Teatro La Fenice (live stream), 26/04/2021

 Verdi @ La Fenice

Luca Salsi, baritone

Michele Pertusi, bass

Chorus and Orchestra of the Teatro La Fenice

Stefano Ranzsni

Venice's Teatro La Fenice has been proposing live-streamed concerts regularly for months now, but tonight, they had an audience in place, masked spectators, in their ones and twos, in the jewelled boxes of one of the most beautiful auditoriums in Europe, for an all-Verdi concert.  Not the 'greatest hits' kind of Verdi either, but Verdi at La Fenice, extracts from the five operas that Verdi premiered in the Venetian theatre, which made it particularly interesting.  Choosing to feature baritone and bass soloists meant that La traviata lost out a little, as there is no leading bass role in it and the baritone has one the one aria, but then it's by far the best known opera not just of this particular sub-set of Verdi, but probably of his entire output.  Otherwise, we were offered quite substantial chunks of Ernani, Attila, Rigoletto and, perhaps most interestingly, the original (and now very rarely heard) version of Simon Boccanegra.

Conductor Stefano Ranzoni opened the proceedings with the Prelude to Ernani, immediately followed by Silva's Act 1 aria "Infelice! E tuo credevi", expressively delivered by Michele Pertusi.  He was joined by Luca Salsi for the confrontational duet with Carlo which actually precedes the bass aria, and then Salsi delivered the big Act 3 aria, which is Carlo's most important scene.  I have to admit that Ernani is not my favourite opera, never mind my favourite Verdi.  In a domain which abounds in absurdities, I find those of Ernani particularly hard to swallow, because the music is not quite good enough to excuse them.  The last time I saw this opera, Hvorostovsky was the Carlo, and that was a pair of shoes Salsi was not able to fill, though the performance was generally laudable.  However, at least tonight, he was showing a tendency to shout a bit, and that never really abated throughout the rest of the concert.

Attila is the bass's opera, and Pertusi gave a fine reading of the 'dream' aria from Act 1, while Ezio's big scene from the start of Act 2 was gilded by bright, sharp trumpets in suitably martial vein.  There was a duet between Ezio and Attila advertised, but instead we went straight into Rigoletto, the Rigoletto/Sparafucile conversation from Act 1.ii, the courtiers' conspiratorial chorus from the same scene, just before they kidnap Gilda and, naturally, Rigoletto's great monologue.  Salsi's penchant for near-parlando effects was a little troubling here; it's not uncommon, but I like my Rigoletto's to sing their role, from start to finish, the music is powerful enough that it doesn't need any 'assistance' from vocal special effects.  That said, Salsi's heart was well and truly on his sleeve, and the second half was genuinely touching.

"Di Provenza" from La traviata was more nuanced than anything Salsi had previously sung, with finely shaped phrasing and elegantly marked dynamics, as well as delicate support from the orchestra, never allowing it to lapse into bathos.  Then the chorus delivered the two 'fancy-dress' choruses from the second scene of Act 2.  This, as well as in the first part of Rigoletto's monologue, was the clearest indication of the difficulties imposed by the new performance conditions, with the greatly increased physical distances between chorus members, and between the chorus and the conductor, now standing at the other end of the stalls, because the chorus clearly wanted to go a little faster than the tempo Ranzani was setting.  However, it was a fairly minor issue, on the whole.

Verdi's publisher Ricordi had been periodically suggesting to the composer that he revise Simon Boccanegra from around a decade after its 1857 premiere, without any success.  However, when he then proposed that Verdi collaborate with Arrigo Boito for a new opera - which would be Otello - the suggestion was that Verdi 'try out' the collaboration by working on Simon Boccanegra (Piave, the original librettist, having died in the interim).  Boito was all for rewriting the whole thing, which was more than Verdi was prepared to accept, and in the end much of Piave's libretto stands.  However, what was rewritten entirely was the end of the second act (which became the end of Act 1), and Boito's Council Scene was such an outstanding improvement that it established the revised Boccanegra as the definitive one.

I've never heard the 1857 version, and the two Simon/Fiesco duets presented here did not really seem to show much difference from the later version.  There's maybe something in the orchestra, which I couldn't pinpoint exactly, but the vocal lines are, I think, the same.  These brought out the best from both Salsi and Pertusi, a real dialogue, and in the Act 4 one, a true sense of pathos.  The one real difference was, preceding that final duet, a women's chorus - i presume a nuptial chorus for Amelia and Gabriele - ethereal and luminous.  

The Boccanegra selection ending on a very low-key note, and the audience so audibly pleased to have been able to assist at a concert in person, the 'missing' duet from Attila was produced as an encore, to end the evening on a bolder note.  the trumpets again leant a glittering military swagger to the blustering bravado of the two characters, and delivered with relish by the soloists for the greater pleasure of an appreciative public, both on site, and on screen.