{"id":3521,"date":"2018-12-09T23:17:21","date_gmt":"2018-12-09T22:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=3521"},"modified":"2018-12-10T00:10:44","modified_gmt":"2018-12-09T23:10:44","slug":"the-1001st-night-in-bilbao","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=3521","title":{"rendered":"The 1001st Night in Bilbao"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

A certain enterprising culture manager and former director of several leading opera houses in Poland went on a trip to Bilbao, after which he contended that there is no opera there. At least that is the conclusion to be drawn from his column of four years ago, in which he did not resist the temptation to make biting comments about a certain director who happened to succeed the author in one of his more important director\u2019s posts. \u00a0The columnist marched off to the Teatro Arriaga, found some \u2018dramas, comedies, musicals, operettas and zarzuelas\u2019 in the repertoire, but as far as operas were concerned, spotted only two unfamiliar titles. The problem is that the gorgeous Neo-Baroque building on the banks of the Nervi\u00f3n River was never a real opera house to begin with. The heart of opera in Bilbao beats somewhere completely different. The columnist\u2019s hated competitor has collaborated with the local ABAO-OLBE association and directed at least three productions in the capital of Vizkaya province, among them Szymanowski\u2019s King Roger<\/em> with Mariusz Kwiecie\u0144 in the title role and \u0141ukasz Borowicz on the conductor\u2019s podium.The existence of all of the aforementioned parties cannot be denied; neither can that of Artur Ruci\u0144ski, who sang the role of Marcello in La Boh\u00e8me <\/em>no more than a month ago \u2013 <\/em>and this was by no means his first performance in Bilbao.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It all began in 1953, when four opera enthusiasts \u2013 Jos\u00e9 Luis de la Rica, Guillermo Videgain, Jos\u00e9 Antonio Lipperheide and Juan El\u00faa \u2013 formulated the statute of the Asociaci\u00f3n Bilba\u00edna de Amigos de la \u00d3pera and went out into the world to find performers for their first post-war season. The program included five titles (Tosca, Aida, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore <\/em>and La Favorite<\/em>), under the baton of Giuseppe Podest\u00e1 and with casts comprised mostly of soloists from La Scala Milan. The festivals took place annually until 1989. The shows were accompanied by recitals of true stars: Maria Callas herself performed on 17\u00a0September 1959 with the orchestra of the Gran Teatre del Liceu. In 1990, the association opened its first opera season, comprised of six productions \u2013 among others, Stefania Toczyska and Alfredo Kraus shone as L\u00e9onor and Fernand, respectively, in a revival of La Favorite<\/em>. Until 1999, the Bilbao Opera was headquartered at the Coliseo Albia theatre, which presently houses an elegant restaurant and a casino. A year later, the shows were moved to the brand new Palacio Euskalduna, built according to a design by Federico Soriano and Dolores Palacios \u2013 the reddish steel construction in the shape of a grounded ship was erected in the place of the former shipyard, not far from the famous Guggenheim Museum. The palace boasts the largest opera stage in Europe \u2013 over 600 m2<\/sup> larger than the supposed record-holder, namely Warsaw\u2019s Teatr Wielki \u2013 Polish National Opera. The ABAO-OLBE association gives a total of about 50\u00a0shows per season; for over ten years now, it has had no debt, and over half of the financing for its productions comes from own coffers. As far as performance quality is concerned, critical opinion places it among the top three opera houses in Spain, alongside the Teatro Real and the Gran Teatre del Liceu. Let us add that over 20\u00a0opera ensembles are active in the country.<\/p>\r\n

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Tiji Faveyts (Rocco),\u00a0Mikeldi Atxalandabaso (Jaquino),\u00a0Anett Fritsch (Marzelline), and Elena Pankratova (Leonore). Photo: E. Moreno Esquibel<\/p>\r\n

And so, in the course of 60-odd\u00a0years, they accumulated 999 shows. ABAO management decided to celebrate their 1000th<\/sup>\u00a0night at the opera with a staging of Fidelio<\/em>, Beethoven\u2019s only opera, about which I once wrote that it had de facto<\/em> three premi\u00e8res, four overtures and two titles, but even so, the composer was not satisfied with its successive corrections and revisions. This peculiar and, in many musicologists\u2019 opinion, internally broken masterpiece gained new life after World War\u00a0II. Considered (not entirely rightly) as a universal apotheosis of peace, freedom and marital love, it was heard already in September 1945 on the stage of Berlin\u2019s Theater des Westens \u2013 the only house to survive the wartime turmoil. Ten years later, Karl B\u00f6hm re-inaugurated the Wiener Staatsoper\u2019s operations with a production of Fidelio<\/em>. In 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the audience of a new staging in Dresden received the prisoners\u2019 chorus with applause that, at each successive showing, began increasingly to resemble a political demonstration. The premi\u00e8re in Bilbao \u2013 the largest city in the land of the Basques, a people without a country \u2013 was set for the day before the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. A year previously, the stage of the Palacio Euskalduna had hosted a production from the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, with stage direction by Jos\u00e9 Carlos Plaza and stage design by Francisco Leal. I arrived in time for the next, 1001st<\/sup>\u00a0show.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Plaza and Leal have been collaborating with each other for years \u2013 in 2000, they created a riveting vision of Penderecki\u2019s The Devils of Loudun <\/em>for the Teatro Regio in Turin. Their Fidelio<\/em> is equally ascetic, awakens the imagination in the same way and is painted with light in a similarly suggestive manner. Almost throughout the show, the stage is dominated by a rough cuboid \u2013 a symbolic wall between the prison and the outside world \u2013 which alternatingly opens slightly, rises, hangs just over the head of Florestan, and in the finale, at last gives way to a somewhat foggy and still ominous-looking distant panorama of Seville. In the purely visual plane, the staging works impeccably. The theatrical gesture and drawing of the characters left a bit more to be desired \u2013 the director gave the performers a limited number of tasks, which were played over and over again without any special conviction.The otherwise interesting idea to show scenes of violence in modern prisons (from the torturers of the Franco regime to the bestial electroshock tortures at Abu Ghraib), in the background in slow motion, somewhat disturbed the musical narrative in Act\u00a0I. Jaquino \u2013 without regard for the libretto and at variance with the composer\u2019s intentions \u2013 was created as a thoughtless brute, triumphing in the finale over Marzelline, who has been cruelly mocked by fate. Leonore raising a shovel at Don Pizarro \u2013 instead of threatening him with a pistol \u2013 triggered a paroxysm of laughter on my part that, while short, was hard to stop. But these are details, all the easier to forgive in that \u2013 on the huge stage of the Palacio Euskalduna \u2013 the production team managed to create an oppressive, stifling mood of prison claustrophobia and a feeling of gloom that nothing would chase away.<\/p>\r\n

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Peter Wedd (Florestan) and Elena Pankratova. Photo:\u00a0E. Moreno Esquibel<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I did not expect, however, that the Basque Fidelio <\/em>would make such an impression on me in musical terms. The indisputable hero of the evening was Juanjo Mena, who \u2013 leading the Bilbao Orkestra Sinfonikoa with clockwork precision, at balanced tempi, with Classical moderation \u2013 brought out considerably more nuances from the score than one finds in \u2018proto-Romantic\u2019 perspectives that suggest not-entirely-justified associations with the later \u0153uvre <\/em>of Meyerbeer and Wagner. While Mena \u2013 following Mahler\u2019s example \u2013 decided to insert Leonora\u00a0III <\/em>before the finale of Act\u00a0II, he did not try to convince us that he was thereby recapitulating the whole. Rather, he focused on the purely colouristic values of this overture, which were brought out with the same solicitous care as the often-neglected episodes in Act\u00a0I (chief among them the phenomenally played out quartet \u2018Mir ist so wunderbar\u2019, in which each of the protagonists shows completely different emotions: enchantment, fear, jealousy and generous consent). With equal awe, I observed how Mena led the soloists \u2013 in the, despite everything, difficult acoustics of the Palacio Euskalduna. Elena Pankratova (Leonore) repeated her success from Seville \u2013 with a dramatic soprano balanced throughout its registers, free and beautifully rounded at the top. Anett Fritsch created a deeply moving character of Marzelline, captivating in her lyrical phrasing. She was decently partnered by the intonationally secure, comely tenor of Mikeldi Atxalandabaso (Jaquino). An experienced performer of the role of Don Pizarro, Sebastian Holecek sometimes charged ahead a bit too much, but in the duet with Tiji Faveyts (Rocco) in Act\u00a0I, both singers managed to scale the heights of interpretation. Egils Sili\u0146\u0161 breathed an unexpected warmth into the episodic role of Don Fernando. Peter Wedd created probably the most convincing Florestan in his career to date \u2013 with a secure, at the same time dark, consciously harsh and very mature voice. His singing now contains echoes of the later interpretations of Jon Vickers; I think it is high time that opera house directors try him out in the heavier Britten repertoire \u2013 above all, the title role in Peter Grimes.<\/em><\/p>\r\n

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Finale.\u00a0Photo:\u00a0E. Moreno Esquibel<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Opera exists in Bilbao. It makes itself known much more confidently and wisely than not a few vainglorious and too generously-financed houses in Europe. It understands convention, it appreciates that Fidelio<\/em> is a reflection of ideas, a musical picture of demons with which the composer himself struggled. It takes such masters as Juanjo Mena and his collaborators for the ideas to speak to us louder than the people.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A certain enterprising culture manager and former director of several leading opera houses in Poland went on a trip to Bilbao, after which he contended that there is no opera there. At least that is the conclusion to be drawn from his column of four years ago, in which he did not resist the temptation … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-mangusta","4":"post-3521","6":"format-standard","7":"category-posts-in-english","8":"category-wedrowki-operowe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3521"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3535,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3521\/revisions\/3535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}