WOLF-FERRARI: Sly.(Review)

WOLF-FERRARI: Sly

[] Kabatu, Cantarero; Carreras, Milnes, Guerzoni, Rubiera; Orchestra and Chorus of the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Gimenez. Text and translation. Koch/Schwann 3-6449-2 (2)

It is not uncommon for artists, in the autumn of an important career, to take on roles that match their somewhat diminished vocal resources. It is more unusual for such roles to provide a revelation about the artist in question, and even rarer for such an undertaking to provide a revelation about the role itself. In the case of Jose Carreras and his late-career vehicle of choice, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's 1927 opera Sly, both artist and piece are reintroduced to the public with impressive results. But the title role in Sly is far more than a star turn or cameo by a veteran. This is a "big sing," requiring resources one may have thought the Spanish tenor no longer possessed. Carreras's championing of this largely forgotten work has proved it so stage worthy (and attractive to stars) that next season it will arrive at the Met, with Placido Domingo as the protagonist.

When Wolf-Ferrari's musical tale of a drunken English poet had its premiere, at La Scala, on December 29, 1927, it was seen as a musically conservative throwback to the nuova scuola that succeeded Verdi, and which did not include composers (aside from Puccini) who wrote more than one or two lasting successes. Berg's Wozzeck and Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex were introduced the year before Sly, and Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel was unveiled the same year; there were many new forms of musical expression in the air. But Wolf-Ferrari was steeped in traditions that he bent to serve his expressive needs, rather than exploding or eradicating them. The result is, happily, a work of freshness and originality, sparked by the persuasive sensuality of the orchestration and the force of characterization written into the score, particularly for the title role. After all the current attention, Sly may return to the near-oblivion in which it spent the better part of seventy-five years. But its moment in the twenty-first-century sun will have shown Sly, to be opera of rich musical textures, powerfully dramatic monologues and deft melodic inspiration.

Wolf-Ferrari's score, in fact, is sly, and full of wit. Although the composer was, by birth, half Italian and half German, Sly feels like an identifiably Italianate work, nicely balanced between the sort of pastiche homage to commedia dell'arte with which Wolf-Ferrari succeeded in I Quattro Rusteghi, and the attempt at bloodcurdling drama with which he did not in I Gioielli della Madonna. Wolf-Ferrari had created a number of his own librettos, often based on plays by Goldoni, but this time he enlisted Giovacchino Forzano, who devised a very singable text based on an ...