Zurich.(International)(review of Stiffelio)(Opera Review)

Having been impressed by Stiffelio ever since I first encountered it in its Aroldo guise, in a Hamburg performance exactly fifty years ago, I don't remember having ever been so gripped by a performance of the opera as by that given on Zurich's first night (Sept. 26).

Snowballing tension piled up from the beginning of the overture, which under Stefano Ranzani's electrifying leadership pulsated with the urgency and breathlessness that characterized the whole performance, culminating in the fabulous Act II quartet of "Ah no! e impossibile!," tellingly accompanied by elegiac woodwind phrases and palpitating strings. Repeatedly, one registered the numerous felicities of Verdi's instrumentation--as in the intricate halo surrounding Lina's invocation of her mother in "Ah! dagli scanni eterei, " or in the stirring pathos of the English horn obbligato, underlining Lina's declaration that her heart still belongs to her husband, Stiffelio, who wants to divorce her.

Jose Cura, the Stiffelio, was the only member of the cast who had sung his role before (at Covent Garden's Verdi festival in 1995). Verdi imagined that Stiffelio would sound like "a great silver plate struck with a silver hammer"; Curds timbre is more akin to a bronze tocsin. He has a visceral, chest-oriented ferocity, and there is certainly no lack of heft or vigor to his sound. One could wish for more subtlety in his delivery of the words and a smoother spinning of the musical lines, but his delineation of the character's dilemma, torn between his flaw damentalist morals and his intense sexual jealousy, was very impressive indeed. Some Stiffelios I ...