Luisa Casati
The excessively wealthy Italian Marquesa Casati strove to be seen throughout her life. She was famous for the exuberant parties she organized. She was portrayed and photographed by the great artists of her age. With her black-rimmed eyes, her flaming red hair and eccentric behaviour she tried to gain a place in the art world. Against the background of the outbreak of the First World War, librettist Frank Siera questions the relevance of art. At one of Casati’s parties, Siera brings together all sorts of artists from the time of Casati. Casati does not engage with worldly problems and focuses blindly on her passion and her artistic ideals.
Willem Jeths
In composing operas such as Ritratto, Willem Jeths – who was the Netherlands’ first national composer between 2014 and 2016 – manipulates orchestral colours and deliberately selects timbres to match his protagonists. ‘I’m convinced that music can be stronger and more expressive if people can relate to it.’
Review of the audio release by Challenge Records, written by Christopher Cook
Verity Wingate, Martin Mkhize, Frederik Bergman, Paride Cataldo, Dominic Kraemer, Lucas van Lierop, Cameron Shahbazi; Dutch National Opera; Amsterdam Sinfonietta/Geoffrey Paterson
Challenge CC 72849 88:24 mins
An invitation to an opera that promises a party is not to be sneezed at! As Willem Jeths discovers in his third music drama, Ritratto (Portrait), parties are an elegant way of introducing assorted characters, and a perfect excuse for bad behaviour. (Think no further than Flora’s Party in La traviata, or more recently Thomas Adès The Exterminating Angel.)
Jeths and his librettist Frank Siera’s hostess is the fabulously rich Marchese Luisa Casati, who with the help of the early 20th-century avant-garde, including D’Annunzio, Diaghilev, Marinetti and Man Ray, intends to make herself a work of art. Unfortunately the Great War marches through her salon, although Casati partly lives out her ambition by embellishing her portrait with her own eyes and breasts as it’s being painted by Romaine Brooks.
Jeths’s story about the meaning and purpose of art is a powerful and accomplished piece of music theatre. His own post-modernist style helps, with fragments of Ravel’s La Valse, hints of Tristan and Salome, and even Tchaikovsky’s letter scene drifting through a comfortably tonal score. There are well-crafted arias for the principals, most notably a Puccinian outpouring for D’Annunzio in Scene II and Luisa’s lament in Scene IV introduced with more than a hint of Tosca.
It’s invidious to single out individuals from the young cast, many of them members of the Dutch National Opera Studio, but Verity Wingate is compelling as Luisa, and Paride Cataldo’s posturing D’Annunzio all but steals the show. Laurels, too, for Geoffrey Patterson who conducts the Amsterdam Sinfonietta with complete conviction.
Dazzling costumes by Jan Taminiau. Check. Ear-busting music by Willem Jeths. Check. Fascinating stage design and ditto lighting by Marc Warning and Alex Brok. Check. Spiritually stimulating direction by Marcel Sijm. Check. Breathtaking performance of Verity Wingate as main character Luisa Casati. Check. Ingenious libretto by Frank Siera. Check. Paired with a subtle choreography by Zino Ainsley Schat and a cast of top singers, Ritratto by Willem Jeths has all it takes to become a world hit.
At first glance, little seems to be different from the video premiere. The fairytale-like grey-blue stage setting with strings of soap bubbles dangling from the ceiling and the extravagant costumes of the characters have remained. Through the clever use of perspective, it is hardly noticeable that, other than in the original production, they keep a covid-proof distance from each other.
In fact this even reinforces the message: Luisa Casati emphatically and constantly puts herself centre stage, but avoids emotional involvement. When Romaine Brooks paints her portrait and describes Luisa’s eyes, breasts and femininity in a subdued whisper, the former lovers do not touch for a second, unlike in the video production. A poignant representation of the gap between reality and art.
What is truth? That is the key question in Ritratto. Luisa Casati – based on the society figure of the same name who lived from 1881 to1957 – regards herself as a living work of art and thus as the embodiment of truth. She wants this recorded for posterity, and has herself portrayed by such greats as Kees van Dongen and Man Ray. Her lover Gabriele D’Annunzio seeks the truth in war, Romaine Brooks opts for true love. ‘You never loved Luisa’, she snaps at the poet.
In vain, Romaine holds up a mirror to Luisa: ‘Do you want to be an object or a subject, Dorian Gray or Joan of Arc?’ Yet Luisa refuses to look in the mirror and even considers the recent outbreak of World War I secondary to her ambition. When D’Annunzio writes in a letter that he has lost an eye on the battlegrounds and has thus gained deeper insights, she stabs out her own eyes in order to make Brooks’ painting more ‘lifelike’.
Two dull blows in the percussion make this gruesome moment palpable; on the second blow, the lights suddenly snap off and we are bathed in the same darkness Luisa has incurred on herself. With such seemingly banal but effective means, Ritratto connects the popular with the sublime, placing the opera in the best Italian tradition. Jeths presents a colourful palette of sweet-voiced choral parts, rich arias with Puccini-allure and dramatically dissonant instrumental exclamations, alternating with restrained orchestral passages, pounding marches, ballroom music and Johann Strauss-style waltzes.
The score is a perfect match for Frank Siera’s clever libretto. Recurring harmonies and melodies in a predominantly tonal idiom give the listener a pleasant sense of orientation. The avid opera lover will discern echoes to Wagner, Strauss, Verdi and other predesessors. Jeths has a deep understanding of how to write for the human voice. The vocal lines are extremely graceful and are often linked to equally sensuous melodies from solo instruments such as clarinet and bassoon.
The cast of mostly young singers is superb. The South African baritone Martin Mkhize shines as Garbi, Luisa’s faithful servant. In a gold-coloured Roman suit he welcomes us to the party at the Venetian villa of his mistress, where the story is set. He has a warm timbre and impeccable diction, and can be understood verbatim.
With his steely tenor voice Paride Cataldo is the ideal macho D’Annunzio, his sturdy pose wittily emphasised by the prominent leather pouch in front of his sexual apparatus. The British mezzo-soprano Polly Leech is no less convincing in her role of Romaine Brooks. As the voice of the outside world/the conscience, she is the only one not clad in extravagant outfit but in a simple suit and top hat.
Unsurpassed star of the evening is the soprano Verity Wingate, who performs on stage from start to finish. Seemingly effortlessly she performs her demanding part. She switches smoothly from the highest to the lowest registers without missing a single note. Her dynamics are breathtaking: even in the very highest regions, she still dares to decrescendo, while her voice remains flawless and audible.
Deeply moving is the moment when she realises she has always lived a lie: art is not the truth, it is only art. Her barely audible, fading sighs ‘it is art, art, art, art…’ pierces the marrow of one’s bone. Luisa Casati may realize that there is no such thing as a living work of art, but her interpreter Wingate comes pretty close.
Geoffrey Paterson also conducted the video premiere of Ritratto and steers his singers and musicians through the score with a confident hand. Yet the live performance lacks the profound eloquence of the online original. Of course, that was created with a ‘now or never’ feeling, but the musicians of the Residentie Orkest are audibly less familiar with modern notes than Amsterdam Sinfonietta. – Fortunately the ‘all or nothing’ performance of 12 March 2020 has just been released on CD.
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