From Alexandre Kantorow’s virtuoso eccentricity, Simone Young’s playful radicalism, to Leo Muscato’s masterful staging – conductors lead the season with mercurially expressive batons.
La Scala’s concertos are, for the most part, genre-bending performances that are apt to tie musicologists in knots. Most of them date from early years and were composed for gifted virtuosi rather than professional amateurs. Their impact can vary, but the meticulous way they’re conducted is as prominent as ever.
Alexandre Kantorow’s concerto is one example: the French pianist, who performed on La Scala’s stage earlier in November, released a beautifully shaped performance including Brahms’s Piano Sonatas alongside works by Bartók and Liszt, and proved himself as a classical interpreter of sharp insight and distinctiveness.
Riccardo Chailly. Photograph: Brescia e Amisano ©
In the sonatas, it’s the dark, gothic, almost supernatural side to the pieces that come through notably strongly. Several times, Kantorow sends his left hand far down the keyboard, either echoing or working against a melody heard at a much higher pitch, and in his playing these bass-line mutterings come across as something unsettling, even incomplete.
Brescia e Amisano | Teatro alla Scala. Photograph: Brescia e Amisano ©
In the loudest passages, he makes the instrument ring, drawing the maximum resonance out of all those vibrating quavers yet somehow still maintaining clarity and definition in each pause. In the softest passages, his playing has a beguiling, sometimes dreamlike sweetness. His skill is a whole world in itself, and Kantorow’s interpretations reckon fully with their scope; his pacing of the shorter movements rounds the work off in a completely convincing way.
His penchant for spreading out chords from bottom to top might be a bit much for some listeners, especially when teamed with how he creates a rhythmic tug back and forth between the playing of his right and left hands, making a small discrepancy in where the beat falls, but it’s all in the service of some beautifully fluid and beguilingly expressive playing.
Brescia e Amisano | Teatro alla Scala. Photograph: Brescia e Amisano ©
Simone Young’s baton is a marvel: not only does she demonstrate the wonderful poise and triumphant elegance of Brahms in her conduction, but she projects a captivating synergy typical of the composer’s regality and tonal ubiquity. A regality transposed in her conduction of Ein Heldenleben, leaning on Strauss’ diaphanously light coloratura juxtaposed with the orchestra’s depth.
These elements make a sweet coupling, though these works are, in fact, portraits of Strauss’s know-how and expertise. Heldenleben mockingly pits thoughts of domesticity against the twists and turns of stardom, nicely directed here by Young’s precision and irreverence, which comes across as a striking Straussian in some capacity.
Brescia e Amisano | Teatro alla Scala. Photograph: Brescia e Amisano ©
The multiple ironies of Heldenleben are superbly caught, though the emotional rigour of her interpretation lies in an equally rigorous account of the touchingly beautiful treatment of the finale. The orchestral sound is lean and sinewy; it’s not for those who like their Strauss uber-opulent score. That this is deliberate, however, is born out by the warmer orchestral colours that Young adopts for her regal yet imposing performance of this season’s Heldenleben.
Reimagining Verdi’s great tragedy of guilt, obsession and the reckless nature of fate in terms of 20th-century military conflict and its aftermath, Leo Muscato’s 2024 staging of La Forza del Destino returns to La Scala for its first revival, conducted by Riccardo Chailly. The show opens the Teatro alla Scala’s 2024/2025 Season on Saturday 7 December.
Still. Photograph: Brescia e Amisano ©
The opera will be sung by Russian soprano Anna Netrebko (Donna Leonora; the part will be sung on 28 December and 2 January by Elena Stikhina), Brian Jagde (Don Alvaro), Ludovic Tézier (Don Carlo di Vargas), The direction is by Leo Muscato, with sets by Federica Parolini, costumes by Silvia Aymonino and lighting by Alessandro Verazzi. The opening evening is dedicated to Renata Tebaldi on the twentieth anniversary of her death.
The artist was a splendid performer of the part of Leonora at La Scala in 1955 under the baton of Antonino Votto. The opera will be performed in the 1869 version reworked by Verdi for La Scala, according to the critical edition edited for Ricordi by Philip Gossett and William Holmes in 2005. Every year, the performance will be filmed by Rai Cultura cameras and broadcast live on television on Rai1 and radio on Radio3. The Premiere will be preceded on Wednesday 4 December by the Preview for the Under 30s and followed by seven performances on 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 28th December 2024 and 2 January 2025.
The opera marked the conjunction between Giuseppe Verdi and La Scala after the rift that had occurred with Bartolomeo Merelli at the premiere of Giovanna d’Arco in 1845. Verdi would no longer write a new opera for the Milanese theatre until Otello in 1887, but he did make substantial changes to the score of La Forza presented in St. Petersburg in 1862.
In the 19th century, the opera would only be revived in 1871 and 1877, with Franco Faccio conducting. It was Arturo Toscanini who revived the title in the new century with a performance in 1908, and then in 1928 with a new production designed by Giovacchino Forzano. The sets, by Edoardo Marchioro, were also the backdrop for productions directed by Giuseppe Del Campo (1929, 1930), Gabriele Santini (1934), Gino Marinuzzi (1940), Victor de Sabata and Nino Sanzogno (1943).
Still. Photograph: Brescia e Amisano ©
After the war, the first conductor to bring La Forza del Destino back to La Scala was Victor de Sabata in 1949, again alternating with Nino Sanzogno. Particular affection for this title was shown by Antonino Votto, who directed it in 1955 with Renata Tebaldi as Leonora and Giuseppe Di Stefano as Don Alvaro, and again in 1957 and 1961. In 1965 Gianandrea Gavazzeni chose La Forza to open the season, the direction was by Margherita Wallmann and the sets again by Nicola Benois.
The cast of 7 December sees Ilva Ligabue, Carlo Bergonzi, Piero Cappuccilli (replaced from the second act by Carlo Meliciani), Nicolai Ghiaurov and Giulietta Simionato for the last time Preziosilla at La Scala after four productions. Luciana Savignano, who has recently joined the La Scala Ballet Company, is also among the solo dancers.
After opening the 1965/66 season, La Forza del Destino returned to La Scala in 1978, conducted by Giuseppe Patanè and directed by Lamberto Puggelli. The sets of this legendary production were designed by Renato Guttuso, who had already collaborated in the creation of three other performances at La Scala.
The cast was historic, with Montserrat Caballé, José Carreras, Piero Cappuccilli and Nicolai Ghiaurov. It took 21 years for the title to be revived, and it was Riccardo Muti who revived it under the direction of Hugo de Ana, who also designed the sets and costumes.
The protagonists include Georgina Lukács, José Cura, Leo Nucci and Luciana D’Intino, but also Alfonso Antoniozzi as Melitone. This same production would be taken on tour to Japan the following year, again with Muti on the podium: these would be the last performances of the 1869 La Scala version with the theatre’s ensembles.
La Forza also returned to La Scala in 2001, when the Mariinsky ensembles conducted by Valery Gergiev performed the 1862 St. Petersburg version as part of the Grandi Teatri per Verdi festival.
by Chidozie Obasi