Musical lightheartedness is well-suited for the early warmth of spring. This Wednesday, April 25th at the Nice Opera, the dress rehearsal for Wolf-Ferrari’s work, “La Vedova Scaltra,” had plenty to entertain the audience. In fact, it involves a rather thin plot that can be told like a good joke within a few minutes at a bistro counter. A young widow named Rosaura is courted by four suitors from different nationalities: Italian, French, English, and Spanish. This scenario brings a kind of European national directory with a lot of stereotypes, patriotic exasperations… and cultural faux pas. The rigid dignity of the Grandee of Spain, the pedantry of the Frenchman, moreover from Paris (misfortune never comes alone!), the pathological jealousy of the inevitably macho Italian, and the chic alcoholism of the Englishman, obviously outside his borders. Seeing these characters, one might almost feel sorry for Brussels and Europe. Thus, at first glance, nothing exceptional.
But this was without considering Carlo Goldoni, author of this comic opera, whose mischievous spirit probably inspired the director René Koering, exceptional in his direction of the actors in this initial production of the Montpellier Opera. It should be noted that the action is set in Venice, the hometown of the writer, where even after the celebration, the masks never fully fall off.
The tour de force of this production, originally insipid, is nourished, stuffed like a goose one might say, with misunderstandings, scenic gags, and pantomimes of all kinds (and even almost nude for one of the extras posed as a statue!) to the point of almost causing laughter indigestion. Only the paunch of the poor innkeeper’s servant, Arlecchino, magnificently portrayed by Evgueniy Alexiev, will remain definitely empty, to the greatest benefit of his both sparkling and clear vocal performance. Henriette Bonde-Hansen, often giving the retort in the role of Marionette, the French maid of the Widow, also deserves mention for the same reasons. Also credit to this well-coordinated team effort, the evident desire to multiply nods and other tributes to the Ancients. This enriches the “main dish” with varied references, as artistic as they are supremely political: inn waitresses that resemble playmates from a famous American magazine, a picture à la Andy Warhol featuring the portrait of the director as an interior decoration in the Widow’s home, who, for her part, busies herself around a canvas which, turned to face the audience, represents the conductor Marco Guidarini directing, always brilliantly in order not to overshadow the voices of the artists. We note the fleeting passage right in the middle of the scene of an almost accurate copy of Visconti’s Tadzio from “Death in Venice,” as a double homage to the director and the composer Gustav Mahler. The arrival by gondola of the Grandee of Spain, draped like his entourage in the darkest of blacks, his majestic bass voice (Giovanni Furlanetto) inevitably reminds one of the statue, as rigid as the character of Don Alvaro, of the Commendatore in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Another probable reverence. But Italy also knows how to laugh at itself: at the first “Fortissimi” airs of the Italian suitor (Andrea Giovannini) under the spotlight, he pulls out his handkerchief held in one hand, not yet that of master Pavarotti.
The very political humor of Goldoni floated on the stage of the Nice opera theater: genuine hilarious sketches took aim at the stupefying TV of Silvio Berlusconi. They competed with modern parodies of burlesque episodes from Boccaccio’s poems where pink telephones “fall from the sky” for the “pleasure” of the nuns. The bad memories of the writer’s religious education were probably resurfacing. Let’s recall that the composer Wolf-Ferrari, born to a German father and an Italian mother, was exposed to his first musical influences, highly divided between Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” in 1888 and Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” presented a year later.
This veritable fireworks display of absurdities alternates with a few friendly tunes. In the end, no pretension, but rather a beautiful celebration, a happy “rejoicing” reflecting Goldoni’s views on marriage: “a marmalade, a jam, a treat!”
La Vedova scaltra
Comic opera in three acts based on the eponymous comedy by Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793). Music by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948).
Friday, April 27, 2007 – 8:00 PM
Sunday, April 29 – 2:30 PM
Wednesday, May 2 – 8:00 PM
Nice Opera: 04 92 17 40 79
