The 43rd iteration of the Monteverdi Festival took place in his home town of Cremona between 7 and 21 June, a full programme of operas, familiar and unfamiliar, vocal and instrumental recitals, lectures and workshops, celebrating not just the main man, but the whole musical world of the Italian Baroque. Cremona is particularly appropriate setting for such an immersion, partly because of its largely untouched city centre, but also because of its unique role in the history and present-day story of violin manufacture. The tightly-knit relationships between period ensembles and the makers of their instruments unites past and present throughout the year, making this festival a natural point of culmination and coming together, rather than simply an annual extraganza.
While I only could attend a fraction of the events, once you are part of the setting you do feel part of a larger experience which is worthy of description to give a sense of the unique feel of the festival, its intensity and also its warm welcome. It wraps you up quickly and completely in the ambience even if you are only there for a few days.
Cremona is one of several medium-sized cities in the Po Valley that have a storied history in music as much as art – Perugia Pavia, Parma, and Mantua are all nearby – and easily accessible from both Milan airports. They are compact, unspoilt, layered historic cities that emerge quickly and unexpectedly from the flat, neat, precisely organised agricultural hinterland of Lombardy. All routes in Cremona lead directly to the centre through streets of courtyard houses designed to offer shelter from exactly the simmering, shimmering heat I experienced on arrival. As I headed off to explore through row after row of shuttered shops and deserted parks there was a definite feeling, not so much of Monteverdi, but of ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun’, except all the canines were clearly far too savvy to put in an appearance.
But the excellent range of inexpensive restaurants do come to life at cocktail hour ahead of concert time, and you just have to head towards the Piazza Comunale and the Duomo to pick up the genial vibe. While not a concert venue, the Duomo is certainly built in the festive vein, a huge Romanesque structure, with a magnificent striped marble facade, as if someone had placed a slab of viennetta on top of a vast biscuit base. From there it is a short walk to the Teatro Ponchielli, a tiered jewel-box of a theatre, a miniature La Scala, where the operatic action began.
First up was a premiere, based on a reconstruction of Cavalli’s Marriage of Thetis and Peleus. First seen in Venice in 1639, this work has required very considerable intervention and restoration by many hands, as the manuscript only survives in partial form, probably in a version made for the basso continuo player. To mark the 350th anniversary of Cavalli’s death, conductor Antonio Greco has used clues from the archives to put a score together across the whole of the libretto, and director Petra Deidda has found a way of threading together a disparate array of scenes several of which bear no relation at all to the main thrust of the story. To this extent it is a huge achievement, not least because this is Cavalli’s first work and represents the point within Venetian musical history when the baton passes from Monteverdi to his leading pupil, and opera moves from the domain of private princely patronage to the space of public theatre.
As ever in these first operas, the themes are sketched out in broad terms in the prologue where Time and Fame debate each other’s priority before being usurped by Discord, who ends up being the real deus ex machina who drives the opera forward. The two leads, Peleus and Thetis, are much more passive figures, pushed together and then pulled apart by a gallery of scheming gods and the victim of multiple deceptions. The story is then usurped by the prequel to the Iliad, as three goddesses compete for the golden apple awarded by Paris. This becomes perhaps the most compelling episode of the evening, really a one-act opera in its own right parachuted into the greater whole. Eventually, the god Hymen intervenes to tie up a lot of loose ends.
There was much earnest debate in the interval as to the meaning of the plot, but that perhaps misses the point. In early opera why should we necessarily expect narrative continuity in the modern sense? This was meant as an ad hoc entertainment above all, where continual incident and diversion mattered most; and in any case we can think of plenty of examples of contemporary popular culture, perhaps the best comparison, where the same loose standards apply. Better to note the most effective of those episodes and the roles that were projected most memorably.
Valentina Ferrarese sang the role of Thetis with purity of tone and an appropriate sense of divine distance, which contrasted with the more urgent singing of Ferran Albrich, as Peleus, here presented by the director as something of a naive, well-intentioned Indiana Jones explorer. Alessandro Ravasio was notably commanding and creepy as Jupiter; and all those involved in the Olympian beauty contest made the most of their roles, and especially Jorge Navarro Colorado, as Paris, initially exasperated and then beguiled by the proceedings. This was by far the most engrossingly sustained dramatic episode of the evening.
This is music that is much more self-consciously melodic than Monteverdi’s more austere declamatory style, and one of the fascinations of this last weekend of the festival was to see that transition in action across the middle decades of the 17th century. Here the burden is very much carried by the orchestra who have to engage with a huge multiplicity of musical forms both in link materials and in accompaniment. From the opening trumpet fanfare onwards the twelve-piece band of Cremona Antiqua provided a superb idiomatic lead in music that must have been new to them. Hopefully, a recording of this newly reconstructed work will be forthcoming. With so many changes of scene across the evening, costumes rather than sets had to carry the main visual messages, and Valentina Volpi’s work here struck a good balance between literalism and symbolism.
The following day took us the other main venue of the festival, the Museum of the History of the Violin, right at the heart of the city. It contains a jewel of a performance space, a concert hall with its swooping gangways and balconies shaped according to the side contours of a violin. But the building holds other kinds of treasure too to which no price tag can be attached. Alongside a fascinating exhibition on the history and techniques of violin manufacture, there is a room filled with original instruments created by the Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari workshops, each standing in its glowing varnished uniform like guardsmen on parade.
Some of these instruments are available for performance, and we were fortunate enough to hear a recital -lecture on a Stradivari guitar made in 1684, played by Davide Rebuffa. There were a lot of words, perhaps too many; but to hear a guitar of this period in action was a revelation. The quiet, intimate, almost confiding tone of the instrument, so different from the classical guitar, brought it home to you that at this stage, this small guitar was really intended for domestic rather than concert performance, and as an accompanying rather than a leading voice in a consort. The delicate plucking and thrumming drew you into a refined sound world, as if you were listening at a key hole across time reaching through to a patron’s plush palazzo. Through continuous ownership in one Venetian family the instrument has largely escaped alteration and updating, and to hear a range of 17th century dance and toccata movements played on it was a rare privilege.
Later in the day we returned to the same venue to focus on the later seventeenth-century, and the work of Alessandro Stradella, in particular. In a concert called ‘La Dea delle Scene’, soprano Silvia Frigato and Ensemble Mare Nostrum, led by Andrea de Carlo, took their point of departure from the encounter in Genoa in 1679 between Stradella and Caterina Betteghi, ‘La Centoventi’, one of the most celebrated singers of the day, whom Stradella nicknamed ‘the goddess of the stage.’ In their operatic collaborations his sprightly music and her stage presence produced something like the first comic operas in recognisable form. While the listings in the programme were not that easy to follow, the extracts served to demonstrate a virtuosic, florid style in both vocal and instrumental solos that already begins to sound like the world of Handel’s Italian Cantatas. There was a seamless synergy between Frigato’s coloratura and the brilliant violin and cello soloists in the orchestra. Frigato is a very experienced performer in these genres, demonstrating great vocal agility and supreme control over tonal dynamics and colour. Everyone took great delight in precise yet apparently spontaneous ornamentation that began to feel a bit like jazz improvisation. Indeed that aspect became almost explicit in in the sinuous syncopations of Monteverdi’s famous ‘Ohimé ch’io cado’, stealing the joyful show, as he so often does, in the final item, and sending us foot-tapping on our way towards L’Incoronazione di Poppea, back at Teatro Ponchielli.
Each time I hear this work it seems impossible to credit it as the work of man in his mid-70s, such is the wealth of musical invention and depth of characterisation on display. In that sense, if no other, there is a parallel with Verdi’s Falstaff. There is something newly impressive that strikes me on each occasion, and this time it was the confrontational duet between Nero and Seneca on the role of passion and reason in politics, a debate for our own times, if ever there was one. In ‘Son risoluto, insomma’, the arguments for whimsical autocracy are weighed against considered rational policy with intellectual sophistication and musical incisiveness.
In the pit, Paul Agnew’s vast experience and the assured virtuosity of Les Arts Florissants ensured an exquisite set of textures supporting the singers throughout and sprightly orchestral interludes, brief yet punchy, every time. I wish I could say the same of the production values. If ever there were a case to trust the strength of the original material, it is this opera; and yet the work of director Roberto Catalano was distracting at best and patronising at worst. Until I read the programme note it was not clear to me why seven dancers wander through the action in a life-cycle that appeared to imitate the debauchery and excesses of the leads – is the message of the whole not clear enough as it is? Amid this inconsequential additional action several of key moments lost their impact and some of the interchanges of the characters became muted and blurred.
The supporting roles were least affected by this undertow of drift, with fine performances from Mara Gaudenzi as Ottavia, defiant and fierce in her defence of traditional virtue; Lucia Martin-Carton as Drusilla, pert, incisive and vocally assured throughout; and Federico Domenico Eraldo Sacchi as a grave and noble Seneca. There was also a notably knowing performance from Luca Cervoni as the nurse, Arnalta.
The two leads, Benedetta Torre and Mayaan Licht, had some fine moments, but the chemistry between them did not come over compellingly, and both sounded under pressure in the sections where passion, anger and rapid action were involved. They were more at ease in the quieter sections, and rose well to the complex final challenge of ‘Pur ti miro.’ Licht was also impressive in the homoerotic bacchanal with Lucan, especially in suggestive ornamentation, and Torre used her voice to cover her long vocal lines with credible insinuation to manipulate and charm those around her.
The ultimate triumph of vice over virtue, or, as the prologue would have it, the victory of fortune and love over virtue, used to be considered problematic, but increasingly this seems a rather precious critical perspective to adopt. It is a tribute to the ruthless realism and modernity of the work that nothing is sugar-coated and beauty of expression can be plausibly juxtaposed and dramatically integrated with the most mordant of motivations.
As I strolled back to my hotel in the still stifling heat of midnight, I thought of a shape-shifting painting by Arcimboldo, Monteverdi’s near contemporary, that I had seen earlier in the Civic Museum. Apparently an innocent bowl of vegetables, when inverted the face of an aged rustic gardener appears, with several hints of genitalia emerging as well. You could say that is Monteverdi’s point too – as an audience we choose ultimately what to notice and prioritise in music and drama. The composer has done his best job by presenting us with a rich variety of plausible raw dramatic materials from which to select. By avoiding a conventional moralising framework he ultimately does us a liberating favour. The rest is up to us.
Photo Credits: Antonino Dimondo and Lorenzo Gorini