Guglielmo Tell, Usher Hall, review: 'hugely enjoyable' A concert performance of this rare Rossini opera was rewarding Rupert Christiansen - Wednesday 27 August 2014 Even those who feel sceptical of some of the claims made for Rossini’s genius bow down before Guillaume Tell. Composed in 1829 to a French text, without recourse to his trademark rum-ti-tums and accelerating crescendos, it is Rossini’s final and greatest work for the theatre – a tale of resistance to foreign tyranny and a hopeful hymn to nationalistic liberty. Although it proved hugely influential on the development of both French and Italian opera, Tell is expensive to stage and relatively seldom programmed today, so it is a rare treat that new productions are scheduled by both Welsh National Opera and the Royal Opera during the 2014-15 season. As a taster, the Edinburgh Festival offered a concert performance, emanating from the Teatro Regio in Turin and presented in the Italian version made under the composer’s supervision. It proved hugely enjoyable and rewarding. One great obstacle to Tell’s modern success is a shortage of tenors who can master the cruelly high and virtuosic role of the Swiss freedom-fighter Arnold. Edinburgh was fortunate to secure the services of the American John Osborn, who is not only master of its technical challenges but also an interpreter of musical sensibility, who shaped, coloured and inflected the more lyrical passages as well as belting out the martial top notes. His Austrian beloved Mathilde was also impressively incarnated by the American soprano Angela Meade, who has recently become a big favourite at the Metropolitan Opera. One could hear why: the voice is sumptuous and it paints the music with a confidently broad brush and a richly coloured palette. The tone spread under pressure and some things went a little fuzzy at the edges. I’d also like to feel more urgent engagement with the text, but as she was a late addition to the cast (replacing Elena Mosuc), I shall charitably assume that she hadn’t time to explore the music in depth. Dalibor Jenis made a vocally imposing if emotionally withdrawn Tell, and there was a wealth of excellent singing among the supporting cast – I particularly enjoyed the resonant young basses of Mirco Palazzi and Luca Tittoto. The chorus and orchestra of the Teatro Regio showed admirable gusto, though Gianandrea Noseda’s simpatico baton didn’t always secure ideally taut, clean ensemble. After some rows with his management, Noseda is threatening to walk: for Turin’s sake, one hopes he can be mollified.

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William Tell brims with apalpable sense of relevance inconcert performance at theEdinburgh Festival

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A conspiracy theorist might ponder whether the programming of William Tell

during the final week of the 2014 Edinburgh International Festival, the day after

the Salmond-Darling Scottish independence debate on the BBC, was intended

as a propaganda move in support of the “yes” campaign.

Certainly the fervour of the opera's grand finale, as the Swiss rise up in

triumphant revolt against their hated imperial overlords, is so palpably rousing as

to make one at least question the commonplace assumption of Rossini's

indifference to political matters. And in a coincidence sure to fuel our

conspiracist's fantasies, the Milanese censor gave the green light for the opera's

staging at La Scala – several years after its 1829 première in Paris – only on

condition that the setting be changed to Scotland, with the protagonist restyled

as "Guglielmo Vallace", and a name change from Gualtiero to "Kirkpatrick".

Teatro Regio Torino Orchestra

© Lorenzo Di Nozzi

But even if one is left to wonder who could, without ludicrous hyperbole, be

figured as the dastardly tyrant Gessler in such a contemporary allegorical

reading, an undeniable frisson vibrated through the audience gathered in

Edinburgh's stately Usher Hall. Mixed therein were Scottish politicos and Italian

diplomats, the Italian Embassy in London having supported the production “on

the occasion of Italy's 2014 Presidency of the Council of the European Union” –

a clue, perhaps, to the malleability of the opera's message in the eyes of the

beholder. And what to make of the apparent plethora lately of productions of this

otherwise rarely seen opera, with a new one to be unveiled next month in

Cardiff?

****1 READ MORE

“There was symphonicheft, an almostBeethovenianmuscularity, in thescore's most powerfulclimaxes”

Reviewed at Usher Hall, Edinburgh on

26 August 2014

PROGRAMME

Rossini, Guillaume Tell (William Tell)

PERFORMERS

Teatro Regio Torino Opera

Gianandrea Noseda, Conductor

Dalibor Jenis, Guillaume Tell (William)

Marina Bucciarelli, Jemmy

Angela Meade, Mathilde

John Osborn, Arnold Melchtal

Luca Casalin, Rodolphe

Fabrizio Beggi, Melktal senior

Luca Tittoto, Gesler

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Soaring straight into ourheartsCharlotte Valori, 11th September

Jonathan Dove's joyous old-

fashioned fairytale, magically

realised in a very stylish production

including some wonderfully original

puppetry, is a fabulous talent

showcase from British Youth Opera

- and fun for all the family.

Seeing is believing: The BlankCanvas

***11

By Thomas May, 27 August 2014

Gianandrea Noseda

© Ramella & Giannese

And this without any staging, without the barest hint of Regie. Where innovative

approaches to opera presented in “concert performance” are increasingly part of

the landscape, the Teatro Regio Torino opted for the most traditional format,

more staid even than an oratorio: there was no lighting, the singers at most

walking on and offstage to indicate a change of scene. Subtitles were likewise

lacking, but those with programmes in hand could follow the printed libretto.

Still, conductor Gianandrea Noseda led a spirited performance of enormous

variety and sufficient colour to compensate for the lack of theatrics. No question,

the Teatro Regio Torino Orchestra was on splendid form, the real protagonist of

the evening, along with the chorus expertly rehearsed by Claudio Fenoglio.

Already in the overture, Rossini's marvellous tone poem avant la lettre, Noseda

made it clear that he wouldn't single out a particular aspect of this capacious

score to favour, from its pastoral interludes to violent storms, its lyricism, or its

blood-pumping, heroic momentum. Rather, all of these were present and fully

delineated, in intriguing juxtaposition.

Noseda incisively shaped Rossini's

many variants of lilting countryside

rhythms, yet turned on a dime to

whip up the martial frenzy when

needed. There was symphonic heft,

an almost Beethovenian

muscularity, in the score's most

powerful climaxes. The strings

played with dashing ensemble

clarity in the Act 4 storm sequence

and the principal cellist and horn

player made memorable

contributions. The chorus, too, is

essential not just as a supplier of

Rossini's local colour but as a

motive force in the drama; indeed it must assume multiple roles, representing

different Swiss cantons, the oppressed people, and even the occupying soldiers

who do Givernor Gessler's bidding. If anything, they veered on being overbright

at some points, but in general commanded a well-judged dynamic spectrum.

Presented here in the later Italian version, but with only a modest amount of

cutting (such as the choral scene-setting at the beginning of the second act),

Guglielmo Tell lasted just under four hours, including two intermissions and an

introductory speech dedicating the performance to the late Claudio Abbado.

William Tell is notorious for being outrageously difficult to cast, and Torino had to

accommodate several unanticipated changes. Curiously, the title role proved to

be a weak link here, with Dalibor Jenis as a rather dull, uninflected superhero

who is not only an expert marksman but a champion navigator and political

alpha-male to boot. Admittedly, this isn't Rossini's most interesting music, and his

characterisation of Gessler (given a disdainful, patrician-like demeanour by Luca

Tittoto) is also relatively flat. Gessler's henchman Rodolfo, however, took on a

more vividly menacing presence in Luca Casalin's colourful phrasing.

The first act in particular failed at several points, especially in the absence of

staging, to overcome its static longueurs. Along with the orchestral and choral

***11 READ MORE

****1 READ MORE

****1 READ MORE

Charlotte Valori, 7th September

Winner of OperaUpClose’s Flourish

competition for new writing, The

Blank Canvas is a heartbreakingly

tragic tale of an abstract artist

coming to terms with widowhood,

success and some worrying

hallucinations.

A thoughtful Susannah fromSan Francisco OperaJaime Robles, 8th September

San Francisco Opera's thoughtful

version of the 1955 opera

Susannah, one of the most

performed American operas, placing

the story of Susannah and the

Elders in the Appalachian hills of the

1930s.

Pérez and Costello open SanDiego seasonMatthew Richard Martinez, 6th

September

Ailyn Pérez and Stephen Costello

open San Diego Opera's season in

a generous duo recital.

MORE REVIEWS...

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Noseda, Gianandrea

Casalin, Luca

Jenis, Dalibor

Osborn, John

Meade, Angela

Bucciarelli, Marina

Teatro Regio Torino Opera

Guillaume Tell (William Tell)

Rossini, Gioacchino

vignettes, the most successful musical characterisations arrived in the subplot of

Arnoldo and his love for Matilde, a Habsburg princess who ends up rooting for

the Swiss cause. The American tenor John Osborn was a casting triumph as

Arnoldo, all but stealing the show in his magnificent "O muto asil" in the last act.

Osborn navigated Rossini's impossibly difficult high tessitura as surely as Tell

ferries about Lake Lucerne, but what truly thrilled was his sophisticated grasp of

the character's complexities as set to music. Osborn provided fragile tenderness

as well as full-throated patriotism, capturing Arnoldo's desperate need to

assauge his sense of guilt over the death of his father Melcthal, here sung with

booming vigour rather than mere age by Fabrizio Beggi. His second act trio with

Tell and Gualtiero (Mirco Palazzi in heroic voice) ranked among the highlights.

The romance with Matilde came off persuasively. As the brave princess, Angela

Meade included tasteful ornamentation and delicate pianissimo phrasing as well

as sensuous low notes, her huge voice securely powered if lacking somewhat in

depth of expression. It made for a delightful contrast with Anna Maria Chiuri's

earthy Edwige, and the intrepid young soprano characterisation by Marina

Bucciarelli as their son Jemmy, on top of whose head Tell splits an apple with his

arrow in Schiller's most iconic scene.

In Rossini's splendid apotheosis (which, in retrospect, turned out to be his

farewell to the stage), the freshly optimistic Swiss join in an ode to liberty as the

vehicle of joy, the chorus floating ever onward with a glowing serenity that almost

hearkens ahead to Parsifal. Even in the native language of bel canto of this

Italian version, Noseda and the ensemble conveyed a sense of the composer's

forward-looking musical language, casting aside as it does so many of the

familiar formulas of old, in which “a new world is revealed.”

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Seattle Chamber Festival closes on an elegiac note

A full chamber feast in Seattle

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Impressing their peers: All eyes and ears on Seattle

A familiar-sounding new commission and an unusual approach to Beethoven

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All articles by Thomas May

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Noseda does justice to Rossini's freedom fighter Teatro Regio Torino's sparkling concert-performance of the full Rossini opera proves there's more to it than the 'Lone Ranger' Kate Molleson - Wednesday 27 August 2014

Rossini's last opera – the whole thing, that is, not just the overture – is a rarity that suddenly seems to be everywhere. There are new productions at Welsh National Opera and Covent Garden this season, and there was this, a magnificent concert-performance from Teatro Regio Torino and its music director, Gianandrea Noseda. Perhaps the themes of self-rule and justice are particularly topical at the moment; perhaps the word is finally out that there's a whole lot more to this score than the first 10 minutes. The plot is pure picturesque nationalism, and lively enough if you like that sort of thing. Set in Austrian-occupied medieval Switzerland, Guglielmo Tell is a Swiss freedom fighter who outwits the brutish Austrian governor Gessler by shooting an apple from atop his own son's head and navigating treacherous waters to freedom in a rowboat. Arnold, son of the Swiss leader, is in love with Matilde, an Austrian princess; the chorus alternates between righteous patriots and boorish oppressors. Mainly it's the music that keeps things rollicking along. This is Rossini at the height of his operatic powers: boisterously fluid and inventive, sparkling with dramatic sequences, colourful orchestration and lush choral writing. Premiered in Paris in 1829, the rumblings of grand opera are everywhere. Noseda and his team made a terrific case for the piece. The demands on the soloists are as daunting as the Alps – poor Arnold needs an absurd cache of high notes, but John Osborn sounded heroically well-oiled. Angela Meade was an ardent, sassy Matilde with huge decibels; Dalibor Jenis an august Tell, Luca Tittoto a deliciously suave Gessler. The chorus was rich and spirited and the orchestra gave its all for Noseda; shaping the music meticulously, he kept the performance wonderfully buoyant and made the four hours fly by.

Edinburgh International Festival 2014: Complete coverage from The Scotsman and WOW247

Turin Opera: William Tell

Published by Edinburgh Festivals

28 Aug 2014

****

Edinburgh International Festival Scotsman review (opera): Kronos Quartet at the Usher Hall.

Reviewed by David Kettle

Conductor Gianandrea Noseda takes centre stage in Turin Opera’s performance of Rossini’s William Tell at the Usher Hall

[Picture: Lorenzo Di Nozzi]

One of the often-quoted benefits of opera in the concert hall – as opposed to the opera house

– is that it can be more vivid than a fully staged production. You’re not getting just a single

director’s vision, and the action can’t help but unfold in the endless vistas and bright colours

of the imagination.

That was true of Turin Opera’s colourful concert account of Rossini’s William Tell, in which

the apple-splitting archer hero leads Swiss nationalists to revolt against their Austrian

oppressors. The orchestra played as if the music was running through their veins, with a

captivating confidence and a lustrous, distinctive sound – silky strings, woodwind that truly

sang, and even a boisterous percussion section – especially in the bass drum thuds that

brought so much character to the storm section of the famous Lone Ranger overture.

You couldn’t have hoped for a brighter or more persuasive account to fire the imagination.

But the real advantage to this concert was in bringing conductor Gianandrea Noseda out of the

pit and placing him centre stage. He seemed like the source of power around which the

performance revolved.

It wasn’t simply an athletic performance – for the most part, he took things at quite a relaxed

tempo, although his gestures became increasingly extrovert as the opera’s revolutionary zeal

developed. It was his soft shaping of phrases, his command of the grand architecture, his

generosity in allowing soloists to shine in their own personal deliveries.

And for an opera that relies so heavily on its chorus – representing by turns Swiss villagers,

Austrian troops and Alpine guerrillas – the Turin Opera choir was on astonishingly fine,

incisive form.

Strangely, it was with the solo singers that the performance was rather variable. Angela

Meade shone as love interest Matilde, with a superbly controlled, powerful voice that

nevertheless brought a touching vulnerability to the Act 2 aria ‘Selva opaca’, while John

Osborn as her tormented suitor Arnoldo had a gloriously rounded, intense tenor.

Fabrizio Beggi was big and demonstrative as the doomed elder Melcthal, and Luca Tittoto

made a suitably imperious Gessler, head of the Austrian oppressors. Least convincing, was

Dalibor Jenis in the title role, who seemed ill at ease and struggled to project above Noseda’s

scintillating orchestra. But it was a quiet note of doubt amid a revelatory evening of

tumultuous drama.

Originally published in The Scotsman

Guglielmo Tell/Noseda/Teatro Regio Torino at Usher Hall,

Edinburgh

Sarah Urwin Jones Published at 12:01AM, August 28 2014

*****

What with the technical requirements of shooting an apple off a boy’s head with a bow and

arrow, the stage-shunting of hordes of rowdy Swiss partisans and a lot of key dramatic

moments spent in a rowing boat, you can see why one might opt to keep Rossini’s last opera

Guglielmo Tell firmly in the concert hall. The price tag alone would probably buy you a small

Swiss canton.

But there was drama aplenty in this Teatro Regio Torino concert performance of Rossini’s

paean to liberty, thrillingly paced under music director Gianandrea Noseda in this Italian

translation of the French original. The soloists might have lined up on the Usher Hall platform

in their sober evening best, but you could see the mountains in Rossini’s thrillingly

orchestrated work, from the remote call of the horns as the oppressed Swiss rose up behind

every crag to the tinkling of bells across the restless valley and a truly Alpine storm whipped

up with gale force in the strings.

Despite a low-voltage start from a self-effacing Dalibor Jenis as the eponymous rebel archer,

the first act was a musical tour de force, every ounce of tension extracted from Rossini’s

sparkling score by Noseda and his Teatro Regino cohorts. A fine lineup of soloists was

crowned by John Osborn’s ardent Arnoldo, running the emotional gamut of love, grief and

revenge alongside the soaring soprano of Angela Meade’s fabulous, coloratura-slaying

Matilde. The chorus thrilled to Rossini’s pastoral, partisan tapestry, from a pert chorus of

archers to the impassioned cries of the put-upon populace.

Even the somewhat plodding dramatics of Act II, in which Swiss revolutionaries seep from

the hills to join Guglielmo and Arnoldo in their fight to topple Luca Tittoto’s crazed tyrant

Gesler, had a certain hushed tension. And the Act IV finale was a shimmering triumph.