What would Donizetti say?
"&%!7Xç!&!!" In Italian, of course.
At curtain up at the Fenice this past Thursday, my heart sank as the curtain rose. The sets in opera today, I lament. For this production, think Legoland on an opera stage with strong hints of the bleachers at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. Rectangular laminated boxes on a slanted stage formed into a maze. Each box one meter or two meters high, some 4 meters long. All reflecting the alternating designer colours projected from lighting above, green, blue, violet, red, and, of course black and gray. Green suggesting, I guess, the garden at Fotheringhay Castle where Mary Stuart was held captive by her cousin-rival Queen Elizabeth. The stage had a Vegas look. I was half-expecting Englebert Humperdinck (the singer, not the composer) to appear from the top and saunter down through the maze as he sung The Last Waltz. The creator of all this was the director, set designer, and costume designer, Denis Krief, as in grief.
Singers walked inside and through the maze while singing, left here, right there, back again left, then forward, etc. Exits and entrances were slow and awkward. In one scene, a duet between Stuart and Talbot, the cubes upon which they were leaning as they sang, actually started to move away from each other in a bizarre scene of bordering on the ludicrous. Giggle-worthy.
Within this setting sang some excellent singers: Fiorenza Cedolins and Sonia Gonassi, among others. And you can't fault the music of Donizetti.
It was a night to use your ears, not your eyes.
We are seeing Bryn in the Flying Dutchman in Munich in two weeks and if the sets are similarly dreadful, Act II will see me in the bar.
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