Cavalleria rusticana / Teatro dell’Opera di Firenze, 26th October 2014

After inaugurating the new season with a rarity (Il campiello, never been staged in the Tuscan city before) the Opera di Firenze chose to settle on one of the most beloved operas, Cavalleria rusticana, fortunately uncoupled from its usual bedfellow, I pagliacci, and paired with the premiere of a ballet, La luce nel tempo, choreographed by Francesco Mappa and performed to music by Franz Joseph Haydn (Symphony in F minor Hob. 1:49 La Passione: Adagio(Allegro di molto/menuet/ Symphony in G major Hob. 1:94 mit dem Paukenschlag: Andante). My absolute ignorance in matters of ballet does not allow me to review, or even describe, the performance of the MaggioDanza, the Maggio’s corps de ballet. All I can say is that I enjoyed it.

Mozart: Don Giovanni / Teatro Verdi di Pisa, 11 October 2014

An absolute masterpiece such as Don Giovanni has lent itself from the very moment of its creation to numerous and antithetical interpretations; the central question for performers and listeners is the spirit in which the work is to be approached. The opera concludes with divine retribution for sin, but it also involves the subtlest musical exploration of the comic and tragic motivation for compassion and moral indifference. Who is the most profoundly realized character: Leporello? Donna Elvira? The Commendatore? And what are we to make of Don Giovanni himself? Is he simply a faceless libertine whose real significance is in what others see in him, or is he is some way a tragic protagonist defending his genius against complacent practicality? Or is he an animal rendered obsolescent by civilization? A mediaeval Vice figure, Marlow’s Faust, Brecht’s Baal?

Wolf-Ferrari: Il campiello / Opera di Firenze, 25th September 2014

The popularity of opera buffa in Italy had already dramatically decreased in the first part of the nineteenth century; Rossini himself was not commissioned another opera buffa after La Cenerentola (1817) in his native country. This genre experienced its true zenith in the first decade of the century, when an army of composers and librettists worked indefatigably in a still eighteenth century climate before being swept away by the “Cyclone” of Pesaro. There is an underground thread linking this period to the late 1800s and the early twentieth century: librettos based on Goldoni’s body of work. A fair number of operas were adapted from his comedies even after 1843, the year of Don Pasquale, traditionally considered as opera buffa’s last bloom.

Max Jota in recital, Complesso Monumentale San Micheletto, Lucca, 14th September 2014

The breathtakingly beautiful town of Lucca is renowned throughout the musical world as the birthplace of one of the most beloved opera composers, Giacomo Puccini. His immense popularity has inevitably overshadowed another talented but unlucky “lucchese”, Alfredo Catalani. It is therefore commendable that one of the most important local musical societies, the Circolo Musicale Alfredo Catalani decided to name itself after the composer of La Wally, his only opera to be occasionally revived (and I would also like to mention that the name of the local Conservatoire of Music is “Luigi Boccherini”, another illustrious son of Lucca).