Toscanissimo: La Boheme at Gran Theatro all 'Aperto Giacomo Puccini

While Wagner fans contemplate  the holy grail of  a trip to Bayreuth, Puccini fans make a  pilgrimage to Torre del Lago, the final resting place of the Tuscan composer near the Italian seaside town of Viareggio in Tuscany. This year the Puccini Festival celebrates 60 years with four productions under the title L'Amore Trafigge, 'Love Pierces the heart' . On a balmy Saturday evening,  pilgrims converged on the Gran Theatro all' Aperto for a performance of La Boheme by all manner of transport. Buses and cars gave way to a throng of bicycles and mopeds. The audience of mixed ages seemed to represent a  cross section of Italian society and the atmosphere was not unlike that of  a build up to a big match with street vendors selling refreshments, programmes and Puccini memorabilia  lining the route.

Director, Ettore Scola a veteran of Italian Cinema played it straight,  avoiding the temptation to  modernise using the tricks of his trade and we got a sparkling traditional production. He is quoted in a local paper . I include a translation here- 'Revisions, updates, upgrades, contributions in video and in digital, strobe effects, endless possibilities to 'modernize' the opera crowd his restless mind. Then, fortunately, everything falls humility and common sense remind him that modernity is already in all those works, in music, in feelings, in the soul that made them eternal ...'

There is a murmur of approval and a round of applause when the set for Momu's Café is revealed. and there is a collective gasp at snowflakes flurry  in Act 3. Of course, one doesn't expect the acoustic of a major indoor theatre but the sound was quite good from the lower tiers and if it was less so at the top, you had  a backdrop of stunning lake views to compensate.

Conductor Valerio Galli (a local from Viareggio ) was  almost balletic in his podium presence  with his energetic and graceful conducting style compelling attention. With five performances over weekends in July and August, there is some rotating casting.  Italian songbirds, Danielle Dessi as Mimi and Alida Berti as Musetta had the audience hooping and hollering. There was a lovely moment in Mimi's aria when a lake bird could be heard in a brief duet around the vocal line. It was the bonhomie and sonority  of the gentlemen that  generated the warmth and charm.in this production  Alessandro Luongo as Marcello and Fabio Amiliato as Rudolfo made a very well matched  tenor/ baritone  blend. Marco Spotti  was a rich and sonorous Colline, Frederico Longhi as Schunard completing  the bohemian quartet Have a listen in the video of Spotti singing the same role at Orange  and see if you agree?  It was all beautifully done and the audience responded enthusiastically as they would in support of a home team on their local turf.
As  I watched an impossibly good looking, elegantly dressed Italian couple don  helmets and scoot off  on  a Vespa in the warm night air, it felt like a silver screen  moment from La Dolce Vita.
There are some festivals that one feels very fortunate to have  visited once and there are some that you  would love to return to. The Puccini Festival is definitely one of  the latter.

listen to ‘Curtain call for La Boheme by Puccini at Torre de Lago 2014 Tescany, Italy’ on Audioboo

How to get there?
I made the trip by special bus service from Viareggio.  Torre del Lago is less than 20km from Pisa and Lucca. There are regular flights to Pisa from Shannon and Cork with Ryanair until October.

Related posts Toscanissimo A Day at Wexford Opera   Includes my interview with Pisa baritone, Alessandro Luongho

All Europe's a Stage: Six Top European opera festivals to visit this Autumn http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/features/six-of-europes-top-opera-venues-to-visit-this-autumn-276846.html

Memories of a Summer Puccini Trail

Dresden Opera House

With the year drawing to a close and highlights of the year lists appearing everywhere, I wanted to recall a couple of events that slipped through the blog net, before too many of the details recede into the fog of dimmed memories. In June, I traveled to Italy, stopping off in Saxony en route. Looking back over the week, it was the strains of Italian opera composer, Puccini that provided the soundtrack to this escapade with a visit to hear Manon Lescaut at Dresden Opera House and a trip to the composer's Tuscan birthplace, Lucca on the itinerary.

Iconic image: Dresden Destroyed

Flooded Banks

There  is a spot in the Berlin where Puccini rubs shoulders with Wagner and Guonod. The Deutsch Oper underground stop is lined with ceramic tiles bearing the names of opera composers. On to our base in Leipzig, from where  we took the train to  Dresden, a journey of little more than an hour for a day of sightseeing and a trip to the famous Opera House home to Semperoper. Given that Dresden had suffered such extensive bombing during the war, I  expected to find a modern city, with new architecture replacing old. A surprise then to find a cityscape magically restored to it's former Baroque splendour with  no visible cracks. No more so than in the emblematic Frauenkirche.  Extraordinary!  The elements had wreaked some havoc though and at the city quays, boats remained forlornly at their moorings cut off from their tourist passengers by high water levels.



      Promo for Manon Lescaut from Semperoper

View from Seat 71 

In the evening, we took our seats high up in the gods for a production of Puccini's Manon Lescaut. For a modest ticket price of €11.50, (secured on the day) I didn't expect much of a view but in fact it wasn't bad at all and it was perfect if (a) you are dressed not in glad rags but walking gear and (b) are prone to a little snooze after a heavy day of sightseeing. A-list conductor, Christian Thielemann directed. I include a link to a review that appeared in the online journal, Opera Critic, here.

Dresden boasted a superior class of busker with golden angels and excellent trumpeters adding colour to the scene. Undaunted by the enormous space, Arun was  pouring the strains of the Grand March from Aida into Neumarket.  It was a cheerful sight  'Ah Ireland-  he said when I paused to chat 'I came some years ago to play in  Wexford for the festival' said the young Armenian. a human face to all those press reports about wrangles between Wexford Festival and the Musicians Union

Lucca  Birthplace of Puccini

On to Italy via a cheap Ryanair flight, where we spent a few days in Viarregio, on the Tuscan Riviera. Sadly we were too early for the Puccini Festival held annually at Torre del Lago where the composer had a villa. In Lucca, the composer's birthplace, you can visit the elegant town house house he grew up in before taking in a recital at the 'never ending Puccini Festival'.  In a local initiative, Puccini e la sua Lucca, a rotating cycle of recital programmes is offered to a predominantly tourist audience. With lots of tourists in the region looking for some evening entertainment, this seems like a good  initiative- We heard

Golden Angel at Frauenkirche 

solid professional performers in a splendid baroque space, in a recital of the composer's arias interspersed with Neopolitan songs. I particularly enjoyed the solo piano fantasias on operas very well played by Diego Fiorino. It is probably stretching it though to brand it a festival which suggests a temporary extravaganza  rather than a year round nightly event.  Having come from enjoying the delights of a subsidised. full scale opera production for half the price, the tickets seemed pricey at €20 a ticket and we wouldn't have rushed back for a second night. Unfortunately the percussion sound effects of the box office counting their takings was distinctly audible at one point in the recital.

There are direct flights to nearby Pisa from Cork during the Summer and train connections from the airport to many towns in Tuscany including Lucca and Viareggio on the coast are  easy and very cheap.

Curtain Call Puccini Recital Lucca 

listen to ‘Busker plays the trumpet in Dresden’ on Audioboo