Gioachino Rossini: L'italiana in Algeri
Opera national de Paris
Palais Garnier, 1998
Mustafa - Simone Alaimo
Elvira - Jeannette Fischer
Zulma - Maria Jose Trullu
Haly - Anthony Smith
Lindoro - Bruce Ford
Isabella - Jennifer Larmore
Taddeo - Alessandro Corbelli
Bruno Campanella, conductor
Stage Director: Andrei Serban
NTSC
Sound Formats: PCM-STEREO, DD 5.1
Picture Format: 16:9
Subtitles: GB, D, F, I, E
Region Code: 0
Running Time: 148min
TDK presents the latest in their series of recordings from the prestigious Opera National de Paris. This production of Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri by renowned opera stage director Andrei Serban and conducted by Bruno Campanella was first presented at the Palais Garnier in 1998.
The excellent cast of singer-actors was led by international mezzo-star Jennifer Larmore who, with her unaffected contact with the audience, beautiful voice and excellent acting, is central to this staging. The American singer has acquired a reputation as a Rossini specialist, and is no stranger to inventive stagings of the composer’s comedies. The part of Isabella lies relatively low for many mezzos, but Jennifer Larmore has expressed her preference for this and Rossini’s other deeper mezzo roles. And in interview she has spoken of how she threw herself into the Serban production: “There’s a lot of movement, but it works, with the costumes that can be kind of tacky, with the sets that can also be kind of tacky. I felt I had to be an integral part of this to make it work, so I’m tacky too”.
However, the work may be named after the Italian girl, but her adversary Mustafa is just as dominant, and this production has one of the leading exponents of this gleeful role, the buffo bass Simone Alaimo. Two other leading Rossini singers complete the cast: the tenor Bruce Ford, who is at the forefront of the revival of the composer’s operas, and whose Lindoro has been heard in the leading opera houses across Europe, and Alessandro Corbelli who makes the hapless Taddeo, insulted and mocked from his first appearance, into something more than a figure of fun, a fully-rounded character, with all his awkwardness, pretensions and timid eagerness to please.
Outrageous colours and incessant movement are the hallmarks of the production that director Andrei Serban and his designer Marina Draghici. In this production everything is outsize, from the protruding stomachs of the palace eunuchs to the huge ship we see sinking behind the captive Isabella, or the vast table with its checked cloth where Mustafa sits to experience the life of a “Pappataci”. The cartoon quality of this vision of the opera is summed up in the defining opening image of a carefree girl perched on a pole. And Mustafa’s animal nature is slyly pointed up by the presence of his tiger-skin rug, and even a zebra in the second act.
The exaggeration, however, works well in this -joyful drama“. L’Italiana in Algeri - like Il Turco in Italia is pure buffoonery and - written at dizzying speed in the spring of 1813 - Rossini’s screwball comedy of the resourceful Italian girl who outwits the obtuse Mustafa set the seal on the young composer’s meteoric rise to fame in the opera houses of Venice. It is still a success with audiences today and this DVD provides more than two hours of carefree entertainment, especially as L’Italiana in Algeri is not performed as often the more serious Barbiere, which makes the DVD recording of this staging for home-viewing even more important.
( TDK )
