L’elisir d’amore

So, the second coming, a.k.a. Il ritorno di Don Peppino al Metropolitan, had its bumps. Filianoti’s voice twice, for an instant, disappeared, and I would have liked to hear a less robust sound overall. (Was he oversinging because the Met’s a barn, or might it have something to do with the lower, heavier rep—Favorite, Zauberflöte, Werther—he sang between the fall Lucias and now?)

In any event, what was good was surpassingly so. Filianoti may be the finest comic actor I’ve seen in opera. (He looks uncannily like Frodo Baggins in this staging. Someone who can get their hands on a photo should do a separated-at-birth.) His enunciation is well-night perfect, and his legato could hardly be better. His every phrase has heart, sparkle, point.

From Newsday, here is my review of L’elisir d’amore. (Incidentally, it’s a bad time for the arts at Newsday, as elsewhere, but isn’t it grand that my editor agreed that this lovely, end-of-season Elisir was worth covering? My US Italia editor, too, jumped at the chance to run a Filianoti profile—though in that case, well, we’re Italian, and we know what’s important in life.)

When I interviewed Filianoti, he cited Aureliano Pertile’s recording of “Tu che a D-o spiegasti l’ali” from Lucia as a special favorite. Here it is, for your listening pleasure. A distinguished maestro-who-shall-remain-nameless wrote to me about this disc:

A 1924 Fonotipia, just months before the microphone changed everything…

Makes me schizo: As a conductor, I want to strangle his teachers for leaving him unprepared to sing even a single stepwise descent in legato, and for the pressurized tone which has to be “faked” into simulating the musical effects a relaxed sound could have achieved naturally.

But as a listener, I just want to go on my knees… and then the conductor wants to ask, “Maestro, can you pass on to the youngsters what it feels like to sing to the soul of your beloved, when you know she is in heaven?”

More on Elisir: But for a few ill-advised flights into the stratosphere, Ruth Ann Swenson is magnificent. (Yes, kids, this is what it sounds like when a Donizetti comic heroine is sung by an actual musician.) Corbelli sang better in the fall Lyric Opera of Chicago Cenerentola; his voice was foggy on Saturday (allergies?). The staging is as loathsome as ever.

Addendum: Sorry, I posted sans coffee. Do visit the witty and wonderful brother Roy and read about “Filianoti’s Miracle Elixir.” (All the rain makes vilaine fille very sleepy…)

Comments

[vilaine fille]

Caro Muori: The yiddishe-thing-in-Italian thing is probably a figment of my own tormented conscience. I figure you can't be too careful when your blog's "patron saint" is Gainsbourg...

[Maury D'annato]

Wow "D-o." I've never seen the yiddishe "G-d" thing in Italian, or for that matter any other language. Being extremely lapsed and militantly atheist, I tend to just spell it out and usually don't capitalize :)