Bocelli and Domingo protagonists at the Arena of
Verona Chronicle of the “Centenary Opera Gala”.
Andrea Bocelli is alone, in the middle of the stage, his
tunic stained with blood; the conductor’s baton is ready to
cut the humid air of a summer yet to come. A beam of light is
concentrating behind his shoulders.
It is the phrase of the clarinet; it is that phrase, full
of languid, poignant beauty to silence the twenty thousand
breaths in the Arena. The melody of the wind instrument
meticulously anticipates the tenor’s voice blazing on the
verses we will soon hear, (strong words, like encircling arms,
quivering words that describe a night of love). Then, his
voice: a few words, and the passionate, sensual, memory
through the evocation of the senses: first the sight (“e
lucevan le stelle”), then the smell (“ed olezzava
la terra”), the hearing (“stridea l’uscio
dell'orto”).Overwhelming in the end the touch“Oh
dolci baci oh languide carezze”!
Thus the stars have really shone on the biggest open
theater in the world, so has opened the festival last 1st June,
and the senses and the emotions of this crowded arena, that
for two thousand years has simulated the circle of the world,
have celebrated Opera in one of the shows richest in
authoritative voices and in stage and dancing splendors ever
conceived in the third millennium.
After the silence that best can express the inexpressible,
perhaps only an Aria - be it by Puccini, Verdi o Bellini –
can tell us what words cannot say (that is why Opera is an
epidemic that has been spreading out for more than four
hundred years, and that it is no use trying to stop). An
“Aria” even better if from a voice we recognize since the
very first notes: voices like signatures, just like music
bodies that can be recognized at first glance, as witnesses
and guardians of an ancient and contemporary tradition, voices
like the ones of Placido Domingo and Andrea Bocelli.
Civilization flourishes around rivers, Verona is a bright
example. This fortified center around a double bend of the
Adige (a water line that neatly cuts the North East part of
Italy) has achieved such evidence as to make each visit, a
journey through time, a journey that expresses itself through
the stone. The Scaliger town is a Florence in front of the
Alps, just as beautiful, just as mysteriously remote. Here the
concept of love has shaped two profiles that take everywhere
their very sweet, painful odyssey:
Romeo and Juliet, and that fictitious balcony wich is the
symbol of a sigh that makes us all equal in every part of the
world.
Verona, the city of love, the city of bel canto. In Verona,
Andrea has arrived the day before the Gala, undergoing a long
session of rehearsals in the Arena, given the complex
logistics of a show, captured by state television which will
be broadcast in prime time. For “Maestro Domingo” whom he
has already had the opportunity to work with in the Unites
States (among other things a “Petite messe solennelle” by
Rossini), Bocelli has thought of a small present a gesture of
friendship in the form of a “Panama” straw hat, a cult
object of a famous Italian hat factory. He will give it to him
directly on stage, two hours before remembering, while singing,
the stars and the night of love with Tosca.
A hundred years ago the first Opera festival in the Arena,
with an Aida conceived to celebrate, at that time the
centenary of Verdi. An event that saw, sitting like spectators,
on the same worn out steps, Mascagni and Puccini. Today one
hundred years later, the good reasons to celebrate are
multiplied: one century of posters, for the elderly, welcoming
limestone lady, one century of Arena, a distillate of history
and consecrated stars (Maria Callas, more than anyone else),
of memorable performances, of wondering neophytes, and more or
less poisoned criticism, adventures and misadventures,
triumphs. And brothers and sisters come from afar, who raise
their faces of every color looking for the “Casta Diva” in
the spectacle of the sky that is silvering Verona. In the
golden album of the theater even a “Requiem” by Verdi, in
the Arena at the beginning of the new millennium, where
Bocelli was performing under the conduction of Lorin Maazel (
a performance Bocelli often remembers, because the death he
was singing he had in his heart, having lost his father short
before).
Two hundred years is Verdi’s Anniversary, the star of
Busseto who with his genius, calm and unattainable, has shaken
conventions speaking of love, but of power too, the torments
of conscience, and the vertigo of sacrifice. Twenty years the
time that Andrea has spent, so far on stage in front of the
world; two thousand those who have seen inside the open heart
of the Venetian city, gladiators and martyrs, merchants and
warehousemen, and finally singers.
On this imposing Opera Gala that has the responsibility to
celebrate so many anniversaries, weighs the unforeseen absence
of Jose Carreras, who has been unable to come because of
serious family problems. So, it is Placido Domingo and Andrea
Bocelli, without that precious piece of a reconstituted trio,
to celebrate the work and to pay homage to the memory of the
great absentee who remains in everybody’s heart, Luciano
Pavarotti.
Among the facets of this evening, of this sparkling jewel
that illuminates the strength of Opera (intact power, provided
you know how to explain it, provided you know how to spread it),
one side is shining entirely for him. The tribute to
Pavarotti, whose voice the stones of the Arena have so many
times perceived, starts with the memory of his widow Nicoletta
Mantovani. Then it goes on with the famous Romanza “Non ti
scordar di me” which saw the light in 1935, the year when
the great tenor was born, and with the duet from Les Pêcheurs
de perles by Bizet. In both cases, the voices of Andrea
and Placido alternate and mingle, in a moving commemoration.
In the afternoon beyond the wooden door of the dressing
room n. 53 (an over elevated narrow and rickety passage which
makes its way in the stone, charming and noisy), reluctantly
breaking the silence he, usually, strictly observes before
singing, Bocelli himself, in the course of an interview,
remembers the Maestro and friend Pavarotti. And to those who
suggest a comparison answers:
“Any comparison would be meaningless…A singer
becomes famous also because his/her voice is recognizable and
different from all the others. Pavarotti among his very many
talents also had this feature, which I seem to have too. And
two voices which are recognizable are necessarily different.
His career is, anyway, unique unrepeatable. I have cherished
memories of our relationship, he has always been very kind to
me, has trusted me showing he appreciated my voice. So much
that not only did he invite me to sing at the “Pavarotti
International”, but to his wedding too. During our meetings
we have always talked about singing, interpretations and vocal
technique. His have beenvaluable advice.
On the day when the most outstanding voices of today
converge on the Arena stage to celebrate Opera - the only form
of art in which muses give up grandstanding joining, the
forces – the crisis of the opera houses is the subject of
one of the questions of the interview. The answer of Bocelli
catches the journalist unprepared, while from the loudspeaker
a chorus of children (from Carmen) bursts out supported by a
miked, disturbing piano:
“No, Opera knows no crisis, and the proof is the fact
that theaters are always full, when serious, high level
productions are carried out. I think that the only problem is
to square accounts, and to do it there are rules that must be
respected (even more when the state no longer has means to
support culture and swell the coffers of the theaters): spend
less than what you earn, here is a precept to be observed one
way or the other. Another problem is the lack of promotion and
popularization of Opera among the younger generation…We
should make young people approach the theater, invite them to
the rehearsals, we have to spread it just as we do with sport.
In a word, Opera needs to be supported by an adequate
marketing operation. For the rest it is more than alive and
enjoys good health”.
The twenty thousand spectators who have been patiently
waiting in the Piazza Bra to earn a place, the millions who
will relive the blockbuster Opera show through the television,
support the thesis of Andrea, indeed they espouse it with
passion. And collective passion bursts out in a white heat
when Bocelli opens the show and the tiers welcome the tenor
before the clarinet proposes the puccinian languor of
Cavaradossi’s last night. The whole Arena will jump up when
he sings the “Nessun dorma in the unusual exclusive and
desperately beautiful edition with Andrea in the role of
“Calaf” and Maestro Domingo on the Podium. Domingo, who
just with Turandot, had made his debut at the Arena, for his
Italian Operatic baptism at the end of the sixties. A standing
ovation for Bocelli equaled perhaps by the enthusiasm
shown when the Madrilenian interpreter has infused his
overwhelming musicality in the baritone “Dio di Giuda”
from Nabucco.
A step back: Late afternoon…Beyond the sweet roundness of
the stones of the Arena the sun is setting on the Veronese liston,
as is called in this part of Italy, the walk that
identifies the public heart where the people of the city meet.
While the patron Giancarlo Mazzi, Bocelli and Domingo (the
latter holding his never missing bottle of water) are
perfecting the timing of the play list together with other
fellow singers (a long list of professionals of the highest
rank ready to compete in the summer season at the arena)
little Virginia, daughter of Veronica and Andrea, continues
unabated to get on and off the limelight along the walkway
connecting the proscenium to the audience.
Fourteen months, a listening experience like an inveterate
music lover, Virginia moves around at ease as if it were the
most normal thing that might happen, she is walking besides an
orchestra with a hundred elements that is playing the hottest
moments of Carmen or the triumphal march of Aida. While she is
enjoying Domingo’s caresses, while she is running around
holding the hand of her grandmothers, or of her siblings, or
of Veronica herself, while she is quiet because everywhere in
the air the voice of her father is there to reassure her, she
seems to perfectly embody a refreshing metaphor of the state
of health of Opera: daughter of our civilization, simple and
irrepressible, a concentrate of life and energy, together the
result of the values of those who have conceived her, and yet
an autonomous creature with an endless horizon in front of
her, and new things, every time, to do and say.
In the evening, while watching the show resplendent by
itself in an Arena crowded with people, the television
presenter (Antonella Clerici), will show in her own way an
assonance with the object of the joyful celebration, well
representing that flourishing intimacy, that friendly and
extrovert simplicity which also connotes the lyric show,
popular representation par excellence, a workshop of values, a
melting pot of feelings, art ready to be absorbed by common
people, a show thanks to which Italy is known, respected, and
admired worldwide.
And in the final part of this historic marathon, to Italy (the
land where Opera was born and raised, where it had the best
exegetes) Verona devotes the last notes. Together Bocelli,
Domingo, the many colleagues singers, the artists of the choir,
the many dancers involved and any mastery at the Arena, but
also the whole Audience have started to sing the anthem, the
“Song of the Italians” that starts by calling everybody
“brother”. It is the family of a whole country that makes
itself heard. Moreover it is the great family of Opera which
has expressed a bright burst of pride. It is the universal
family that welcomes anyone, anywhere in the globe who has
known this mysterious “paradise of music” (Andrea’s
words) which is at hand.
It is one o’clock in the morning, the cameras are turned
off, and people slowly start to leave the Arena. In front of
the dressing room n. 53 whose only quality is to be close to
the stage entrance, colleagues, friends, relatives, admirers
are around the wooden door. There is also Laura Biancalani,
the President of the “Andrea Bocelli Foundation”, who also
on this occasion has woven the web of solidarity and
philanthropy raising public awareness about the international
projects that ABF is pursuing. There is Sergio, the friend,
and then Mariella the “genius loci” of the Bocelli
family.There are Andrea’s sons and their friends. Thus even
in Verona as in New York, and in every other place around
Andrea is recreated that atmosphere of frankness and
friendliness that dissolves tension in any context, even the
most delicate and the most exclusive. Veronica does not give
in to fatigue and does not stop planning: the evening is not
yet over, there is the post concert, the dinner, (which if we
go on waiting will run the risk to become breakfast), and the
guests and the colleagues to invite, sort, greet.
Andrea says he is” quite happy” with the
concert, and when he claims he “is quite happy” (adding:
I could have done much better”) it means that the
evening has been undoubtedly brilliant, and that his voice was
in great shape. Luckily the cameras (roughly fifteen) are
still swollen with music and with the sumptuous scenes of this
evening of celebration. The protagonist, the Arena; Opera,
Music, and all those who heroically spend their lives in its
service. Luckily the show will return to dazzle through
television. Just the same as every time an opera house, be it
small or big, with lavish scenes or with a papier mâché
scenery will raise its curtain. Because in case tomorrow were
expected to be the end of the world, tonight it would be
definitely worthwhile going to the theater.
Giorgio De Martino