Download Dubrovačke ljetne igre

Dubrovačke ljetne igre
Dubrovnik Summer Festival
2001
Croatia Hrvatska
Zbor i orkestar Opere
Hrvatskog narodnog
kazališta
Choir and Orchestra of Opera of
the Croatian National
Theatre
Split
Nikša Bareza
Dirigent Conductor
Solisti Soloists
Alessandra Rezza
sopran soprano
Ildikó Szònyi
mezzosopran mezzo-soprano
Janez Lotrič
tenor
Ivica Čikeš
bas bass
Držićeva poljana
Držić Square
1. kolovoza 1 August
21.30 9.30 p.m.
Giuseppe Verdi:
Requiem za sole, zbor i orkestar
Requiem for soloists, choir and orchestra
Requiem Kyrie
Dies irae Domine
Jesu Sanctus
Agnus Dei
Lux aeterna
Libera me
Koncertni majstor Concertmaster : Orest Shourgot
Zborovođa Choirmaster: Ana Šabašov
Korepetitorica Rehearser: Vera Pavasović
Inspicijentica Stage manager: Elza Tudor Gančević
Ovaj koncert ostvaren je pod pokroviteljstvom Ministarstva
kulture Republike Hrvatske i u suradnji sa Hrvatskim
narodnim kazalištem Split.
This concert is realized under the auspices of the Ministry of
Culture of the Republic of Croatia and in collaboration with
the Croatian National Theatre of Split.
The Croatian conductor Nikša Bareza graduated from the Zagreb Academy of
Music, whereupon he practiced with Milan Sachs at the Opera of the Croatian
National Theatre in Zagreb and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg under Hermann
Scherchen. He was chief conductor and director of the Zagreb Opera (1965-1974),
then visiting chief conductor of the Zurich Opera where he became its chief
conductor (1978-1981). In 1981 he was appointed chief conductor of the Graz
Philharmonic and Opera, to become chief-conductor of the Croatian RTV Symphony
Orchestra in 1992. He has mastered a large opera and symphony repertoire also by
collaborating with the great partners such as Lovro von Matacic, Herbert von
Karajan, Ferdinand Leitner, Otmar Sultner, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, etc, while at the
same time putting up direct contacts with the contemporary composers. His
appearances at leading opera houses of Europe (Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich,
Frankfurt, Dresden, Leipzig, Prague, Paris, Bologna, etc) are acclaimed as a rule. He
had his debut at La Scala in 1991 with Wagner's Parsifal; three years later he
created Die Walkure (with Muti), and in spring of 1997 Wagner's Siegfried, when he
became permanent guest-conductor. In Berlin State Opera he had an enormous
success with Puccini's Tosca. His large discography features the highly successful
Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung, while his CD release of Ferrari's // Campiello (with
Verdi Theatre, Trieste) was awarded a platinum medal in Paris.
The Italian soprano Alessandra Rezza (b. Velletri, 1975) graduated in singing and
piano, had her debut as Violetta in La Traviata at the Manzoni Theatre in Rome
(1997). Her victory at the 39th Verdian Voices of Busseto International Competition
granted a scholarship to the Mozarteum, soon to be followed by another victory
(Gianfranco Masini, Reggio Emilia). Acclaimed are her creations at the Opera of Sofia
in Gomez's Maria Tudor and Verdi's Don Carlos (Elisabetta), in Spoleto as Duchess in
Mozart's Figaro's Marriage, in Busseto and Ravenna in Verdi's Luisa Miller and as
Leonora in II Trovatore in Parma. Her reputation was particularly reaffirmed at the
Japanese tour of La Scala where she appeared as Leonora in Verdi's La forza del
destine She played the young Callas in the film on the life of the great singer.
The Hungarian mezzo-soprano Ildiko Szdnyi got her musical education at the high
school of music and at the Conservatory in Budapest, whereupon she was engaged
by the Budapest Opera and as a leading singer of the opera house in Graz. She has
appeared in Vienna, Salzburg, Marseille, Nairobi, Prague, Meiningen, Wiesbaden, St.
Gallen, Bregenz and Basel. In 1995 she had her German debut at the Berlin State
Opera, while in 1997 she became resident leading singer of the Aalto-Oper in
Dresden. She is especially, versatile in Italian (Preziosilla, Eboli, Ulrica, Amneris,
Azucena, etc) and German repertory (Fricka, Ortrud, Venus, Klytemnestra, etc). She
shares her time on the concert stage as well.
The Slovenian tenor Janez Lotrič, born in Zelezniki, studied singing in private with
Ksenija Vidali-Zebre and with Ondina Otta-Klasinc at the Academy of Music in
Ljubljana. After the master courses with Mario del Monaco and Hilde Zadek, he
became the soloist of the Maribor Opera (1980-1987), and was a highly noticed
participant of the international competitions of Toti dal Monte (Trieste) and Mario del
Monaco (Castelfranco). After one season of a soloist at the Osnabrück Opera, he
decided to become a free-lance singer on the many stages in Croatia, Slovenia,
Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Russia, Germany, France and Austria (with
already highly acclaimed 11 roles at the Vienna State Opera: Canio, Califfo, Manrico,
Bacchus, Arrigo, Rodolfo, Hoffmann, Turiddu, Jean, Ernani and Don José). He has
appeared opposite the most reputable partners such as Edita Gruberova, Agnes
Baltsa, Cheryl Studer, Dolora Zajick, Leo Nucci, Renato Bruson, Kurt Rydl, Ferruccio
Furlanetto and with such conductors as Hort Stein, Jun Märkl, Marcello Viotti, Fabio
Luisi, Roberto Abbado and Simone Young.
The Croatian bass Ivica Čikeš (b. Split, 1964) got his first musical education in the
class of Branka Ristić at the Josip Hatze Musical School in his native town. Still a
student, he appeared in Mozart's Requiem and got his first engagements at the
Opera of the Croatian National Theatre in Split. Thereupon he studied for a short
while at the local detachment of the Zagreb Academy of Music (with Cynthia HanselBakić), and went to Rome to study with Maja Sunara and Wilhelm Wodnanski. In
Italy he attended master courses in Rome and Parma. His participations at the
international competitions Ott di Roma, Bellini and Donizetti (Vercelli), and,
especially, his semi-finals of the H.G. Belvedere in Vienna resulted with an
engagement by the Vienna Chamber Opera and a candidacy for the Herbert von
Karajan scholarship granted by the Vienna State Opera. Čikeš is the leading singer
of the opera house in Split and a regular guest at other opera and concert stages at
home and abroad.
When in 1868 Gioacchino Rossini died aged 76, Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
enacted a homage requiem that was to be first performed in Bologna on the
anniversary of his death (November 13, 1869). Upon Verdi's recommendation, 13
composers were invited to contribute one movement each, while Verdi was to make
the final Libera me. In a letter to his publisher Ricordi, Verdi wrote: 'The mass
should not become a matter of speculations and cheap curiosity; on the contrary,
after the first performance it should be sealed and deposited at Liceo Musicale not to
be touched ever again. An exception could be made only at the anniversaries of
Rossini's death, should future generations want to honour his memory... it should
not tend to be musically wholesome, which should not be taken as a setback, for in
that way it should give a true evidence of the respect for the man whose decease is
being mourned by the whole world'. But the idea of a collective task failed for some
quite trivial reasons: Bolognese impresario Scalaberni refused a production by the
soloists, the choir and the orchestra of the Bolognese Opera without a payment.
Verdi himself suspected that his one-time friend, the famous conductor Angelo
Mariani who lived in Bologna at the time, incited the affair. So the idea of a requiem
died temporarily, only to be revived four years later, after the death of Alessandro
Manzoni (1785-1873), Italy's greatest man of letters of the 19th century. This time
Verdi took to making the whole piece. It took him almost a year (summer 1873
spring 1874), and it was first performed on the anniversary of Manzoni's death (May
22, 1874) at St. Marcus in Milan; the following days four more, enormously
successful performances were given at La Scala. Only several weeks later, the
Requiem was produced in Paris at six consecutive sold-out concerts. Many
productions on various stages of Europe followed, with Verdi himself conducting over
the performances in London and Vienna and at the Musical Festivities in Cologne. It
is less known that back in 1868 and 1869 Verdi was not working only on the
changes of the Libera me as part of a possible collective project, but also on the
variations of Dies irae, at a moment in which it seemed he would have to step in for
one of his colleagues. Equally, it is not widely known that he continued his work on
the Requiem in the spring of 1873, before the death of Manzoni, which drives to the
conclusion that he was chased by the idea constantly, where the death of the poet
served as a motive and strong encouragement for the completion of the piece.
The fundaments of Verdi's Requiem conceal diverse influences from his own quite
operatic, to the 19-centuries-old tradition of spiritual music and some very old
elements of church music. How characteristic the work is, is best illustrated by the
notorious stinging allusion of Hans von Btilow: 'Here's another Verdi's opera in a
church robe!' Realistically, there are some liaisons in style with his later operas, from
Don Carlos to Othello, just as they lay in melodic turnovers, harmony, orchestration,
even in solo scores. It is well known that while writing the soprano and the mezzo
parts, he was thinking of Maria Waldmann and Teresa Stolz, two brilliant
protagonists from Don Carlos and Aida. Well, that happens with other great masters,
too no one can refrain from his own idiom, not even while writing church music. Yet
Verdi's Requiem is a specific example of such symbiosis: while it does possess his
operatic handwriting and his operatic passion, it raises above any opera while
describing death that becomes a hallucination of life (or vice versa), while
emphasizing man's sinfulness and his inferiority in the battle he is doomed to lose.
There the Requiem becomes a full-blooded musical drama par excellence, a triumph
of poetry of purification and salvation, of catharsis and ascension. The strict fugato
polyphony of the Requiem, so clear in some choral scores, goes beyond any
contrapuntal categories of his entire output: framed by the task, the composer could
not deliver all his polyphonic abilities but had to adhere to the traditions of church
music. This is well illustrated by the very opening of the piece, Te decet hymnus, or
by the eight-voiced double fugue in the Sanctus, not less in the grand closing fugue
in C minor in Libera me; inventiveness has penetrated deep without hurting the
tissue. As for the oldest traditions, they show in the embryos of the melodies
drawing upon the Gregorian chant and upon the old psalms that inspired the delicate
unison melody of the several opening bars of Agnus Dei.
Requiem has seven movements of different size, based upon the Latin liturgy of the
service for the dead. Requiem and Kyrie of the first movement appear from an
immense silence and talk for peace, humility and consolation. The anthological Dies
irae is a Michelangelo-like dramatic picture of the Last Judgment, inspired by a 13th
century Latin sequence feeding on the eternal existential clash between life and
death, raise and fall, light and darkness. Occupying almost one third of the whole
piece, this most impressive segment consists of 12 skilfully interwoven shorter
scores (choruses, solo parts, tutti) in which a general turmoil of people soaked with
fear turns gradually into a uniform rhythmical shift provoked by the opening of the
book that records all the sins of man. The very end of the movement gives some
almost realistic sketches of the sinners praying, assigned to the soloists
accompanied by an indifferent choir in the manner of the ancient Greek
commentary. Arioso scores are lyrical, reminding in style of the lacquered pages of
Aida. Offertorium Domine Jesu Christe is delivered by the soloists ornamented with
fine lace of the woodwinds and the strings partitioned in several groups. Sanctus
excels with the aforementioned double fugue of the chorus. The Gregorian-like chant
of the female solo vocals and the choir in Agnus Dei is surrounded in an unusual way
by a transloosing instrumental setting; following the allegory of the text, the
accompaniment of the third chant is assigned to the fluid-pastoral vibrations of three
flutes. Ethereal air of the Lux aeterna is a refined musical reflection of hope for
eternal light. Libera me grows from a psalmodic soprano score, over the chorus and
its decisive shifts, into an effective 'fugue of redemption'. A huge gradation takes us
to the psychologically justified peaks of the end from which the chorus, led by the
soprano, goes back to the initial atmosphere of regained peace.
D. Detoni
Jutarnjiist
medijski pokrovitelj 52. Dubrovačkih ljetnih igara