Review: L'ITALIANA IN ALGERI, tripudio rossiniano a Vienna

Review: L'ITALIANA IN ALGIERI, Rossini's triumph in Vienna, with an extraordinary cast, under the direction of Maestro Evelino Pidò.

© DiBartolocritic

The masterpieces of the Opera are such because they are eternal. But it is easier for a nineteenth-century masterpiece to still be capable of making the spectator cry: much more difficult to make him laugh. As is the norm in the theatre, after all. AND’ also for this reason that Rossini is an undisputed genius: it is enough to know how to stage it properly and even today we smile, laugh, even.

And he smiled and even laughed big time Vienna State Opera di Vienna the April 5, 2017 with Italian in Algiers, staged in the historic, as always brilliant, production of Jean Pierre Ponnelle. And smiling with Italianness in Vienna is not always easy, especially if on stage there is a cast that is not Italian at all. Yet the perfect fusion of this extraordinary cast, in a Rossini gear that worked better than a clock, was able to give us back the masterpiece brilliance of an opera that needs not only the voices, but also the characterizations of the characters.

Very pretty, but above all extraordinary vocally'Italian by Margarita Gritskova, who is Russian, born in 1987. A very dark vocality, with impressive agility and high notes that reach the ring. A decidedly out of the ordinary voice, which seems tailor-made for Rossini, but which can sing anything, and not only en travesti, also animated by a spirit of skilled stage ability. A joy to listen to a young voice of such range and technique: it didn't give up for a moment, the perfect agility that unfolded one after the other, not a disingenuous bearing, a nice dry singing, of excellent school.

Just as good, if not even more amazing Lindoro at Maxim Mironov. Another young man who has the expressiveness of a consummate actor and a voice with perfect high notes for Rossini roles. The times of Bruce Ford are recalled, listening to such a vocal marvel, extremely agile and master to perfection of every possible and imaginable embellishment.

Next to him a Mustafa thirty-one year old, the Polish Adam Plachetka, of an overflowing sympathy, perfectly suited to this role, as well as having a very respectable bass-baritone voice.

Other than in the head! The bell, the Elvira of the Israeli Hello Fahima it's in the vocal cords. Spectacular ringing with high and high notes giving applause to every musical phrase.

The most scenically tarnished the Thaddeus by Paolo Rumetz, who does not naturally find the characteristic sympathy of the character, but who vocally created a compact force with the protagonists who are his equals and the rest of the cast, all to be mentioned and praised, because he Haly on Rafael Fingerlos he had a communicative, even mimic, commedia dell'arte style and the Zulma on Rachel Frenkel she also stood out, especially in the concertatos, without missing a beat. Not to mention, then, the perfection of Coro del Vienna State Opera, directed by Thomas Lang.

In short, a thrilling cast who had only one fundamental fact in Italian: the Director, the M°. Evelin Pidò.

A name, a guarantee. In watching Mustafà Pappataci gorging on spaghetti with tomato sauce, one imagined Maestro Pidò doing the same, finding himself in front of instead of the Italian dish par excellence, the amazing orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper. The Maestro gorged himself on the skill of his professors and returned a masterpiece within a masterpiece, in a Rossini-esque triumph, also at his own personal pace, which it is not clear how the entire cast managed to sustain in some moments. But no wonder, this also happens in Vienna and they are memorable moments, not to be missed. Overall, his orchestral conducting and his exquisite Viennese spaghetti in the hole, al dente, sonorous and snappy, shone with brilliance and Rossini colors at full blast.

Even the spectator left the theater after having binged: quality. And you can never have enough of quality.