Brescia e Amisano

Human nature encourages us to continue producing new works which speak to us — whether or not they dwell thematically upon present issues — while simultaneously aiming to create works that will somehow go on to become classics. The limitations of these competing objectives were apparent in last month’s world premiere run at La Scala of Francesco Filidei’s The Name of The Rose, an ambitious, overall ‘succès d’estime’ that still does not manage to take us beyond the breadth and scope of Umberto Eco’s monumental book, nor inevitably beyond the popular film rendition. This is certainly not an easy project, though much of the content has been faithfully reproduced upon La Scala’s stage. But the question remains whether this should have become an opera at all, asking also how synergistic are the music and staging.

Among many of the pre-announcements of Maestro Filidei, we find his wish that all be set in the form of a ‘melodrama’ (originally intending a poetic text destined to be served by music, a sung scenic action), and that his original libretto (honed by Stefano Busellato with the collaboration of Hannah Dübgen and Carlo Pernigotti) would remain close to Eco’s novel, linking the medieval world to the contemporary. He also stated that we would retain as much of Eco’s text as possible; a noble aim that in some way was achieved yet was the principal cause of the stage action’s being all too narrated resulting in much being buried in nonchalant vagueness.

This damaged the musical texture of much of the dialogue, as well as the effectiveness of the drama’s natural development. In fact, one had the impression that the structure of the entire opera, as divided into seven days spread out in 24 scenes, became perhaps a bit too imposing and cumbersome. Each one was influenced by a diverse key signature on the chromatic scale, each note bore witness to brisk, chatty actual readings of the novel at times, each one accompanied by its own rhymical, repetitious undercurrents in the Minimalist vein of a Philip Glass. This takes away from the whole as the plethora of undeveloped characters appearing and disappearing as if in an Alain Resnais film yet rarely leaving their mark in a theatrical sense.

Much has been said of the influences Filidei resorted to in his attempt to render all ‘operatic.’ We find characteristics of ‘Grande Opera,’ as well as traces of ‘Opera Buffa,’ to use Eco’s own words. Italian melodrama was evident, and Filidei musically cited, not copied, familiar melodies or sound clusters of works we all know. Here again another let down, tarnishing what should have been an occasion to create another world, a representation of that unique novel the composer so loves. There is Puccini, Verdi, Gregorian chant, an obvious, all-too-brief Mahler citation; some have spoken of Honegger, Messiaen, and Saint-Saëns. Yet, one may have also recognized Ping, Pang and Pong from Turandot and the jazz syncopation of West Side Story.

The overall impression is that the composer evidences his reverence for Eco’s novel but does not explore his own musical language to sustain the whole. The orchestra is Wagnerian in proportion, surely over 100 musicians. The five percussion sections produce a lively, emphatic sound of endless variety, at times stunning as related to overpowering dramatic scenes. One sensed something of Ginastera’s operas from the 70’s, mixing as it does modernist folk elements with atonality and complex structures. There were bird chirpings, wind effects, and even a wheezing accordion humming along.

The chorus in The Name of The Rose is enormous, including Benedictine and Franciscan monks bickering on the stage or simply seated in the rafters of a church choir, wobbling the pages of their scores noisily as if to indicate time marching on through their participation in the novel; one sensed they were also spectators in a tiered, non-sterile operating theater observing destiny marching on as they chanted the Latin phrases that spike Eco’s text. Their first utterance from St. John’s Gospel, “In principio erat verbum et verbum erat apud deum et deus erat verbum” (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”) scrupulously emulates the opening words of the novel, revealing Eco’s semiotic endeavors, wherein word meanings through convention represent a complex notion.

Brescia e Amisano

The opera is the story of the Franciscan Guglielmo of Baskerville, a Sherlock Holmes-like investigator, who is sent to investigate a series of murders in an abbey of Northern Italy. His sidekick, Adso of Melk, a young Benedictine novice, learns much from him in a series of “It’s elementary, dear Watson” tongue-in-cheek dictates. The historical refences are multiple, and may indeed be lost to many spectators, as does much of what we witness on stage and through the music, again an indication of the novel’s complicated adaptation for the theater. A myriad of motley characters, almost all linked to Church hierarchy, whether seen or simply mentioned, join a long list of those involved in a religious conflict between the Benedictine work ethic within the power balance between Church and State and the Franciscan acceptance of poverty as a virtue in serving both God and humans.

From this, the human sentiment of laughter as a sign of happiness enters into play as it was mentioned in the reputedly lost Second Book of Aristotle’s Poetics, with its treatise on comedy (actually, humor). It is the very book hidden away in the monastery’s labyrinth library, thought of as dangerous as the truths themselves therein could destabilize the power of the Church. It is upon the pages of this book that a poison is laced, causing the death of the various monks who attempt to read it.

The assassin, the blind Jorge da Burgos (Eco’s reference to Jorge Luis Borges and the labyrinth theme central to many of his stories and poems) once discovered by Guglielmo, bitterly eats the pages of the book as the library burns to the ground. Within this framework is also the story of a nameless girl who sells her body to the hunchback monk Salvatore for food and with whom the young Adso falls hopelessly in love. In the end, he chooses a life of chastity, abandoning earthly pleasure. It is he, returning to the Abbey years later, who closes Eco’s novel with these words: “Of the rose of old, what remains is to be found only in its name; that is all we now possess of it.”

Brescia e Amisano

As to the happenings upon the stage, the ubiquitous tandem of stage director Damiano Michieletto and scenographer Paolo Fantin have offered us a rather unappealing depiction of a Medieval ambiance. Though not abundantly apparent, this is a show within a show, supposedly taking place in La Scala’s sterile rehearsal space, lined with a curving upstage wall of black plastic laden with wide industrial double doors. Moving elements of what appear as parade floats glide on and off the empty stage, many of them resembling Saks Firth Avenue display windows featuring perfumes, kitchens or luggage. In a La Scala-produced brief interview, Michieletto spoke of his aim to maintain a union between a very powerful Medieval aesthetic, finding in it a parallel with a more contemporary one. He dwelled on the word ‘edificium,’ here best described as related to the construction that was to transmute from a cathedral to a labyrinth, then to a library, while also representing the intricate inner petals of a rose.

Yet, what we saw were over-head limp white gauze strips forming an octagon with a simple crucifix in the middle; thus this monastery, when lowered to the floor, formed the labyrinthine library, filling three-quarters of the stage surface. Lit red in the beginning, it would assume the qualities of a rose, catching flame at the opera’s end as if in Götterdämmerung, along with the destruction of the abbey’s precious books. Hardly effective, if one dreams of what could have taken place by technical use of La Scala’s backstage area. As to the individual scenic elements, we had a marble frieze of the Apocolypse with the chiseled figures coming to life through all too jig-saw-like pieces, a 10-foot-tall Madonna into whose lap Adso crawls to seek comfort, a giant page of a Medieval book with the letter ‘C’ wherein a devilish goat plays a violin.

There was also a broken square cement mass that closed in on the monk that presided over the abbey, Abbone da Fossanova, all but burying him alive, save for his struggling arm remaining within view. (He actually suffocated in a secret passage leading to the library.) The scene in which the unnamed girl — whom Michieletto duplicates in red and white to represent Adso’s struggle to confront his choice between the carnal and the spiritual — frees herself from a horse in the stalls through Salvatore’s magic rituals was the best of all, with the surreal, slow-motion plasticity of a Bob Wilson image. It also contained the best music of the entire opera.

Brescia e Amisano

The numerous singing roles were all well-performed. There was criticism regarding the Italian pronunciation by foreign artists, yet this seemed not to bother many in the audience, as a spectator had to also grapple with Latin, German, English and Ancient Greek. The duo of Guglielmo (Lucas Meachem) and Adso (Kate Lindsay) were well matched. Especially excellent were the blind Jorge da Burgos (Gianluca Buratto, evoking Borges and his labyrinth library), Salvatore, the grotesque polyglot hunchback. The unnamed girl, played by Katrina Galka, and her double were convincing and aroused tenderness for their sorry states.

All gave their best as to the stage performance, though they mainly had to get through the long, almost spoken parts as if the actual novel were reading itself to us. The chorus and the childish treble voice ensemble created much atmosphere through their almost-Gregorian Chant utterances, and the agitated power in the Franciscan/Benedictine brawl.

Kudos to Ingo Metzmacher for his well-timed gesticulation in uniting all the elements. He seemed totally involved in the music, affording much care to detail yet never exaggerating. Some of us know him through his performances of more modern music; a wonderful, schizophrenic version of Wozzeck at La Scala in 2015 comes to mind. The huge orchestra played with aplomb and élan. As stated, the percussions were divided into five groups and at times carried the show. Unlimited sound effects also caught our attention

In many ways, the opera appeared to have been a success. Filidei’s passion for Eco’s novel is evidenced in the monumental task of both fashioning the libretto and especially in writing music that would capture our attention. But all might have been freer with less of a sense of obligation to bring us all the pages of the book, confusing the dramatic action. Also, the vastness of stage space through the entire opera gave one the sense that much detail was lost. Michieletto, oddly, did not fully follow through with his intentions, and the lack of fusion between the Medieval period, with its supposed message to us in today’s world, did not come across, nor did the scenic elements create the sensations one might have experienced visiting that abbey of mystery and horror. Medieval thought and operatic requirements are many and labyrinthine but we searched in vain for spanning the work’s erudite linguistic culture. We sensed the direction of the drama but were sadly often abandoned by the work itself.