Opera isn’t our favorite musical genre, but we’ve gone to a few over the years. We’ve been to La Bohème and Carmen. I went to Rigoletto with our friend Bruce four years ago (my review is here). Julian wanted to see the Venice Opera House, affectionately known as La Fenice (The Phoenix) because it burned in 1996 and was rebuilt. The opera Thursday night was Cavalleria Rusticana, one I’d never heard of. The intermezzo is the only generally recognized bit of music in the piece.
La Fenice is an architectural confection. While not as large as the Paris Opera Houses (old or new), it has its charms. The façade is on a small plaza where opera fans cruise and schmooze before and after performances. Some of the audience was quite spiffed up, but nobody was wearing furs in the humid Venice evening.
As you can see, we had a great view of the stage and orchestra pit.
The plot of Cavallaria Rusticana is a standard love quadrangle with jilted lovers and jealous men bent on revenge. The whole piece was less than 90 minutes long with no intermission. The scenery was minimalist. The main characters had excellent voices. The harpist took on the intermezzo full steam ahead.
La Fenice was celebrating the centenary of Maria Callas’s birth. Our level of the theater had numerous photos of the diva. She developed her vocal style from Wagnerian to bel canto in Venice during the early 1950s.
After reading my earlier post, Julian said, “Can’t you say something positive about Venice?” I’m saying it now, the opera was a high point of our visit.
2 comments
La Fenice is a very intimate, comfortable space. All the seats are individual removable chairs. In the video of Mascagni’s Intermezzo (linked in Cindy’s post), you might notice that the musicians are playing on the ground floor, instead of in the pit. Maybe this is why that area is sometimes referred to as the “orchestra.”
Che Bella salla grande!