crónica aparecida en Opera-L
"The Teatro Cuyas in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in a narrow side street of the old town, is a small and extremely modest theatre, with a capacity of all of 900 seats. Were it not for the association with Alfredo Kraus, it would be an unlikely venue for the debut of Juan Diego Florez as Arturo in Puritani in this, the 37th annual opera festival. How opera can be given in
a fully staged form, with a top international cast, in this tiny theatre, and with a top ticket price of 66 euros ($80) is a miracle in itself. Not surprisingly, seats for all three performances were sold out, virtually on
the day they went on sale.
Having not been here before, my expectation was for a basic production, with a small second-rate orchestra and chorus. How wrong! To imagine the production, from the Teatro SNG of Maribor, which has also been done in Trieste, think of the England of an Errol Flynn movie. Lavish costumes, swords much in evidence, halbardiers, flag carriers. For the sets, castle walls and stairways, and a great deal of overgrown ivy. It was shamelessly old-fashioned, to the extent that the lighting changed colour at several points for no other reason than that it seemed to suit the music, and, at the point where Elvira goes mad, the lighting dropped to leave her flooded in white. The stage direction was, it must be said, inimal, yet within that, most of the cast, and Florez in particular, made as uch of the dramatic potential as you could want, because with the music placed first, and the setting content to support it so well, rather than trying to make any particular point, we got Bellini’s opera, not Bellini re-written by an unmusical director, and it was all the better for it.
As for the orchestra and chorus, they were really rather good. There is some horrendously exposed orchestral writing, particularly for the horns. There were no fluffed notes. At Covent Garden, you would be on the edge of your seat, and probably not for long, waiting for a horn note to crack. Riccardo Frizza, from the remarkable and growing pool of talent managed y Ernesto Palacio, is a fine, fluent conductor of this music, who has the most important quality for its success, a real sense of phrasing. But Bellini is about singing. The voices of Juan Jesus Rodriguez as Riccardo and Simon Orfila as Giorgio were a little too similar to each other than would be ideal. Riccardo’s “Ah per sempre io di perdei” was rather monotone, though one felt for the singer when a coughing fit by a member of the audience at the front forced them to leave and create a disturbance just at the climax. (On the coughing index, by the way, this audience rated with the worst.) Still, the notes were all there, including the florid passage at “d’un tenero amor”, and getting the notes right in Bellini is the starting point on which the belcanto has to be built, and unfortunately the first hurdle at which many singers fall. Orfila was remorselessly loud, which turned to a virtue really only in “Suoni la tromba”.
The surprise was Mariola Cantarero in her debut as Elvira. Technically assured in “Son vergin vezzosa”, if with a rather white timbre, she received a deserved prolonged ovation. The second act is largely hers, and showed not just technical fluency but a great capacity for expression. Her relatively light, but attractive, accurate and powerful voice complemented well that of Florez. This was a hugely impressive performance, and I look forward to hearing her again in Pesaro as Matilde in Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra.
And so finally to Juan Diego Florez in this, his most demanding role debut to date, and to a display of bel canto singing finer than this writer ever thought to hear. High notes, yes, three D-naturals and two C-sharp/D-flats faultlessly executed, (and thankfully no attempt at the top F) but that is only a small part of it. Bellini above all is long, long phrases, and what distinguished this singing most of all was Florez’s ability to feel and to sing these phrases, not necessarily in one breath, but to breath and to sing without breaking the line. And the singing line is combined with the most perfect, clearly enunciated and undistorted diction, disproving absolutely the Sutherland/Bonynge theory that clear vowels and consonants are incompatible with bel canto. The third act, in which the tenor is on stage nd singing virtually throughout, is one of the most strenuous in the bel anto repertory, with a murderously high tessitura. To sing this Act, with no audible sign of effort, is a great challenge, and no-one who heard this erformance and who understands what goes into such singing is likely to orget it. The reception at the close, particulary for Florez and Cantarero, as long and rapturous.
This was one of the great evenings of fine singing of a lifetime.
Stephen Cutler
Dorking, England"