{"id":66497,"date":"2013-08-24T20:57:19","date_gmt":"2013-08-24T18:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gbopera.it\/?p=66497"},"modified":"2017-02-09T14:44:12","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T13:44:12","slug":"the-domingo-festival-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/the-domingo-festival-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Verona, The Arena Opera Festival: The Domingo Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Verona, Arena, Festival del Centenario 2013
\n<\/em>Orchestra dell’Arena di Verona
\n<\/strong>Direttore Daniel Oren\u00a0<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Soprani: Inva Mula, Pretty Yende, Irina Lungu, Ana Maria Martinez, Carmen Giannatasio
\n<\/strong>Tenori: Giuseppe Filianoti, Stefan Pop
\n<\/strong>Baritono: Placido Domingo
\n<\/strong>Bassi: Orlin Anastassov, Vitalij Kowaljow
\n<\/strong>Musiche di: Giuseppe Verdi, Umberto Giordano, Gaetano Donizetti, Francesco Cilea, Charles Gounod, Georges Bizet, Giacomo Puccini, Manuel Penella
\nVerona, 20 agosto 2013\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
\nTo Domingo goes the merit of having created a prestigious singing competition<\/strong> which takes place in a different city around the world each year.\u00a0 It discovers fine, young singers launching them on an international career, thanks also to the presence of numerous jury members from the echelons of foremost, international opera house management who have a decisional power in casting.\u00a0 This week the competition is being held in conjunction with Domingo’s many, and multifaceted commitments in this year’s Arena centenary season, an occasion which also provides him with the opportunity for a self-congratulatory\u00a0 20th<\/sup> anniversary celebration of the competition.
\nLast night, nine previous prize winners, all of whom\u00a0 in demand in the most important world theatres, joined Domingo<\/strong>in a concert performance of famous operatic excerpts in what promised to be a star-studded evening. Various factors however, contributed, to make the evening rather disappointing.\u00a0 Not least of all, the late starting hour, a cool, humid, late-August 10p.m. , a fidgety to noisy audience,\u00a0 and the orchestra relegated to a low-profile in the pit\u00a0 leaving the singers alone on a the bare, monumental stage, their vocal presence supported and reinforced, however, by a sound system.
\nOver the years,\u00a0 as\u00a0 the orchestral ranks have been reduced,\u00a0 we’ve seen a growing reliance on amplification.<\/strong> It was therefore not surprising to see a visible row of loud-speakers along the entire length of the proscenium between the orchestra and the stage. This situation has been evident in previous performances, but last night it was particularly disconcerting.\u00a0 The opening orchestral ‘Sinfonia’ from Nabucco<\/em> seemed to be in play-back, and the singers were obviously boosted during the evening, leaving us with the nagging doubt regarding what we were actually listening to.\u00a0 How much of the vocal presence, the power and the body of the singers voices, was due to phonic doping?\u00a0 In this context anyone can sing anything and it’s considered acceptable, especially in the world of marketing?\u00a0 The bar is inexorably being lowered.\u00a0\u00a0 Isn’t the wonder of a classically trained singer, the fact that they can produce and project a voice by their own natural physical capacities?\u00a0 Isn’t that the challenge and the specificity of the Arena?\u00a0 Amplification is a leveller, and the sound technician\u00a0 ultimately has the last musical and artistic word.
\nOn the other hand, what singer, even in his prime could think of singing a Verdi\/Wagner gala, a Nabucco<\/em><\/strong> and an operatic gala in the Arena in the space of 6 days !\u00a0 Domingo, as usual, was generous and whole-hearted in his performance, relying on his innate musicianship, his masterful use of colour and phrasing, intense in both his dramatic and lyric expressiveness. But the baritone roles he chose to indulge\u00a0 in, especially Gerard and the Count Luna, left a craving for the full weight, grittiness and edge of the authentic baritone, and the capacity to passionately convey harshness, violence, cruelty, contempt, and love\/hate.\u00a0 Even the more conversational part of Marcello although well-defined, was not convincing. Only the zarzuela duet, from El Gato Mont\u00e8s<\/em> by Manuel Penella Moreno seemed to fit in style and vocality.
\nAmong the other singers there were some very fine performances; the women more impressive than the men.<\/strong>\u00a0 Irina Lungu<\/strong>, stood out.\u00a0\u00a0 A minor(!) prize winner in 2004, she was in splendid vocal\u00a0 form and looked ravishing too.\u00a0 Her ‘Ah, fors’\u00e8 lui’ was sung with tenderness and pathos and the ‘Sempre libera’, with ease and naturalness. Her incisive, round and malleable vocal quality was\u00a0 put at the service of a sensitive and intense interpretation of both Violetta and Juliette.
\nThe other particularly strong presence was that of Carmen Gianattasio<\/strong>, 1st<\/sup> prize n 2002,\u00a0 whose strong, round, dark quality and even emission supported a well-balanced interplay between the expressive lyrical moments of ‘Tacea la notte placida’, the agility and assertive dramatic accents in ‘Di tale amor’, and the final duet with Domingo, ‘Udiste? Come albeggi’.\u00a0 A small though beautifully produced voice of intense colour, Pretty Yende<\/strong> gave a well-shaped and refined rendition of ‘O luce di quest’anima’ from Linda di Chamounix<\/em>.\u00a0 Inva Mula<\/strong>, notwithstanding her customary elegant vocal line, disappointingly showed\u00a0 an evident slackening of her earlier perfectly controlled vocal support in a rather laboured performance of\u00a0 ‘Ah! Je ris’ from Gounod’s ‘Faust’<\/em>.\u00a0 Ana Maria Martinez<\/strong> was a vocally and dramatically intense Violetta to Domingo’s light-weight Germont, but absolutely shone in the zarzuela( her winning prize category in the 1995 Operalia) encore, which was also sung with Domingo.
\nGiuseppe Filianoti <\/strong>sang with a beautiful, vibrant and even quality of sound as both Federico and Rodolfo, but Federico’s\u00a0 ‘Lamento’, scored in pianissimo both in the vocal score and in the muted string sections, was given a full-throttled, vocally luscious, but heavy performance,\u00a0 completely missing the heart-rendering, and intensely intimate melancholy of, as the title suggests, lament. Stefan Pop<\/strong> gave a disappointing performance both in ‘Les P\u00eacheurs de Perles’<\/em> with Domingo, and in ‘Che Gelida Manina’,\u00a0 unable to break free of a tight and squeezed vocal emission which in the upper register fell even further back in the throat.\u00a0 Orlin Anastassov<\/strong> gave an appropriately earnest and solemn portrayal of Banco’s aria from Macbeth<\/em>, but the interesting colour evident in his middle register was unfortunately counter-balanced by a ragged higher and lower register.\u00a0 Vitalij Kowaljow<\/strong> gave a well-defined and vocally commanding performance as the Duke in Lucrezia Borgia<\/em>, notwithstanding the wrong and insecure entries in the orchestra, one presumes from lack of appropriate rehearsal.\u00a0 Daniel Oren<\/strong> kept the orchestra continually at accompaniment level, helped, as mentioned above,by the sound technician. A festive and ebullient zarzuela encore duet from ‘El Gato Mont\u00e8s<\/em>‘ by Manuel Penella Moreno with Domingo and Martinez and a final rumbustious encore with the sextett from Lucia di Lamermoor<\/em> with an overdose of three sopranos singing the Lucia line, brought the concert to a close, amidst enthusiastic though shivering, late-night applause. Foto Ennevi per Fondazione Arena<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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