INNSBRUCK FESTIVAL 10-30.VIII.2026

THE ART OF REFINEMENT  

A tribute to Alan Curtis with Anna Bonitatibus  

          Eleven years had to pass before the Innsbruck Festival officially paid tribute to one of the artists who left a lasting mark on its history: Alan Curtis, who died in Florence on 15 July 2015. Harpsichordist, musicologist, teacher, conductor and tireless archaeologist of the Baroque repertoire, the American musician played a decisive role from the late 1970s onwards in establishing Innsbruck as one of the major centres for the rediscovery of early opera. 
          With his Il Complesso Barocco, he brought to Innsbruck, among other works, Stradella’s Susanna, Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, Landi’s Sant’Alessio, Handel’s Ariodante and Rodrigo, and Gluck’s Armide.

          A belated tribute, then, but one that was all the more fitting. Curtis was less a spectacularly theatrical conductor than a mediator, discoverer and practising musicologist. 
          Dramatic fury and stage instinct were not always his strongest weapons; his immense achievement lay elsewhere: in bringing forgotten scores to light, approaching them from a historically informed perspective and, above all, giving them a second life through recordings featuring outstanding singers of the Baroque revival.  

          Handel naturally stood at the heart of this work, with Rodrigo, Deidamia, Rodelinda, Radamisto, Ezio, Tolomeo, Alcina, Ariodante and many other works. Vivaldi was also central, above all Motezuma, whose recording remains one of his most important projects.  

          These productions also accompanied the rise of singers who would later become indispensable figures of Baroque singing: Ann Hallenberg, Simone Kermes, Marijana Mijanovic, Joyce DiDonato, Maite Beaumont, Mary-Ellen Nesi — and, not least, Anna Bonitatibus, who appeared in Deidamia and Tolomeo, among others.  

          It was therefore particularly fitting to entrust this tribute to the Italian mezzo-soprano, accompanied by Accademia Bizantina and Ottavio Dantone. The programme was conceived as a musical album of memories, bringing together the composers at the heart of Curtis’s research: naturally Handel and Vivaldi, but also Purcell, Scarlatti, Geminiani and Gluck. 
          Everything begins with Handel’s Concerto grosso in F major, Op. 6 No. 2. Accademia Bizantina immediately establishes the elegance without excess that will characterise the evening. At the harpsichord as at the helm of the ensemble, Ottavio Dantone favours clear lines and supple articulation. The compact, incisive orchestra also knows how to leave the music room to breathe. 

          Yet it is only with the voice that the portrait of Curtis truly takes shape. In Rodrigo, Anna Bonitatibus shapes “Siete assai superbe, o stelle” with a virtuosity that never becomes mere display. The aria is striking for its contrasts, above all for the brilliant coloratura on the word “fulminando”, through which the singer moves her voice with remarkable precision.  

          This passage seems to echo two worlds of Handel: the tension of “Pensieri” from Agrippina and the self-assurance of “Fermati!” from the cantata Aminta e Fillide. Behind the score, the characters and affetti that constitute its true substance emerge. 
          Then comes that moment of suspension in which Anna Bonitatibus abandons almost frontal projection for a velvety, enveloping and finely controlled mezza voce. In Alessandro Scarlatti’s “Mentr’io godo in dolce oblio”, the voice seems to reach us through a veil. The effect is enchanting: a few bars are enough to create an atmosphere of half-awakened dreaming, as though the music itself were beginning to float.  

          With Handel, the singer then returns to her preferred territory. In “No, quella beltà non amo” from Deidamia, she demonstrates how deeply her artistry rests on an extraordinarily precise treatment of the text. Her perfectly articulated Italian becomes musical material in itself; every word seems weighed, coloured and placed. Character and contrasts emerge with particular clarity.

          But it is with Agrippina as an encore that the embodiment becomes complete. In “L’alma mia fra le tempeste”, Anna Bonitatibus returns to a role she has sung so often on international stages — most recently at the Opéra de Rouen — that it has become inseparable from her voice. The coloratura pours forth with astonishing ease, at almost stratospheric speed, yet always with the stylistic command that prevents virtuosity from becoming an end in itself. 

          Fire, perfidy, temperament: Agrippina is there. The ability to characterise without caricature is one of the mezzo-soprano’s great strengths. Her unmistakable timbre retains that slight vibration which gives it such expressive power. Above all, the upper register seems to float, held by the thinnest of threads — a fragility that makes its dissolution all the more precarious and precious.  

          And what imagination in the da capo sections, which the singer never repeats mechanically. Ornamentation, variations and cadenzas all contribute to reconstructing the musical discourse. The final turns of the arias can unfold on a monumental, almost theatrical scale, without ever losing their stylistic nobility.  

          After so much virtuosity, the contrast with Dido is all the more poignant. Purcell’s “When I am laid in earth” is sung with a simplicity that is deeply moving. No contrived effect, no added pathos: simply a line that gradually strips itself bare until it finally fades away on a gently vibrating thread of sound — as though the character were disappearing before our eyes.  

          Perhaps it is here that Bonitatibus’s artistry is most clearly revealed: knowing that emotion does not need to be underlined in order to reach its destination.  

          The programme then reveals further facets of the voice: Vivaldi’s lament in “Sento in seno ch’in pioggia di lagrime”, Gluck’s brighter grace in “Le belle immagini” from Paride ed Elena. Scarlatti’s Il giardino di rose completes the journey through the musical landscapes so familiar to Curtis.  

          Opposite the singer, Accademia Bizantina proves a luxurious sonic frame. The pizzicati in Vivaldi are particularly delicate, almost tangible, turning the accompaniment into genuine musical ornament. The instrumental works by Geminiani and Handel also allow the refinement of the strings to be appreciated: their clarity and their ability to move between tension and tenderness without weighing down the musical discourse. Ottavio Dantone, harpsichordist as well as conductor, leads the ensemble with discreet authority.  

          No spectacular gesture: the music moves naturally, sharing a common breath. This restraint is particularly well suited to the spirit of the programme. Above all, it gives the soloist the space she needs to shape the affetti.  

          The evening is not entirely without reservations, however. Some of the coloratura, particularly in “Alma oppressa”, occasionally seems deliberately thinned out in order to gain precision and speed. The approach allows remarkable control of the vocal line, but at times takes something away from the density and projection of the voice. 
          The lower register can also seem less present than in the past. None of this calls the artist’s authority into question; the passing years have naturally altered the balance of a voice that nevertheless retains remarkable longevity and splendour. Her recent performance in Pergolesi’s L’Olimpiade in Beaune proved this once again. It is regrettable, however, that the singer so often remains absorbed in her score.  

          For an evening conceived as such a personal tribute, a few more moments of direct contact with the audience would undoubtedly have heightened its emotional impact. Some arias sung from memory would surely have felt even more immediate. 

          Fortunately, Alan Curtis was present as an invisible thread in every score, every coloratura passage, every name that resurfaced in the programme. One might wish that this tribute had come sooner. One could also imagine that the occasion might have brought Il Complesso Barocco back to life — the ensemble founded and led by Curtis, which no longer exists as a performing formation.  

          The presence of Accademia Bizantina and Dantone nevertheless proves a particularly meaningful choice. The festival’s current music director stands precisely within the tradition of conductors who continued Curtis’s work in Innsbruck after René Jacobs and Alessandro De Marchi. And Anna Bonitatibus certainly owed him this evening.  

          She, who had been one of his recorded voices, returned to give back to him what he had given her: a repertoire, trust, a history.

          The final encore says this with infinitely greater eloquence than any long speech. “Sonno” from Vivaldi’s La Griselda: just a few bars, sung on a knife-edge of frightening fragility. Anna Bonitatibus barely touches the music, almost on tiptoe, like a lullaby for the man to whom this evening was dedicated. Then she raises her hands towards the heavens: Alan would probably have been happy. And proud.  

          The magnificent Spanish Hall, with its fascinating portraits, lent the moment an additional solemnity. It is unfortunate, however, that this remarkable space is not ideally suited to concerts: only those seated directly in front of the platform enjoy truly satisfying acoustics and visibility, while the side seats are clearly disadvantaged. 

          Yet at the end of the evening, one thing remains: the tribute came late, but what mattered was there. 
          A voice that had belonged to Curtis’s musical circle, an orchestra that upholds the legacy of historically informed Baroque performance, and above all a programme that reminded us how profoundly this man’s immense work continues to resonate in our concert halls.  

          Eleven years after his death, Alan Curtis finally had his evening. 

Antoine Fournier  

Photos © Amir Kaufmann

       A Baroque Fairy Tale

For its 50th anniversary, the Innsbruck Festival pulls out all the stops with Cesti’s monumental Il pomo d’oro  

          It took audacity — and no small amount of resources — to bring Il pomo d’oro back to life. At its premiere in Vienna in 1668, Pietro Antonio Cesti’s opera was already a work on a monumental scale: almost eight hours of spectacle spread over two days, some forty-seven roles, a dizzying succession of scenes and no fewer than twenty-four set changes. To celebrate the marriage of Emperor Leopold I and Infanta Margaret Theresa of Spain, the scenographer Ludovico Ottavio Burnacini had devised spectacular theatrical machinery designed to multiply appearances, transformations and stage effects. A work conceived as a world unto itself, deploying every resource of Baroque theatre: machinery, dances, metamorphoses, spectacular effects and musical profusion.

          Three and a half centuries later, the challenge has lost none of its grandeur. For its fiftieth anniversary, the Innsbruck Festival takes up the work over almost eight hours, spread across two evenings, with a multitude of characters entrusted to twenty singers. But the theatrical scale is compounded by a major difficulty: entire sections of the score have disappeared. The task, therefore, was not merely to bring the work back to the stage, but also to restore part of its music.

          Ottavio Dantone undertook this monumental task. This is no simple reconstruction of a few lost pages: working from the surviving fragments and the libretto, the conductor drew on Cesti’s output to find arias and passages whose character, metre and dramatic situation could be integrated into the gaps in the work. A musicological undertaking as dizzying as it was necessary if Il pomo d’oro was to regain a stage life today.

          And then it took a veritable army to bring this work-monster to life: singers, musicians, dancers, set designers, costume designers, technicians, stagehands… An artistic undertaking as much as an organisational one, commensurate with the Festival’s ambition. The challenge was immense.

          For its fiftieth anniversary, the Innsbruck Festival has therefore pulled out all the stops. And let us say at once: the result lives up to the project’s sheer scale. The success begins with a fundamental intuition on Fabio Ceresa’s part: he does not seek to reconstruct the 1668 spectacle as if it were a museum piece. Impossible, and above all unnecessary. Instead, he seeks to recapture what Baroque theatre sought to produce in its audience: meraviglia, wonder. Burnacini’s machinery is replaced by the machinery of our own time; contemporary references mingle with eighteenth-century costumes, gods rub shoulders with businessmen and politicians, Neptune appears on a surfboard while Pallas enters wearing sunglasses and carrying a machine gun.

          The principle itself is thoroughly Baroque: blurring genres, mixing the sublime with the grotesque, the marvellous with the trivial, tragedy with burlesque. The result is a permanent visual feast.

          The audience is quite literally dazzled: characters ascending to the heavens suspended from clouds, descents into the bowels of hell, fights, naval battles, apparitions, metamorphoses, catastrophes, scenes of love and jealousy. A band of buccaneers attacks Paride’s ship and makes it pitch and roll; Charon crosses the Styx in his gondola amid malevolent creatures who want to “depopulate the earth”; the stage itself suddenly gives way, revealing its depths before an upper level emerges. Rarely can a production have attempted to embrace so many registers at once.

          The opening scene might nevertheless give cause for concern. The various countries competing for the golden apple become contestants in an improbable beauty pageant. Fabio Ceresa plunges headlong into the world of reality television: sequins, high heels, divas, drag queens, caricatured presenters and contestants competing in an escalating display of superficiality. The approach is deliberately outrageous. The contestants vie with one another in numbers as improbable as they are ridiculous; some events take on the air of children’s entertainment, while the costumes wholeheartedly embrace deliberate bad taste and excess. One French contestant sports a long, virile beard, while others turn themselves into divas smothered in sequins. And when Rémy Brès-Feuillet launches into a tap-dancing routine, the ridiculous becomes downright irresistible.

          The risk was real, however: that the production might become trapped in parody and reduce Cesti to a succession of contemporary gags. It does not. From the following scene onwards, the production changes face. The dark and ominous cave, Discordia’s arrival on her serpent-bristling cloud, followed by the celestial world of the gods and their feast, abruptly brings us back to the heart of Baroque theatre. The prologue was merely a gateway.

          And perhaps this is where the production finds its finest balance. For Cesti’s gods are far from models of wisdom. They love, envy, betray, covet, lose their tempers and, above all, like human beings, have their price. The formula returns like an obvious truth: “coll’oro si fa tutto”. With gold, everything can be done. The golden apple thus becomes far more than a mythological object. It becomes a revelation of vanity, corruption and the desire for power. Ceresa’s contemporary world is therefore no gratuitous provocation. When the production leaves the divine palaces for cold, impersonal office blocks, and then for a world of offices where the powerful of this earth gather, the continuity becomes clear. The centuries change; human beings do not. Trump, caricatured with gleeful precision, appears alongside references to Bin Laden, the Twin Towers and Che Guevara. Political and economic power thus joins the world of the gods: the same arrogance, the same desire for domination, the same compromises. Baroque is no longer merely an aesthetic. It becomes a mirror.

          Ceresa has a formidable arsenal of ideas at his disposal. Paride, initially a faithful shepherd, gradually becomes an arrogant, vain man convinced of his own irresistible appeal. A search through his bag reveals an improbable stockpile of condoms. Venus visits him and discovers women’s clothes; Paride attempts to distract her while a naked lover slips away behind a cushion. Momo, wanting to listen in secretly, hides behind a flowerpot before proceeding flat on the lower platform of a service trolley. Aurindo, who in the libretto considers throwing himself into the river to end his suffering, threatens here to throw a hairdryer plugged into the mains into his bath. Neptune arrives on a surfboard. Euphrosyne advances interminably on a tortoise, lured by a carrot held in front of its nose.

          And then there is Filaura, Alberto Allegrezza’s nurse: enormous, extravagant, wearing fishnet stockings, fanning herself beneath her skirt as well as beneath her cleavage, playing around with two dancers before finally “breaking their backs”. Above all, she possesses an extraordinary grasp of reality: money is king, so one might as well enjoy life while it lasts. A Despina before Mozart’s time.

          The production embraces these excesses and uses them as counterpoints to mythological grandeur. Even a stuffed cat, Wilibald, carefully pampered by the nurse, becomes a character in his own right in this gallery of curiosities, much to the audience’s amusement.

          But Il pomo d’oro is fortunately not reducible to this accumulation of gags. Its finest moments are sometimes the simplest. The splendour of the costumes is in itself one of the production’s great enchantments. Giuseppe Palella creates a sumptuous, extravagant and lavish wardrobe, in which different eras mingle with thoroughly Baroque freedom. Historical references, eighteenth-century silhouettes, divinities, grotesque characters, drag queens and contemporary figures coexist in a profusion of colours, textures and shapes. The costumes do more than dress the characters: they contribute fully to the dramaturgy and to the sense of wonder at the heart of the production.

          Certain appearances remain immediately etched in the memory: “Miss France” sporting a long, virile beard, Filaura in her improbable attire, Pallas with sunglasses and machine gun in hand, or, after the interval, the dancers appearing in costumes glittering with sequins, combined with large black-and-white pannier skirts inspired by the eighteenth century: a truly magnificent sight.

          Further on, long stems tipped with luminous bulbs emerge from the darkness. They form a shifting constellation, like a sky full of stars that human hands have plucked from the firmament. The idea is almost childishly simple. The result is magical. There is equal wonder in Charon’s crossing of the Styx, in a gondola surrounded by malevolent creatures, or in the marine scenes in which the stage itself seems to transform before our eyes. And when Juno gives vent to her anger — “Tutto sarà distrutto dalla mia collera” — the rain she unleashes begins with a few delicate silver strips before becoming a shimmering curtain. A theatrical invention of great poetic beauty. This is perhaps what Ceresa does best: creating spectacle without confusing spectacle with an accumulation of effects.

          Faced with a work of such duration, another challenge was to avoid musical monotony. Yet Cesti’s score constantly changes character. Recitative and parlar cantando occupy a considerable place, and some passages may seem less immediately seductive than the great lyrical episodes. But this continuous theatrical flow also allows the action to rebound incessantly.

          Ottavio Dantone conducts the Accademia Bizantina with constant attention to colour. Cornetts and serpents bring their dark and deliciously archaic sonorities; the flutes stand out in refined interventions; the harp plays an important role; the trumpets blaze with ceremonial magnificence. The NovoCanto choir, superbly prepared, adds further solidity to the edifice. Dantone’s direction never overwhelms the theatre. On the contrary, it gives it its momentum, accompanies shifts of atmosphere and brings out a score whose instrumental variety admirably matches the visual extravagance of the production.

          And one then appreciates the difficulty of the undertaking: it was not enough simply to recover the missing music; it had to be given a theatrical life.

          Twenty singers for forty-seven characters: the cast itself contributes to the sense of vertigo. With so many changes of costume, role and identity, the audience can sometimes lose track of who is singing what. This is one of the drawbacks of such profusion: certain characters appear, disappear and return in another guise before one has had time to identify them. Yet the quality of the company allows this difficulty to be overcome.

          Sophie Rennert imposes a vindictive and formidable Juno. A strong stage personality, sovereign vocal ease and memorable outbursts of anger: she dominates every one of her appearances.

          Jone Martínez charms with a luminous, sensual timbre, fluid vocality and remarkably effortless coloratura. A Venus who is both seductive and commanding.

          Shira Patchornik burns up the stage. Her temperament, virtuosity and fits of rage make her one of the production’s great personalities.

          With Mathilde Ortscheidt, the production shifts register. Her warm, suave, velvety voice gives Ennone a deeply moving humanity: that of a woman betrayed in love.

          Rémy Brès-Feuillet is deeply affecting as Aurindo, with a stage presence that goes far beyond his irresistible tap-dancing routine in the prologue.

          Margherita Sala brings a dark, solid timbre that provides a welcome contrast to the predominantly luminous voices of the cast and leaves a lasting impression.

          Mauro Borgioni lends Paride an appealing timbre, perfectly suited to a character who gradually slips from pastoral fidelity into narcissistic vanity.

          Giacomo Nanni impresses with his authority and vocal presence, particularly in his irresistible portrayal of the god Jupiter.

          Filippo Mineccia, a formidable moderator in the opening contest, stands out for his theatrical flair and the variety of his other appearances.

          Rocco Cavalluzzi, almost omnipresent throughout the two evenings, creates a particularly engaging Momo.

          Alberto Allegrezza creates an extravagant and irresistible Filaura, whose hilarious stage antics provoke genuine laughter from the audience. A true comic tour de force, as the performer fully embraces the character’s excess and vulgarity to the very end, with such a sure theatrical instinct that he effortlessly carries the audience along.

          Paul Figuier also deserves mention, remarkable in his three roles, as does José Coca Loza, whose cavernous bass leaves a lasting impression.

          It is impossible to mention everyone. And perhaps that is precisely the problem: in a work requiring twenty singers to assume almost fifty identities, both critic and audience must accept that they cannot take everything in.

          Such excess has its downside. The profusion can eventually become tiring. The incessant changes of character and situation sometimes make identification difficult, while certain sequences relying more heavily on recitative may seem long to anyone expecting a succession of virtuoso arias. Some situations also appear more conventional, such as Ennone drowning her sorrows in alcohol, bottle in hand.

          Some choreographies seem less polished than others, and a few gags are pushed to the point of insistence. The comic routine in which Mars holds a character at arm’s length while the latter punches at thin air belongs to the kind of comedy that would have benefited from being shortened. Yet these reservations ultimately say less about any weakness in the conception than about the inherent risk of an undertaking that deliberately refuses all restraint.

           At the end of these two evenings, what remains is difficult to put into words. How does one review a production that seems determined to embrace everything at once? Mythology, love, war, money, corruption, power, the grotesque, poetry, dance, machinery, metamorphoses, battles, hell and the heavens. The difficulty is also that of the critic: how can several hours of images and music be condensed without turning the spectacle into a catalogue? One must therefore accept that some of what one has seen will be left aside. For Il pomo d’oro is precisely a work that resists reduction.

          The challenge in Innsbruck was immense. Dantone has made the musical resurrection possible; Ceresa restores its spirit of meraviglia; the singers, dancers, musicians and technicians transform this monumental score into living theatre. For its fiftieth anniversary, the Innsbruck Festival has not contented itself with paying tribute to its history. It has chosen to do what Baroque theatre knew better than anything else: to astonish, surprise and dazzle — and sometimes to overflow. And perhaps it is precisely in this excess that the finest possible tribute to Il pomo d’oro can be found.

Riggero Meli

A Journey through Italy, Burney in the Background           

          A great traveller was needed to provide a thread for this singular musical journey. In this year marking the tercentenary of Charles Burney’s birth, Un giro d’Italia follows the Englishman’s footsteps through the musical capitals of the peninsula: Milan, Venice, Bologna, Rome and Naples. Through Hasse, Jommelli, Piccinni, Galuppi, Paisiello, Pugnani, Padre Martini, Johann Christian Bach and the young Mozart, the programme evokes an Italy observed at a pivotal moment, as the old Baroque world gradually gave way to the galant style and Classicism.
          The idea is fascinating. It might even have deserved a more theatrical treatment. For, apart from the programme booklet, little is done to explain this journey to the audience or to recall Burney’s stages, encounters and impressions. One would have liked the works to be linked by anecdotes, excerpts from his travel writings or observations from the traveller himself: moments of respite that might have taken us from one city to the next and transformed this succession of rarities into a genuine musical itinerary. The concert thus possesses an implicit dramaturgy, but never quite succeeds in making it audible.

          This reservation notwithstanding, the discoveries are sufficiently enticing to hold the attention. The Academia Montis Regalis, long associated with the Innsbrucker Festwochen under Alessandro De Marchi, offers a reading that is both lively and colourful. At the harpsichord as well as on the podium, Chiara Cattani gives the ensemble a luminous, highly mobile impetus, attentive to contrasts and sudden changes of character. She does more than ensure continuity: her solo interventions, notably in Giovanni Battista Martini’s concerto, reveal a musician equally at ease animating the ensemble and taking centre stage herself.

          The instrumental works are by no means mere interludes. Johann Christian Bach’s electrifying Symphony in G minor captivates with its impetuous surges and dramatic tension, culminating in a biting finale in which the basses hammer out the discourse while the strings quiver. Mozart’s more familiar K. 138 Divertimento benefits from a fresh and precise performance. More revealing is Pugnani’s Symphony in E-flat major, whose writing bears witness to the transition between the Baroque and Classicism, driven by a pulse that gradually gathers intensity and by particularly prominent horns. Martini’s F-major Concerto finally offers fine dialogues with the harpsichord, in writing that is as elegant as it is concertante.

          Yet it is the voice that gives this giro its theatrical dimension. Arianna Vendittelli, first known to Innsbruck audiences through the 2015 Cesti Competition, where she won the Audience Prize, now has a substantial international career and a repertoire extending well beyond the Baroque. Often labelled a soprano—as the festival itself does—she also takes mezzo-soprano roles and above all possesses a voice that is difficult to confine to a category: generous range, substantial lower register, secure top, direct projection and a strongly defined temperament.

          A vocal instrument of such density does not always naturally lend itself to the most delicate characters in the programme. In Galuppi’s “Quante cosette belle”, the ingénue Violetta calls for an almost girlish lightness; Vendittelli’s more substantial voice gives her greater weight than fragility. A similar impression arises in Hasse’s “Per questo dolce amplesso”, in which Arbace bids farewell to his father: the airy writing, delicate coloratura and gentle line call for an intimacy that this powerful voice tends instinctively to broaden. She nevertheless finds some fine accents of tenderness.

          The contrast is even more striking in Hasse’s second aria, “Parto, qual pastorella”, a pastoral scene in which Arbace assumes the guise of a young shepherdess fleeing with her flock from rising waters. Here the coloratura becomes an exercise in bravura: exposed tessitura, rapid passagework, perilous leaps. Vendittelli tackles it with an assurance that never seeks to conceal the difficulties.

          One of the programme’s high points is Jommelli’s “Sperai vicino il lido”, an extraordinary example of the aria di paragone, that characteristic device of eighteenth-century theatre which translates a psychological state into a natural image. Timante believes he has escaped the storm; but just as he thinks he is reaching the shore, he finds himself wrecked upon an even more dangerous reef. The raging sea thus becomes a metaphor for anxiety.

          The music literally mirrors this agitation. After a brief orchestral introduction that seems to reveal a sea only slightly disturbed, the storm suddenly breaks. The coloratura surges forward, particularly on the word trasportar, while the leaps between high and low registers convey the character’s convulsions. Vendittelli confronts the writing with panache; then the central section suddenly darkens the atmosphere, before an even more virtuosic da capo launches the tempest anew. A display of vocal strength, certainly, but above all an interpretation that understands that virtuosity here is never gratuitous: it is the very image of danger.

          Paisiello offers another face. “Soffro per or quel duolo” begins in a lighter, almost playful vein before gradually revealing a much darker suffering. The character wounded by love allows a vengeful threat to emerge; the contrasts of the aria, heightened by the horns, enable Vendittelli to move from lament to barely contained aggression.

          Piccinni proves particularly congenial territory for the singer. In “Numi, perché quel giorno”, the voice seems to waver along with the character herself. The writing hesitates and trembles; voice and orchestra advance along an unstable line, soon swept away by anxious coloratura. Virtuosity thus becomes the very expression of nervous agitation.

          The second excerpt from Gelosia per gelosia is even more directly theatrical. After a troubled, wounded yet rebellious recitative, Climene realises that she is being poisoned. She already feels her strength ebbing away, but her final thought is of Riccardo: if she must die, she would at least want him beside her. The aria “Ah, se morir degg’io” therefore shifts the focus from fear of death to the pain of separation. The obsessive return of “barbaro dolor” gives rise to increasingly vertiginous coloratura, while the vocal line gradually rises into the upper register as though the pain itself were mounting within her.

          It is in these most dramatic pages that Vendittelli seems to find her natural element. She knows how to establish atmospheres, distinguish affects and, above all, give each character a distinct presence. Yet the programme is hardly forgiving to the singer: a diversity of styles, an often demanding tessitura, long coloratura passages and a succession of contrasting characters, from galant grace to theatrical fury. She has certainly not chosen the easy option.

          And perhaps the best was yet to come. As her first encore, “Amour, viens rendre à mon âme” from Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice, in the French version revised by Berlioz, offers a formidable feat of virtuosity. The choice is bold: impeccable French, supple line, coloratura spun with almost disconcerting ease, and above all a cadenza that lays the voice bare, from the tenderness of “objet de mon amour” to a perilous ascent followed by a vertiginous descent. This is French bravura writing in all its glory, and Vendittelli does not attempt to circumvent its obstacles. She confronts them head-on.

          The second encore changes the temperature entirely: Vivaldi’s “Armatae face et anguibus”, from Juditha triumphans. Holofernes’ fury finds expression in dark, almost black low notes, while the coloratura erupts with vengeful force. Vendittelli takes an especially inventive approach to the da capo, before a furious final passage leaves the impression of energy barely contained.

          The third encore, “Se mai senti spirarti sul volto”, brings everything back to tenderness. After so much tension, the line relaxes; a kind of breeze seems to pass through the hall. The refinement of the interpretation reminds us that the strength of this voice also lies in its ability to hold back its natural amplitude.

          Perhaps the only thing missing from this journey was a stop with Tommaso Traetta, another essential figure in this period of transition, whose presence would have further enriched the panorama. Yet the programme, through its boldness and above all the quantity of rare repertoire it brings back into circulation, possesses a personality of its own.

          At the end of the evening, one question inevitably arises: why not turn this into a recording? The combination of a singer with such a forceful temperament, a conductor capable of giving the orchestra such a vivid pulse and an ensemble thoroughly at home in this repertoire would make for a recording with real character. One would particularly like to hear these rarities set within a more fully developed dramaturgy, with Burney’s testimony genuinely serving as a musical travel diary.

          In the meantime, Un giro d’Italia has reminded us how far from static the Italian musical landscape of 1770 was: music that travelled, transformed itself, borrowed and reinvented itself, just like Burney himself. And an Arianna Vendittelli who, decidedly, is not afraid to take risks.

          The concert was recorded by Austrian radio Ö1 and will be broadcast on 2 September at 7:30 p.m.

Ruggero Meli

       What a strange combination! 

          What a strange combination: a family of musicians from South Tyrol – singers, instrumentalists and dancers in traditional costume – alongside a Neapolitan ensemble, two singers who could hardly be more different, singer Mario Sollazzo and countertenor Nicolò Balducci, together with a tarantella dancer. The Innsbruck Festival’s gamble might well have seemed puzzling. Yet the Landestheater was full, and after two uninterrupted hours of music the performers received an enthusiastic ovation.

          The idea was not, in fact, as incongruous as it first appeared. The programme presented tradition as a living substance, constantly evolving: music travels, influences other music, moves from the street to the stage and from the popular to the learned. The project therefore sought less to juxtapose two forms of folklore than to bring into dialogue two cultures founded on transmission, dance and collective practice.

          The challenge was to turn this attractive idea into an actual musical experience. And the beginning of the evening leaves one somewhat perplexed. After an initial Neapolitan song, the audience is immersed for almost half an hour in the Alpine world: yodelling, dances, songs and traditional music. The Familienmusik Huber nevertheless impresses through its mastery. All the musicians seem to move effortlessly from one instrument to another, sing and participate in the collective movement.

          Six dancers – three men in lederhosen and three young women in traditional dress – join them with remarkable precision. This is a very long way from amateur folklore.

          For an audience unfamiliar with these traditions, however, the sequence is rather long. At first the two worlds remain side by side, each following its own codes. Only when the Alpine dancers join Anna Dego, the tarantella dancer, and the musicians finally form a single ensemble does the promised encounter become a reality.

          Mario Sollazzo, simply presented as a singer, is the figure closest to the Neapolitan popular tradition. His voice is reminiscent more of a popular baritone with limited means than of a fully trained operatic singer, and its intrinsic beauty is not what makes the strongest impression. But judging him by operatic standards would miss the point. Sollazzo is above all a storyteller: he narrates, mimes, addresses the audience and transforms every song into a miniature theatrical scene.

          From the opening, Vorria addeventare sorecillo by Leonardo Vinci seems to come straight from the streets of Naples. Yet it is indeed the work of a composer: a perfect illustration of the permeability between learned composition and popular language. In this market song, the musicians become actors and imitate animals; Canto de sette mariti, with its repeated “cric, crouc, crac”, pushes the burlesque vein even further.

          With A riggina de figliole, Sollazzo moves from his natural voice into falsetto, creating a delirious dialogue all by himself, while the ensemble repeatedly sings the words “Caruso melluso miett'a capa int'o pertuso” at full volume.

          But he can also move the audience. Lu rusciu de lu mare, accompanied by the light tapping of a stick and the delicacy of the lute, suddenly suspends the previous agitation. The voice, vibrant and sensitive, with a gently moving and touching vibrato, releases a nostalgic melancholy before rising towards the upper register and finally falling back into an almost whispered softness.

          Then Nicolò Balducci appears. The countertenor possesses above all a remarkable sense of atmosphere. His almost mysterious entrance gradually prepares the eruption of La figlia dellu Re, reprised as an encore under the title La santa allegrezza. He knows how both to charm and to set the stage alight. In Bella ci dormi, he addresses the ladies in the hall directly – “Quantu si bella tu” – before moving with Mario Sollazzo into the almost lullaby-like tenderness of Nenna nenna.

          The transition to E la luna mmiezo mare then feels like an electric shock. In Li sarracini adorano lu sole, almost a Spanish-style number lacking only the castanets, and in Chi nasce annuda, feet start stamping and the dancing begins.

          Balducci can hardly remain still: tablet in hand, he dances almost without interruption. Yet this exuberance is accompanied by genuine vocal mastery. The voice is incisive and beautifully pure, while the upper register retains natural, round and full notes, never strident. Already noticed in Innsbruck at the Cesti Competition in 2022, where he won third prize and the Young Artist Prize, he confirms here a truly exceptional stage personality.

          The Baroque works naturally find their place within this world. Pergolesi’s Dove mai, markedly more learned in character, stands alongside the accompanied recitative E dover che le luci… and Manca la guida, where the expression of suffering connects with the more direct emotional language of the popular songs. The concert thus reminds us that the distinction between learned and popular music is largely artificial: Naples is precisely the place where these worlds meet.

          Anna Dego’s dancing acquires an almost hypnotic intensity that echoes that of the Alpine dancers. When they finally join her, the two traditions cease to confront one another: they begin to merge. Traditional instruments, strings, harpsichord and percussion form an unusual ensemble in which arrangement and improvisation play an essential role.

          This is where the Innsbruck gamble truly makes sense. Folklore is no longer something displayed behind glass: it becomes once again a living practice, made to be shared and transformed.

          After moving through mystery, melancholy, tenderness, humour, seduction and frenzy, the concert ends unexpectedly in gentleness, just as it began. La santa allegrezza, reprised as an encore, sets the hall alight one final time before the music fades away.

          A strange combination, then. But a combination that ultimately works – and even electrifies the Landestheater.

A well-deserved standing ovation.

Ruggero Meli

       Atalanta : Arcadia of Appearances

          To tell the truth, Atalanta perhaps ought not to be called an “opera” at all, but rather a divertimento nuziale. Composed in 1736 to celebrate the marriage of Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, the work is above all a light, pastoral and courtly entertainment, rather short on plot and genuine dramatic tension. Handel, already largely turning towards oratorio, here composed a diversion intended to delight a princely couple.

          Two couples will, admittedly, encounter a few obstacles before they can be united, but nothing capable of generating the great tensions of opera seria. With a libretto so sparing in action, it is difficult to create a tragedy.

          François de Carpentries had the intelligence not to attempt it. His staging instead embraces the work’s fairy-tale quality, its naïve charm and its lightness. From the opening, a child dressed as the huntress Diana, bow and arrows in hand, crosses a forest. She runs, hunts, perhaps already dreaming of marriage.

          The image is simple and immediately evocative: even before the action begins, we have entered an imaginary world somewhere between a picture book and Baroque theatre.

          A solemn declamation in Latin then sets the scene and announces this “wonderful” story. The device contributes to the fairy-tale aesthetic embraced by the production. The sets are made of papier-mâché: a Greek temple with columns and a central arch, a few statues arranged in the garden. The production’s limited means are apparent, but they never constitute an obstacle. On the contrary, this simplicity possesses an almost artisanal elegance.

          The eighteenth-century costumes, attractive without ostentation, happily plunge us into a Baroque world. Video completes the overall picture, sometimes mysterious and dreamlike, sometimes nocturnal, multiplying faces and masks.

          For disguise lies at the heart of this Atalanta. The princess conceals herself under the name Amarilli, while Meleagro becomes the shepherd Tirsi. Each seeks the other without knowing exactly who he or she is; each attempts to control their feelings by playing a role. In this pastoral world, identity thus becomes a game.

          The first act offers the most naïve and cheerful version of this game. Tirsi tries to fend off Irene’s advances while attempting to bring her together with Aminta, a young, inexperienced and somewhat simple-minded shepherd. Atalanta, disguised as Amarilli, falls in love with Tirsi, who in turn succumbs to her charms. Tirsi therefore applies himself, with almost comic determination, to “offloading” Irene onto Aminta.

          The production finds here a lightness that occasionally recalls the young Mozart and, more particularly, the pastoral simplicity of Bastien und Bastienne. The feelings are direct, the characters still untouched by the complications of the adult world, and the music sometimes seems to look at the theatre with an almost childlike freshness.

          Pierre Gennaï contributes greatly to this comic dimension in the role of Mercurio. He portrays a philosophical god, self-confident, slightly arrogant and perfectly aware of his popularity: a somewhat self-satisfied divinity whose outward seriousness becomes precisely the source of the humour.

          He has only one aria, but appears right at the end of the work with “Sol prova contenti”, which he handles with considerable panache: fluid and effortless coloratura, a perfectly controlled line and a brilliant final cadenza earn him one last round of applause.

          It is, however, in the second act that the charming fairy tale begins to crack. The action moves from the countryside to the court. Wigs, eighteenth-century costumes, a large table and a masked ball establish a sumptuous celebration, while the particularly festive and well-lubricated chorus seems to be making the most of the festivities. But the masks are already beginning to crack: behind the celebration and appearances, genuine feelings soon assert themselves.

          Above all, Atalanta discovers that the man she loves cannot become her husband: his social rank makes it impossible. Even in an ideal Arcadia, the laws of the real world remain. The programme note rightly stresses this contradiction: the happiness of the couples remains conditioned by their social origins, and disguises provide only a temporary escape from the rules of society.

          The production translates this idea of false appearances in very concrete terms. The masks projected onto the screen sometimes remain frozen while the hands surrounding them continue to move, seeming to express what the faces conceal. It is a particularly successful image: behind the motionless appearance, everything is in motion.

          Silvia Porcellini then opens the second act with a painful aria to which she brings genuine sincerity. Her soprano voice, clear and very youthful, occasionally slightly piercing, which may have seemed somewhat childlike at the beginning, finds its full meaning here. Ultimately, it suits this adolescent Atalanta perfectly, torn between her love and the constraints imposed by her rank.

          In the duets, the two soprano voices, close in tessitura and colour, intertwine to such an extent that their identities almost seem to merge: the play of masks extends even into the music.

          The revelation of the evening, however, is Sarah Hayashi as Meleagro. Her “Care selve”, the score’s most famous aria and one long associated with the greatest singers, initially charms without entirely convincing. The voice, very childlike, seems almost too light. But this fragility soon becomes a strength. With her appearance as a young hunter wearing a cap, Hayashi ideally embodies this young man disguised as a shepherd.

          There is something deeply touching and sincere about her performance that evokes precisely the simplicity of Bastien und Bastienne, even before Mozart had developed all the sophistication of his great operas.

          The virtuosity, by contrast, is anything but childlike. “Non sarà poco” and “Tu solcasti il mare infido” allow Hayashi to unleash formidable coloratura with remarkable assurance. In “M’allontano, sdegnose pupille”, she finds a particularly convincing tenderness. And the “Sì, sì, mel raccorderò” of the second act is genuinely astonishing: the coloratura is delivered at almost stratospheric speed, with a precision that never sacrifices character.

          Salvador Simão, a prizewinner at the Cesti Competition, makes a sympathetic and youthful Aminta. His performance nevertheless remains more discreet than those of his partners, without his tenor lacking qualities. He has more to defend in “Dì ad Irene”, an aria of contrasting rhythms, punctuated by pauses and hesitations, whose breaks he exploits intelligently.

          Peter Edge has a stronger stage presence as Nicandro. His baritone-bass, with its pleasant yet incisive timbre, lends authority to “Impara, ingrata”. The coloratura is direct and incisive, and he is convincing as the father attempting to bring his daughter back to reason.

          Justina Vaitkute possesses a velvety mezzo timbre of immediate charm. She initially brings great tenderness to Irene in “La tortorella”, a poetic and delicate aria whose staging beautifully extends the reverie: the singer reaches her hand through a beam of light, as though trying to touch the hope or wishes she longs for. It is, however, in Act III that she particularly distinguishes herself with “Ben’io sento l’ingrata”.

          The lively aria allows her to play with contrasts between low and high registers and to unleash clear, assured coloratura. She can finally give Irene a less naïve and more forceful personality, revealing a character that had previously remained somewhat in the background.

          The third act finally takes us into the night. The costumes become nightgowns and nightcaps, the garden fills with statues, and the characters appear and disappear in the darkness. Everyone searches for everyone else, hides, watches and tries not to be discovered.

          One cannot help thinking of Act IV of The Marriage of Figaro: the famous nocturnal garden where identities become blurred, everyone hides and the night becomes the setting for an enormous game of amorous hide-and-seek.

          The comparison with Mozart is not entirely incongruous. Without turning Atalanta into a direct precursor of The Marriage of Figaro, the production reveals in Handel’s work the same fascination with appearances, disguises and feelings that can only be expressed through theatre. Here, as in Mozart, night allows people to see without being seen, to mistake one person for another and ultimately to let the masks fall.

          Andrea Buccarella accompanies the production with the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis Orchestra, giving priority to the elegance, energy and festive dimension of the score. Nothing attempts artificially to impose a tragic depth on Atalanta that it does not possess.

          This is ultimately the production’s great intelligence: understanding that the libretto’s dramatic weakness could become a theatrical virtue. Rather than manufacturing drama, François de Carpentries cultivates wonder, playfulness and lightness. His Arcadia is made of papier-mâché, statues, masks and projections; it is no less seductive for that.

          A world in which, for the duration of an opera, one can still dress up, fall in love and believe that wishes will eventually come true.

Ruggero Meli