Cross purposes
On one side you’ve got an AWOL castrato crusader fathering a child with, and secretly marrying, the sultan’s daughter, who is in turn loved by the evil Grand Vizier. On the other side you’ve got the Master of the Knights of Rhodes, willing to start a war to bring the miscreant back home and push him into the arms of the good Christian girl to which he is already betrothed — who just happens to be his niece.
Very entertaining melodrama it is, too, for the most part. I’ve never been a big Meyerbeer fan, but I have to confess I really enjoyed listening to this 2007 performance from Teatro la Fenice, conducted with a sure hand by Emmanuelle Villaume. Maybe that’s the secret; a conductor of French sensibilities at the helm of a French composer’s last foray into Italian grand opera. The performance has been available for some time on DVD but is just now being released as a CD on Naxos
First, the score is not what you think of when you first think of Meyerbeer. There is a lightness of touch, sureness of dramatic structure, and the beginnings of what would become the Italian “bel canto” style in the solos, duets, trios and larger ensembles. I found the whole thing very accessible, so if you’re unfamiliar with Meyerbeer, this is not a bad place to start.
Casting a Meyerbeer opera these days is always hard. The vocal writing is virtuostic in a very specific way, and we no longer have the voice parts for which he wrote some roles, and I mean that literally. Armando, aka Elmireno, was the last great role written for castrato. We can only imagine the power and virility that these monstres sacrés brought to their singing, but I am not convinced that casting a male falsettist in these roles is the best solution . In this performance, Armond is sung by “male soprano” Michael Maniaci (not to be confused with the pro football player Marc Maniaci).
For the first five minutes I was struck by the focus, quality, spin, range and high notes of Maniaci’s falsetto, but as the opera went on, it began to grate on my nerves. Based on the pictures, Maniaci is a tall, virile, handsome man — much like his chief rival in this repertoire, David Daniels. But when divorced from the visual, I just don’t think this type of casting works. For that matter, I’m not convinced it works with the visuals. No matter how good the falsetto, there is still a “whiteness” to the sound and a lack of real core and strength to the voice that effectively makes the sound “neuter” to modern ears.
When Rossini produced Il crociato in Egitto a few years after its London premiere, he cast the great Giuditta Pasta as Armando. No fool Rossini! I’m likely to get crucified for this, but I have yet to hear a male soprano sing anything that I would not rather have heard sung by Marilyn Horne. There. It’s out. Run with it. That is not to say I don’t admire the work, artistry, musicality, intelligence, and frankly, balls of these guys, but as an opera-goer I do not find the sound satisfying. And I don’t for a minute believe that male falsetto singing is what a castrato sounded like.
For me, the chief pleasure of this recording is the gorgeous singing of Patrizia Ciofi. I keep coming back to words like limpid, lyrical, facile, etc., to describe her voice. As the Sultan’s daughter secretly married to Armando, she is the heart of the opera and it is a beautiful heart indeed.
As the Master of the Knights of Rhodes, tenor Fernando Purtari is okay, but nothing to write home about. He’s won several prestigious vocal competitions, but I found his singing provincial and decidedly lacking in the technical fireworks that would have made this part really stand out. In the best of all possible worlds, this role would have been sung by Juan Diego Florez, or going back a generation, Rockwell Blake. Alas, Mr. Purtari is not remotely comparable.
As Felicia, the erstwhile fiancee of Armando, mezzo Laura Polverelli is quite good. The voice has a nice chiaroscuro balance and an interesting timbre. Her fioratura is very good and her big show pieces are dispatched with aplomb. My only criticism is a lack of musical personality that tends to make her singing a little square. I think it could be an important voice and I would like to hear more of her in the future.
As the Sultan Aladino, Marco Vinco effectively declaims the part’s more somber passages but is at best stolid and reliable in the rest. (Note: Thought none of his bios state it specifically, I’m guessing Marco is Ivo”s son?)
In the small part of the duplicitous Grand Vizier Osmino, character tenor Iorio Zennario is very good. I only mention it because he doesn’t sound appreciably different from Mr. Purtari, so the needed contrast between the good guy and the bad guy, or if you prefer, leading tenor and character tenor, is missing.
The La Fenice chorus sound fine and for a live recording the sound is well balanced, if a little tinny for my taste. To sum it up: a nice way to acquaint yourself with unfamiliar but important operatic repertoire.
Here’s what Grove Music (in an article penned by Matthias Brzoska) has to say about Il Crociato:
After the relatively unsuccessful L’esule di Granata (12 March 1822, Milan), Meyerbeer surpassed even the success of Margherita with Il crociato in Egitto (7 March 1824, Venice). This work has a unique place in operatic history, for while it adheres to the contemporary Italian style of domestic drama, with the addition of an ‘irresolute hero’ and a colourful historical background, the leading part, written for Velluti, is one of the last castrato roles. He makes a virtue of this anomaly by skilfully incorporating many neo-Baroque references and other archaisms into the score, while developing the illustrative techniques that had proved successful in Margherita. The introductory scene now becomes a monumental tableau, and national confrontation is expressed in the opposition of two bands of musicians (no.11, finale primo), intercutting with each other in the stretta and combining with the chorus and orchestra. The exotic subject, an encounter between Egyptians and Crusaders, inspired Meyerbeer to instrumentation of a new kind to depict character: the Egyptians’ janissary music employs percussion and five clarinets in C, supported in the upper register by the piercing timbre of a piccolo flute and a piccolo clarinet in F, and in the lower register by a serpentone, a trombone and two bassoons. The reminiscence motif of the romanza ‘Giovinetto Cavalier’ in the central recognition scene (Act 1, terzetto, no.9) is introduced with a similarly new effect. The romanza is a kind of parable relating to the action, telling the tale of an unfaithful knight, as all three characters, the two women and the hero, recall the melody torn between them, they recognize each other.
With Il crociato Meyerbeer became the leading Italian operatic composer after Rossini. His status is illustrated by the fact that Goethe envisaged someone ‘like Meyerbeer’ setting his Faust (see J.P. Eckermann: Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, Leipzig, 1837–48/R). Writing on 12 February 1829, he saw Meyerbeer as Mozart’s only true successor: ‘Mozart would have been bound to compose Faust. Meyerbeer might be capable of it, but will not embark on such a venture’.
Marco Vinco is Ivo Vinco’s nephew.
I love the Opera Rara recording. Lots of bouncy cabalettas. And there’s an appendix with lots of alternate and insert arias.
And Fiorenza Cossotto is his auntie!
[Small housekeeping problem :
Clicking on the links in the new comments (top left) does not always redirect to that comment, but often only to the thread where it appears. Given the intricacies of the re-instated "Reply" feature, it is sometimes difficult to find the said comment.
This does not occur when one goes to the Comment Feed, which is not always up to the minute and has its own idiosyncrasies.]
Thanks for bringing this up. I thought it was just me.
The erratic linking only occurs sporadically, and so is obviously a small glitch which should be resolved.
The Comments Feed shows about 20 comments – maybe it could be expanded (scope for more advertising…). As it seems to be chronological, it would answer the pleas of those who are getting confused by the new system, or indeed those on different time zones.
The same here. Hard to find the comments.
Please, please, please La Cieca, can we go back to the old way of threading? It’s very hard to follow comments this way.
Maybe you could get your guru to set up a program that works one way, but every midnight (EST) with a wave of the magic wanky turns into the other way. That way all of us could be miserable half the time.
Betsy Ann, don’t you prefer the old way?
Only in certain things.
I find the linking a bit sluggish, yes, but the chronologic method could get confusing and it was too easy to lose track of who was responding to what. The current system arranges by topics and sub-topics (more or less) so you can just skip to the next paragraph, as it were.
For me, it depends on whether or not the thread has stayed on topic. With the current set-up, there’s no problem if a few of us go off on a tangent about where to stay in San Francisco or the dulcet tones of Mara Zampieri–as Betsy points out, it’s easy for everyone else to cruise on by.
However, when pretty much everyone is staying on topic–as occasionally actually happens–things can get chaotic pretty quickly, and I have no idea exactly where to post. So…neither system is perfect. Toss a coin.
Asian Falsetto Mullett Man:
What ever happened to Sebastien (Sebastian?) Na??
If you need a Meyerbeer fix in the 2010/11 season, La Monnaie is doing Les Huguenots in June of 2011, with Marc Minkowski conducting and a cast of:
Marguerite: Marlis Petersen/Henriette Bonde-Hansen
Valentine: Mireille Delunsch / NN
Urbain: Yulia Lezhneva / Blandine Staskiewicz
Raoul: Eric Cutler / John Osborn
Saint-Bris: Philippe Rouillon
Nevers: Jean-François Lapointe
Is Petersen trying to be the next Domingo? She’s everywhere!
Too bad they did not hire Michael Spyres – I would have loved to hear him in this.
But how to combine Petersen and Delunsch? I would like to avoid Henriette Bonde-Hansen, who was the dullest Mélisande for the great Serge Baudo last year. Really bad.
to: Wendy Escampia — it is not accurate to call Michael Maniaci’s voice “falsetto,” for it is not that. Don’t you know the story of his vocal development? In brief, and this is no secret, he was a boy soprano who, just entering adolescence, suffered a stroke (!), which in effect ‘froze’ his voice at that point. He went on to develop adult muscles, size etc. and developed normally, except the voice remained as it had been, except strengthened as he grew into adulthood. This is a singular situation, but I heard it from one of his vocal coaches who knew what she was talking about. I have heard it from others, subsequently; and once you know it, and listen with that in mind, it explains the very unusual nature of his instrument and sound. I enjoy his singing and find him an excellent musician. His voice is well supported and is a true singing instrument – a boy soprano in an adult male body. One of a kind!
Am I alone in finding Maniaci’s “true soprano” voice a little over-hyped? He sounds to me like nothing more or less than a good soprano-range countertenor with a weak lower register.
No, he doesn’t sound like he’s singing falsetto, but neither does a good countertenor.
A quick web search turns up stories of what happened to his voice ranging from the stroke mentioned above to “some medical mystery.” I don’t mean to say that he’s lying about his physical instrument, only that the mythology is important to his public persona.
Prominent in much of this mythology is, of course, the comparison to a castrato, giving Maniaci a claim to “authenticity” surpassing other countertenors. Whether he really captures the sound of good castrato is impossible to know; what’s certain is that he is trying to capture the mystique of one.
But I’d still rather hear Andreas Scholl.
OMG Andreas Scholl! Around the house we call him ‘The 8va Euphonium’, LOLs! I heard he’s singing @Met next year, is it true?
Jaroussky is also very good.
LMM–You are not alone.
Well Miles, not to prolong this rather pointless commentary,
I would point out that Maniaci has a distinctive quality that
counter tenor falsettos do not have – his voice has a natural
vibrato; have you ever heard a counter with same? I have not.
What is means, to me, is that his is a “natural” voice with
a fully supported tone, ‘on the breath.’ The counter tenor
falsetto is a very ‘held’ sound — it is quite different from
all other singers in that quality alone for the voice itself is
constricted and squeezed into a certain range. As for lower
range being absent, when have you heard a boy soprano with
a lower range? Just think of Maniaci as a grown up boy
soprano and I think that may answer some questions. You
seem to disdain him into the realm of myth or legend. I do
not; I find him perfectly valid, myth or not.
What’s the matter Master Miles? Is your boy soprano career
ending?
I’ve heard Jaroussky, Davies, Scholl, Daniels, Mehta, Asawa, and plenty of other countertenors (and haute-contres) sing with vibrato, and Maniaci’s sound is simply not categorically different. The anxiety surrounding countertenor vocal production mystifies me—I think it has to do with the pejorative associations with the word “falsetto,” and of course a dose of gender panic. People also have a hard time accepting Vivaldi’s female tenors as basses as “real” voices.
I don’t know why you think I’m mythologizing Maniaci—I’m not the one who insists on marketing him as a pseudo-castrato. As I said before, he has a very nice sound, and I think he has a good career ahead of him, but in my opinion he’s not quite on the same level as most of the guys I cited above.