Tancredi at Bregenzer Festspiele
July 19, 2024
* Notes *
Rossini's Tancredi (ovation pictured, photograph by author) premiered at Bregenzer Festspiele last night in the Großer Saal of the Festspielhaus. Based on Voltaire's play, the opera has lots of brilliant music that is a joy to hear.
Set in Syracuse, the production from Jan Philipp Gloger is updated to be set in a Cosa Nostra household. It was a bit on the nose, but the revolving set itself is very attractive. The role of Tancredi is written for a mezzo or contralto en travesti, but for this version the character is a woman with she/her pronouns, but this is only known to her beloved, Amenaide.
The singing was adequate. Mezzo-soprano Laura Polverelli was throaty and emotive as Isaura, who was Amenaide's mom rather than her friend in this production. Bass-baritone Andreas Wolf was perfectly fine as Tancredi's rival Orbazzano. Tenor Antonino Siragusa shouted quite a bit as Amenaide's father Argirio. His voice is bright but not overly plaintive or pretty.
Soprano Mélissa Petit is a lovely Amenaide, her sound is bird-like and she sang very beautifully with mezzo-soprano Anna Goryachova as Tancredi. Goryachova has some wooliness to her lower register, but her high notes have a nice clarity and she definitely is convincing as an androgynous person in both her body-type but more importantly, in her carriage. Her last piece was very sad, not only because of her singing, but because she has been completely abandoned on the stage and is singing for no one.
The orchestra could have been more precise and driven under the baton of Maestra Yi-Chen Lin, though the beauty of the music was evident.
* Tattling *
Again, the Bregenz audience was quite terrible. The two women who moved in from the aisle behind me in Row 23 spoke loudly and said very self-evident things like "Es ist eine Frau...Chinesin" about the conductor when the orchestra was playing. A woman next to us in Row 22 loudly unwrapped a cough drop for several seconds during a choral part of Act I.
Naturally, there were people taking pictures of the opera during the performance. A person in Row 20 Seat 6 was stoped by an usher in the first half, but both talked to her companion (for which she was roundly hushed by my seat mate) and took at least one photo during the second half.