albadger | Verdi Haz a Sad (Reply)

Friday night, during the dingy gray production of la Battaglia di Legnano, I found myself thinking, why didn't they use THIS production for tomorrow night's opera, i Due Foscari, which is ITSELF dingy and sad? So you can imagine how unsurprised I was to see Saturday night's curtain go up on more or less the same dingy, sad gray set, complete with chorus elevator. Actually it was even dingier -- in addition to the bleak concrete, we got mildewed, peeling green wallpaper. Thugs slithered through the shadows. Women were mysteriously abducted and just as mysteriously stumbled out of wardrobes later in the evening. Darkness reigned.

Which, for i Due Foscari, is just about right. It's based on a thingy by Lord Byron, and it has effectively no action aside from the destruction of the title father/son duo. If Battaglia fails because it can't keep its ducks in a row, Foscari fails -- for most people -- because it only has one duck.

Me? I like it, especially the husband-wife prison duet in Act II that had me crying last night, and the big climaxes of the crowd scenes are quite moving, even when the crowd is being dangled 20 feet in the air. The final scene of the Doge's disgrace and death is a gift to a singing actor, so it's no surprise Placido Domingo staged this for himself in Los Angeles last year.

Well done all round tonight. And, tomorrow night for i Lombardi, I fully expect to see the same dingy gray and green walls, and the same hydraulic choir loft, used to represent a medieval Italian castle, a sultanate's harem, and a hermit's cave.

Oh, also, I actually went out during the day! I took the U-1 to the Hopbahnhof Sud station and then the U-3 to the Rathaus. That's one hell of a big Rathaus!