FROM AROUND THE WORLD: TURIN.(Brief Article)

The coupling of Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) with Leoncavallo's Pagliacci at the Teatro Regio was justified by their both featuring characters who are physically deformed. Yet above all, the juxtaposition revealed the obvious theatrical superiority of the Italian opera, in which Leoncavallo shows strong empathy not only with the hunchback Tonio but with Nedda and Canio. By comparison, Zemlinsky's work is obsessively single-minded; the composer's interest is focused almost entirely on the dwarf himself -- presented to the Infanta of Spain as a mere plaything on her eighteenth birthday and destined to die when he comes to realize his own deformity, reflected in a mirror.

Yet it was good to have a chance to see this rarely performed opera (given its premiere in 1922) in a performance dominated, on June 6, by a truly great tenor, David Kuebler, who projected the Dwarf's initial smugness and subsequent suffering with remarkable intensity, sustained the high tessitura with dazzling ease and conveyed the character's contorted smallness despite his considerable real-life stature. The others in the cast (including Raffaella Angeletti as the Infanta, Monte Jaffe as the butler, Don Estoban, and Terese Cullen as the lady-in-waiting, Ghita) were musically impeccable, but they failed to project words vividly through the luxuriant wall of sound rising from the pit. (Zemlinsky overdid things a bit in the bustling opening scene, and the Regio's acoustics did not help.) ...