Author : Jos Hermans
"To be a good politician, you have to sacrifice yourself, with all your private plans, desires and ambitions. The profession of being a politician is similar to that of a monk. Ideally, being a politician means sacrificing everything to serve the state." This unmistakable message from director Vasily Barkhatov means as much as : politics corrupts. Tasting power transforms every righteous person into a mafia thug in an instant. While that may be true in general, it is not what this piece is about. It does not conform to the historical figure of Simon Boccanegra and certainly does not conform to Verdi's intentions.
When Verdi, with the inspired help of Arrigo Boito, pulled his 1857 flopped Simon Boccanegra back from the shelves and thoroughly revised it, he celebrated one of the greatest artistic triumphs of his career: he converted his "cold, monotonous opera" into a noble tragedy with a deeply moving hero. Boccanegra's rise from pirate to a man of power transforms him into a humanist reconciler who is burdened by his position as doge, becoming true to himself only in the presence of his daughter or of the sea. For twenty-five years he manages to keep the warring parties apart. He lets the murmuring people, who demand his death, into the council chamber and calms them down with a speech about peace and love. It is not a role he has chosen willingly: "Even the water from the spring is bitter on the lips of the man who rules," he muses as he unsuspectingly drinks the poison of the conspirators that will kill him. Boccanegra is at once an enlightened statesman, a devoted lover, a generous father and rather mysteriously, also a poet. His love of the sea adds an indefinable magic to his most inspired music: he is a dreamer, no less than a ruler, but in both characters he is equally compelling. He does not live in a vacuum. Above all, he remains aware of the heavy responsibilities of his high office.
When Verdi thoroughly reworks his 1857 score anno 1880, the country finds itself in a similarly tumultuous political-social situation. Putting a patriotic father figure on the stage with even greater emphasis (inspired by Cavour) and adding the important council chamber scene in the first act can be understood as a renewed appeal to the moral consciousness of his countrymen.
Barkhatov's Boccanegra, on the other hand, is a deceiver and he is also capable of deceiving himself : "He is obsessed with the idea that as soon as the prodigal daughter returns home, the political situation will magically change for the better. Eventually, this obsession leads Boccanegra to lie to himself and ultimately accept some random girl as his daughter." The consequence of this is that both the duets with his daughter and the utopian ideal he propagates in the council chamber scene will be staged as a dream.
Of course, the Deutsche Oper is playing the 1881 version but it is introduced by the 1857 overture which gives the director the opportunity to spend a little more time on Fiesco's antecedents as we see the family, with Maria and her infant daughter, greet the house servants and the kitchen staff as they enter the doge's palace. Half a turn of the stage later, we find the plebeians amid a walking dinner with uniformed soldiers and women in party dress. Nothing is what it seems, then, is the adage of this performance. Throughout the performance, Zinovy Margolin's revolving stage will alternate between the public space, bordered along the top with a gallery that provides space for political activism and the salon-library of the doge's palace.
Amelia is tucked away in a boarding school. Both her roommates she sends away to receive her secret admirer, Gabriele Adorno. The vocal climax of their first duet takes place while security guards, anticipating the doge's arrival, examine the room for bugs and set up a camera for an official statement. By now it has become clear that, vocally, a great Verdi evening is in the making.
Boccanegra's dream sequences are shrouded in an alienating cloud of yellowish video light. They end with a complete blackout and a running neon light at the bottom of the stage. You don't want to think about directors repeating this process every time they stumble upon a passage they can't believe in. For example, Fiesco is present during the recognition duet which completely kills the plot. That should be possible in a dream, the director seems to be saying. As if the plot is not complicated enough already. Press clippings on the video wall attempt to update political current events with rancid comments from an Italian off-stage television voice, which prompted aggressive noise from the audience. Isn't it strange that directors don't understand the banality and intrusiveness of such interventions?
Barkhatov's handling of the stage is virtuosic, clear in its direction of the actors and the opposite of clear in an interpretative sense as I have shown above. Also absent is the Ligurian sea : for the finale, Boccanegra will once again hoist himself into his navy costume. He will hold his reconciliation duet with Fiesco at the coffee table without falling into larmoyant scenes. In the final image of the evening, the new doge -Gabriele Adorno- screens his staff. The circle is complete. The corrupt political theater can start all over again.
In the Verdi repertoire, Gabriele Adorno's tenor part has become somewhat declassified along with the opera itself as second-rate but Attilio Glaser gets everything out of it. His impressive tenor excels both in the heroic and lyrical-melancholic parts of "Cielo pietoso," for example. The extent to which Russian sopranos come to reinforce Euterpe's first-rate troops continues to amaze me every day. Maria Motolygina sings smaller roles at the Deutsche Oper for now but her Amelia was stunning, primarily because of the terrific projection of the voice, an unerring sense of the Italian repertoire and a beautiful timbre. George Petean, one of the stalwarts among Verdi baritones, did not disappoint as Boccanegra. The timbre is beautiful, the phrasing exemplary, the sense of style an undeniable pillar of his delivery. Michael Bachtadze as the nerdy Paolo sings just slightly below the level of this trio. For some reason, Asians can never fully convince me in the Western lyrical repertoire. It's always a matter of details : diction, phrasing, attitude, usually a combination of all of these. Such is the case with Liang Li, whose bass basically has everything for Fiesco but lacks just a touch of authenticity.
Jader Bignamini, seasoned in the Italian repertoire, is full of confidence in the orchestra pit. The poetry of the nature paintings as well as the grandeur and dramatic potential of the council chamber scene come into their own. The granite chords during Paolo's exposure do not miss their effect.