Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901)
La Battaglia di Legnano - opera in four acts (1849)
Arrigo - Andrew Richards (tenor)
Rolando - Leonardo López Linares (baritone)
Lida - Dimitra Theodossiou (soprano)
Federico Barbarossa - Enrico Giuseppe Iori (bass)
Primo Console di Milano - Francesco Musini (bass)
Secondo Consolo di Milano - Federico Benetti (bass)
Il Podesta di Como - Gabriele Sagona (bass)
Marcovaldo - Giovanni Guagliardo (baritone)
Imelda - Sharon Pierfederici (mezzo)
Un Araldo - Alessandro de Angelis (tenor)
Uno Scudiero di Arrigo - Nicola Pascoli (tenor)
Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Lirico “Giuseppe Verdi” di Trieste/Boris
Brott
Stage Director: Ruggero Cappuccio
rec. live, Teatro Lirico “Giuseppe Verdi” di Trieste, Feb-March
2012
DVD: DTS 5.1, PCM Stereo
Subtitles: Italian (original language), English, German, French, Spanish,
Chinese, Korean, Japanese
C MAJOR 722608 
[129:00: opera: 119:00; bonus: 10:00]
To those with a casual interest in the history of Italian Unification,
especially non-Italians, Verdi is the cultural figure we most closely
associate with the Risorgimento. There is plenty of evidence
of his support for the unification movement in earlier patriotic choruses
like Nabucco’s “Va pensiero” or Macbeth’s
“Patria oppressa”, but La Battaglia di Legnano is
the most closely associated with Italy’s struggle against its
oppressors. Verdi wrote it for Rome during the 1848 revolutions, after
the forces of conservatism had been ejected and before they managed
to reassert themselves.
The story concerns a love triangle which revolves around the conflict
between romantic and patriotic love. More important, however, is the
backdrop of Frederick Barbarossa’s invasion of Italy in 1176 and
the efforts of the Lombard League to repulse him. The parallels with
the situation of 1848-9 are obvious to the point of being laboured.
The Lombards stand for the Italian patriots of 1848, while Barbarossa
and his armies represent the forces of reaction and conservatism, most
particularly the Austrian Habsburgs who were temporarily displaced from
their Italian possessions during the revolutions. Consequently, this
opera is the closest that Verdi ever came to bald propaganda, and you
can’t shake the feeling that he was struggling to turn this into
a convincing work of art, perhaps even that his mind was on other things
at the time. Every act contains a patriotic chorus of some kind and
these are all attractive enough in a rum-ti-tum way, but the crowd scenes
are, frankly, a little banal. Things improve with the domestic episodes,
but there is little in the way of psychological penetration. The highlight
is the third act where Rolando entrusts his wife and son into the care
of Arrigo, not realising that there is an unspoken love between them,
and their subsequent attempts to deal with the situation. However, the
Risorgimento symbolism is unarguably the opera’s reason
for being. This makes it an interesting historical artefact but it also
goes some way to explain why it has fallen so far off the radar of modern
revival: there is a lot less for Verdi fans to enjoy than in the works
that lie on either side of it.
That might also explain why this instalment in the Tutto Verdi
season has veered off piste, without any acknowledgement or explanation.
Where the other instalments have all come from Parma, this one was recorded
in Trieste. Is it because Parma wasn’t interested in doing this
opera, even as part of their festival? The chief consequence is that
the musical values are a little lower than those of the other instalments
in the series so far. The singing of the chorus, so important in this
opera, is rather ragged and lacks heft and impact. Likewise, the playing
of the orchestra is found wanting in conviction, despite some excellent
solos. Boris Brott’s direction feels a little workaday, though
this could be a partial consequence of the material he is working with.
None of the three principal singers are top drawer either. The finest
is Leonardo López Linares, who sings Rolando with a committed
baritone voice that sounds rich and satisfying. Next to him Andrew Richards’
Arrigo is bright but thin and he struggles noticeably at the top of
his range. So, alas, does Dimitra Theodossiou whose rather ungainly
soprano seems to struggle with both coloratura and legato. She sounds
dangerously off the note in the prayer of the final act. The cameos
are very good, such as Enrico Giuseppe Iori as Barbarossa himself, and
there is a very fine Mayor of Como from Gabriele Sagona, but neither
has very much to sing.
The production itself is a bit of a nothing. Cappuccio seems to have
no ideas and has disguised this with a superfluity of half-ideas. Chief
of these is the preponderance of paintings that get wheeled on and touched
up at various points but, try as I might, I couldn’t find any
connection, either with the action or between the paintings themselves.
All of this makes this DVD a bit of a damp squib. However, recordings
of Legnano are very thin on the ground and if you want a DVD
then this is practically your only choice. You’ll get a much better
overall experience from Gardelli’s CD recording on Philips, though,
if you can track it down. It features Ricciarelli, Carreras and Manuguerra
with the ORF Orchestra of Vienna, and it packs a bigger punch than anything
on this DVD.
Simon Thompson
