|
Back
Benvenuto Cellini and His Antithesis Dresden
Semperoper
06/29/2024 - & July 2, 5, 10, August 30*, September 4, 19, 29, 2024
Hector Berlioz : Benvenuto Cellini, opus 23, H. 76 (Weimar version)
Anton Rositskiy (Benvenuto Cellini), Ante Jerkunica (Giacomo Balducci), Jérôme Boutillier (Fieramosca), Tuuli Takala (Teresa), Tilmann Rönnebeck (Pope Clement VII), Stepanka Pucálková (Ascanio), Aaron Pegram (Francesco), Vladyslav Buialskiy (Bernardino), Matthias Henneberg (Pompeo), Jürgen Müller (Le cabaretier), Anton Beliaev (An Officer)
Sächsischer Staatsopernchor Dresden, André Kellinghaus (chorus master), Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, Giampaolo Bisanti*/Oscar Jockel (conductor)
Barbora Horáková (stage director), Aida Leonor Guardia (sets), Eva Butzkies (costumes), Stefan Bolliger (lighting), Juanjo Arqués (choreography), Sergio Verde (videography)
(© Semperoper Dresden/Ludwig Olah)
Benvenuto Cellini was Berlioz’s first opera, premiered in 1838, around the same time as Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots (1836), Auber’s Le Domino noir (1837) and Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux (1837). To get a further historical sense, this was five years before Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer (1843), thirteen before Verdi’s Rigoletto (1851), and two decades before Gounod’s Faust (1859). And yet, Berlioz’ music is avant‑garde compared to contemporaneous works and even, dare I say, compared to those written long after it.
The most astounding musical innovation is Berlioz’ use of syncopation, especially in his incredible “harmonious dissonance,” omnipresent in Benvenuto Cellini, as an allusion to the life of a true artistic creator. Over four decades later, Bizet used this innovative syncopation in his admirable Act II quintet “Nous avons en tête une affaire,” from Carmen (1875).
Léon de Wailly (1804‑1864) and Henri Auguste Barbier (1805‑1882), the librettists of Benvenuto Cellini, wrote a highly fictionalized account of the Renaissance sculptor’s life. Cellini’s most famous and magnificent work, Perseus with the head of Medusa, was in fact commissioned by Cosimo de’Medici (1519‑1574), Duke of Tuscany, and not Pope Clement VII (1478‑1534) as the libretto states.
Born Giulio di Giuliano de’Medici, Clement VII was deemed “the most unfortunate of Popes”, as he faced the expansion of Protestantism in Northern Europe, the expansion of the Ottomans in the East, the suppression of Catholicism by England’s Henry VIII, the irreconcilability of the two leading Catholic monarchs, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and France’s François I, the former’s invasion and sacking of Rome (1527) and finally, his own imprisonment.
De Wailly and Barbier created a sympathetic portrait of Cellini, a depraved man even by today’s ultra‑liberal standards, who derived pleasure from humiliating his sexual partners and who was condemned several times for sodomy and three times for murder. Given his immense talent, the powers of the day judged it more worthwhile to indulge the sociopath. In the opera’s libretto, Pope Clement VII pardons the sculptor with the revealing words: “Puisque Dieu lui‑même a béni/Et tes travaux et ta hardiesse/J’acquitte à l’instant ma promesse,/Et te pardonne, ô Cellini”, an allusion to the immoral notion that talent supersedes crime and absolves all.
The action takes place in Rome, circa 1532, in four scenes over three days: Shrove Monday, Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday. Balducci, the Pope’s treasurer, is concerned that Pope Clement VII has commissioned the unconventional Florentine Benvenuto Cellini rather than his future son‑in‑law, traditionalist Roman sculptor Fieramosca. Cellini manages to access the bedroom of Teresa, Balducci’s daughter, through her window. His rival Fieramosca also enters and overhears Cellini’s plan for Teresa’s elopement with him at Carnival. Cellini and his assistant Ascanio are to be dressed as monks, who are to take her away in the chaos of Carnival. As Balducci returns, Cellini escapes, but Fieramosca is caught and the neighbours are called on to dump him into a fountain.
At Carnival, Balducci and Teresa attend a play about King Midas, in which the sovereign is made to look like Balducci. Commedia dell’arte characters, Pierrot and Arlecchino, compete for the king’s attention. In this production, Pierrot is made to look like a lecherous Cellini, and Arlecchino, a simian and graceless Fieramosca. Teresa is confused when she sees two sets of monks, Cellini and Ascanio, and Fieramosca and his friend Pompeo, wearing the same disguise to outplay the former pair. In the ensuing imbroglio, Cellini stabs Pompeo to death, is captured, but escapes. Fieramosca, wearing Cellini’s disguise, is arrested in his place.
The Pope appears in Cellini’s atelier and threatens to give the commission to another sculptor. The audacious Cellini takes a hammer and threatens to destroy the mold, at which point the Pope promises to pardon Cellini if he promises to cast the statue that very evening. But, should he fail, he would be hung, as iterated in the lines: “Si Persée enfin n’est fondu, dès ce soir tu seras pendu.”
At the foundry, the smithies threaten to stop work until they get paid. Teresa tries to reason with them, to no avail. When Fieramosca attempts to bribe them to stop work, they are enraged, reasserting their loyalty to Cellini. When they run out of metal, Cellini orders all sculptures in his studio to be smelted. Come evening, the statue has been successfully cast. The Pope then pardons the triumphant Cellini, finally reunited with Teresa.
Russian tenor Anton Rositskiy was an ideal choice for the title role. Endowed with a brilliant lirico spinto, he is able to confront the role’s high tessitura and semi‑heroic Fach. One ought to remember that this demanding role was written for the legendary Gilbert-Louis Duprez (1806‑1896) of the ut de poitrine, the operatic high C delivered from the chest. In his Act I romance “La gloire était ma seule idole”, he convincingly portrays a self-sufficient, ambitious artist’s transformation by love. He was truly moving is in his Act II soliloquy “Seul pour lutter, seul avec mon courage... Sur les monts les plus sauvages” in which he expresses an artist’s predicament, almost a confession by Berlioz himself regarding the joy and burden of creativity. In this “modern” staging, Cellini was portrayed as a pop star, featured on the cover of popular magazines and with paparazzi following him on the streets. Dressed in a golden Elvis suit, often bare chested, he personified the director’s vision of the sculptor convincingly. Anton Rositskiy had admirably good French diction, a real accomplishment. His was perhaps the second clearest of the main protagonists, after Frenchman Jérôme Boutillier.
Tuuli Takala was an endearing Teresa, thanks to her warm timbre and vivacious stage presence. Both vocally and dramatically, she was ideal, an alert and rebellious ingénue. Making her into a rebel and an artist was one of the very few inspired ideas in this staging. It explains the mutual attraction between the two lovers. Act I opens in her room, where she’s painting a sketch of Cellini’s new project, the aforementioned Perseus, which she promptly covers with a conventionally dull floral painting as soon as her father arrives. She was convincing in her Act I cavatina “Les belles fleurs... Entre l’amour et le devoir” and impressed in the aria’s difficult coloratura. Her diction was quite good, but there’s room for improvement. The Act II duet with Cellini, “Ah le Ciel cher époux... Quand des sommets de la montagne” was an unexpected paragon of elegant French singing.
Rositskiy, Takala and Boutillier gave a magnificent rendition of the Act I trio, “O mon bonheur, vous que j’aime plus que ma vie”. The initial segment is a melodious love duet that transforms into a trio with the addition of Fieramosca, surreptitiously present in the room. The suavely sentimental melody soon gives way to tension and mayhem when Cellini proposes elopement. One third into the trio, as Teresa and Cellini sing sotto voce “Demain soir, mardi gras” and Fieramosca, barely able to hear, sings “Gras!” is one of the funniest and most refined comic moments in opera. Only with the graceful punctuation conductor Giampaolo Bisanti gave the music could such finesse have been achieved.
Most likely this monumental trio is modelled, at least dramatically, on a trio Berlioz considered one of the most sublime moments in opera, the Act II trio from Rossini’s Le Comte Ory (1825). The idea of introducing, unwittingly to a pair of lovers, a third, rejected and undesired, participant in a trio where the lovers exchange their passion and the third merely overhears, is both cruel and ingenious. French baritone Jérôme Boutillier, a first‑rate actor, introduced loads of dry and caustic humour and wisely avoided vulgarity. He was amusing in his bombastic Act I aria, “Qui pourrait me résister?” The choice of this fictitious character’s name is not fortuitous; Fiera mosca is Italian for “proud housefly”, an insignificant, petty but irritating creature. In addition to exceptionally clear diction and natural comic verve, this young singer boasts a pleasant baritone. One expects to hear more of him in future.
Croatian bass Ante Jerkunica was the Pope’s treasurer Giacomo Balducci. He perfectly portrayed a pedantic and overwhelmed father, unable to reign in his daughter. His demeanour enhanced his awkwardness and one’s desire to irk him, as when carnival revelers pelted him with fausses dragées (flour pellets) in Act I (though the director either omitted the pelleting or didn’t succeed in making it apparent.) In Act II, his irritation at the play in which he was ridiculed was most palpable, especially when multiple Balducci look‑alikes appeared. As amusing as this was, the commedia dell’arte aspect of the play was ignored by director Barbora Horáková and replaced by obscenities (a Pierrot representing Cellini waving a gigantic penis and a half‑witted ape impersonating Fieramosca was the vulgar alternative).
German-Czech mezzo Stepanka Pucálková was the least effective main character as Ascanio, Cellini’s young apprentice. Despite a pleasant and warm light mezzo timbre, appropriate for travesty roles such Ascanio, Cherubino, Sesto, Adamante and Octavian, her French was incomprensible, even to those familiar with the libretto. The reason such a role is assigned to a mezzo is to represent the fragility of a male character, usually an adolescent or a very young man. However, the greatest impediment for Pucálková being effective was the director’s unfortunate decision to make her into a robot. Pucálková spent so much energy simulating robotic movements that she couldn’t enunciate her lines. How a robot is fragile is a mystery only known to the “inspired” director. Ascanio’s sole aria, Act II’s “Tra la la la... mais qu’ai‑je donc,” often one of the opera’s highlights, was sadly forgettable.
German bass Tilmann Rönnebeck was a vocally sonorous Pope Clement VII. The Catholic-bashing idea of rampant depravity in the heart of the Church is a bit tired. The arrival of the Pope in a Fabergé egg drawn by three overly effeminate Swiss guards is not only grotesque, but plagiarized from Philip Stölz’ infinitely more coherent Salzburg production. The Swiss guards engaged in lewd acts with Balducci’s ruffians and looted Cellini’s atelier of whatever they could lift in fancy shopping bags, thereby confirming the other cliché, of the Church stealing from the poor. The additional “bitcoin” collection contraption attached to the Papal egg‑mobile was a not‑so‑inspired aggiornamento. This vulgar sequence distracted considerably, bringing very little to the opera’s dramatic conclusion. Bizarrely, the Pope’s absolution of Cellini and the sculptor’s union with his beloved Teresa felt like trivial details in a festival of debauchery. Pity!
Despite the flawed staging and some weaknesses in the cast, there were two undeniable stars: Sächsischer Staatsopernchor Dresden and Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden. Italian conductor Giampaolo Bisanti, who in the past two seasons has taken Milan, Vienna and Berlin by storm, presided over an inspired reading of Berlioz’s first opera. The spirited overture alone made attending the performance worthwhile. His brilliant musical understanding of the organized chaos of the carnival scene showed an intelligent mind at work, not something that could be said of the director.
Chorus master André Kellinghaus achieved a miracle with his chorus in a rarely-performed (and hence unfamiliar) work, sung in this most difficult of operatic languages. In fact, the diction of the chorists was better than some of the soloists. Moreover, they moved well on a very crowded stage (almost a hundred, between soloists, chorus and dancers).
A successful production of Benvenuto Cellini must evoke the spirit of Rome, whether Renaissance or present day (for updated productions). Sadly, this wasn’t the case here. When Balducci and Teresa shout out to their domestic help, the aptly‑named Gaetana, Catarina, Fornarina, Petronilla and Scolastica (all archaic names, save Catarina, out of fashion for centuries) and their neighbours, to catch and harass the intruder Fieramosca caught in Teresa’s room, an army of typically German Putzfrauen (cleaning ladies) arises. The neighbourhood women are (disparagingly) shabby, but a far cry from Roman. They may well be of Bielefeld, Chemnitz or Ludwigshafen. This detachment from where the action unfolds is a constant deterrent: the bar scene in Act II where the metal workers meet is more akin to Memphis or Kalamazoo. Sadly, the production team killed off the one essential protagonist of the opera: Rome.
Czech director Barbora Horáková sadly misplaced the essence of Berlioz’ masterpiece. Cellini’s love for Teresa, his rebelliousness against authority, whether Balducci or the Pope; the competitiveness against a traditionalist rival such as Fieramosca, the class struggle of Cellini versus the establishment, and the plight of the outsider Florentine in Rome are all facets of the artist’s struggle. The artist’s trajectory while in the process of creating – this is the essence of Berlioz’s opera. As a creative genius himself, Berlioz truly identified with Cellini. Unfortunately, Horáková was out of her depth in this regard. She incoherently conflates Artificial Intelligence and Robotics with artistic creation, undoubtedly as the former is a sujet du jour. If anything, AI is the antithesis of creativity. This timelessly great work doesn’t require a trendy update in order to sell tickets; one need only trust its inherent qualities. No one would be surprised to learn the director had relegated her own role to AI.
Ossama el Naggar
|
