Product: Sigismondo [Blu-ray] (2010)
Rating: 3.0
Was Rossini a Baroque Composer?
Was Mozart? It might be fun to argue the affirmative in a debate tournament. Consider some evidence:* The loopy libretti he chose, most of them, would have served equally well for operas by Handel or Hasse. There isn't a speck of compromising plausibility about any of them. Rossini's "humor" is far closer to 18th C opera than to, for example, Offenbach.* The story-line of a Rossini opera -- Sigismondo is a good example -- is advanced chiefly in the recitativos and ariosos, while the arias are devoted to generic expressions of emotions. That's why Rossini, like Vivaldi and Handel, was able to re-cycle his best arias from opera to opera without any sense of shameful incongruity.* Rossini's operas generally follow the Baroque structures of alternating recitativos with ABA da capo arias. Rossini got wily with his da capos. He extended the B sections, tacked in extra B sections, rewrote the da capo A sections in musically clever ways, but the ever-satisfying da capo reprise is almost always recognizable. As it should be! Da capo makes both aesthetic and emotional sense!* Rossini had a "thing" for high voices! Many of his male characters, including King Sigismondo in this opera, are given soprano or alto music. Castrati were getting scarce in the musical establishments of Rossini's era; hence, like Mozart (that other Baroque genius), Rossini gave us glorious "trouser roles" for the delectation of divas forevermore.* There's virtually nothing in Rossini's musical/harmonic/rhythmic vocabulary that strays away from Baroque practice. In fact, a small "period instrument" Baroque orchestra serves quite well for any Rossini opera except perhaps Guillaume Tell. Such an orchestra would not serve even for early Verdi, let alone Berlioz.* Rossini assigned the continuo for many of his semi-secco recitativos to harpsichord! Long after most composers had deepsixed the instrument.Sigismondo is early Rossini, nearly forgotten, rarely produced. This production from the Pesaro Rossini Festival is richly rewarding to hear ... and hideous to behold. Everything about it except the singing is heavy-handed, beginning with the orchestra and conductor Michel Mariotti. It's not an over-sized orchestra but Mariotti makes the performance sound like an audition for Bayreuth. The "fortepiano" assigned to accompany the recitativos is either played or miked so heavy-handedly that it sounds like a Bösendorfer. Luckily for us, the singers seem to understand the aesthetics of Bel Canto, which was in every sense simply a continuation of the vocal techniques of Baroque opera. Olga Peretyatko sings the heroine's role of Aldimira, and Antonio Siragusa sings the villain's role of Ladislao with consummate bellisimo cantorial technique. Daniella Barcelona sings the role of the demented King Sigismondo gorgeously enough to justify the whole production with its blatty orchestra and its ghastly mis-en-scene.Barcelona also acts the role of the mad King with Oscar-level brilliance, but it's a thankless task. Here's another linkage to Baroque opera: the staging is perversely incongruent -- cognitively dissonant -- with the libretto and the music. The story is told within the sordid ward or a pre-modern madhouse. The "action" is ... well, some of it perhaps ... a madman's obsessive fantasy. Understand please that I'm not a "conservative" about opera stagings; I can appreciate the directorial ambition to make opera pertinent and impactful. This staging is simply distracting and inchoate. The presence of non-singing actors in the guise of gibbering, staggering, slobbering madmen is offensive and degrading. If I were a psychiatrist, I'd stand up and protest, and storm out of the theater. Rossini would have stormed out also. He thought of music as an entertainment -- a thoroughly Baroque attitude -- not as an assault on our mentalities.Okay, now for an ambivalence! I'm giving this DVD a three-star rating because I so much dislike the mis-en-scene. Nevertheless, I strongly urge you to hear it! The singing is sublime and the music per se is spectacular, especially the duets and ensemble pieces. Hey, Gioachino Rossini was surely the most brilliant Baroque composer of the 19th C!