Verdi - Alzira (Maurizio Benini) [2012 / 1991]

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Verdi - Alzira (Maurizio Benini) [2012 / 1991]

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At the risk of being proclaimed a heretic by opera lovers in general and Verdi afficonados in particular, I have to declare that this work by the great Italian maestro has to be his worst; well, if we were to rank his 28 operas, one of them has to be at the bottom - this is it! Surprising, because when it was originally produced in 1845, Verdi had already mounted 8 operas, including the far-superior "Nabucco", so, one would think that he was progressing steadily - and he was, because a few years later he produced a trilogy of great operas ("Rigoletto", "Il Trovatore", and "La Traviata"); there is no way, whether storywise or musically, to disguise the fact that with "Alzira", the reknowned composer hit the proverbial bump in the road to musical immortality - and he himself knew it when he called it "ugly". To the credit of the Teatro di Parma back in 1991, they courageously mounted a production of this rarely-performed work, but unfortunately, it compounded its weakness for technical reasons. Whoever was in charge of lighting must have been using flashlights instead of spotlights; or is the problem with the dvd cameras? In any case, there are long stretches when everyone is in the dark: both on stage and in the orchestra floor. Perhaps, this is the Director's way of blurring the traditional space/lines which separate the audience from the musicians and the actors/singers: instead of just having the audience sitting in the dark, let's have the actors sing in it as well. The accompanying notes tell us that Luciano Damiani, the Director, had built his own theatre in which he removed barriers between audience and actors, and he brought this concept to this production.
By Cy Reese

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Verdi - Alzira (Maurizio Benini) [2012 / 1991]

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