a crusader knight, has fallen under the spell of the enchantress Alcina, who turns former lovers into rocks, trees and wild beasts.  Brademante (Ann Murray in this clip), Ruggerio's beloved, has disguised herself as a knight to gain access to Alcina's magic island and attempts to save the knight.  He is given a magic ring which restores him to his senses and he sees the island as it really is—a desert, peopled with monsters. Appalled, he realizes he must leave,  and sings "Verdi prati" ("Green meadows") where he admits that even though he knows the island and Alcina are mere illusion, their beauty will haunt him for the rest of his life.

While going through a box of programmes in an effort to get rid of "stuff" I discovered the rehearsal shot of Berganza neatly tucked into the book from that year's Festival. It brought back memories of that summer and a magical evening of music under the stars in the courtyard of the Archbishop's Palace.  The programme and the photo went back into the box - how could I rid myself of anything that brings back such happy memories?

24 agosto/August - San Bartolomeo

Mercoledi Musicale

Its been awhile since I created a Mercoledi Muscicale, which was at one point a weekly post and its been a long while since I've posted anything on the operas or concerts that I've seen in the past few months. Its not that music hasn't been happening or is no longer a part of my life. It is very much - concerts, operas and various goings-on around Rome and Italy are all part of daily life for me here. Music took us as far away as Salzburg and Vienna this year and will be part of our upcoming holiday in Sicily. Its just that for some reason, which I'm sure my therapist could eventually ferret out, I haven't been moved to share many of those experiences or a piece that I've discovered and enjoyed.

While I was in Siena this weekend I wandered into the Palazzo Chigi Saracini, once the home of one of the most powerful families in Italy it now is the centre of the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, founded by the remarkable Guido Chigi Saracini. In their bookstore I found an album by one of my favourite groups Accordone. I wrote about two of their concerts at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival in 2008 and 2009. I have most of their CDs but Fra Diavolo was one that I was pretty certain wasn't in my collection as it was only recorded late in 2009. It turns out that is an expanded version of their Via Toledo programme which I had heard and bought that first year.  However there are enough new items in it to make it a worthy addition to their catalogue.

But it also reminded me of that magic moment back in 2009 when Marco Beasley and Elisabetta de Mircovich filled the stilled space of the Mozarteum Grand Hall with the lovely melody of La Bella Noeva,  a traditional serenata from the Liguria region of Northern Italy.  I was able to find a version of it from a concert in Brussels in 2006 with Beasley, de Mircovich, Claudia Caffagni and Helicon.  It allowed me to relive one of the more magical moments of my music going in the past four years.

I thought I'd share it with you.

04 maggio - San Ciriaco di Gerusalemme