BWW Reviews: NABUCCO Opens Opera Philadelphia Season With A La Scala Recreation

When Giuseppi Verdi premiered NABUCCO at La Scala in 1842, Italy was under Austrian occupation, and the citizens' sentiment was to have Austria out. But it didn't do to say so out loud. Not surprisingly, audiences watching an opera about the Hebrews' suffering during the Babylonian captivity under King Nebuchadnezzar - Nabucco - could read between the lines, as, very likely, could those Austrians present in the audience.

Director Thaddeus Strassberger's intent in presenting NABUCCO at Opera Philadelphia at the Academy of Music was, in this 200th year of Verdi's birth, to recreate the atmosphere of La Scala in 1842 - not just the opera, but the audience. To that end, a side drama has been woven into the presentation (new since the Kennedy Center performed this production in 2012), of Austrian elite attending La Scala in box seats, closely guarded by a group of soldiers, and not sure what to expect from those around them. Although they socialize - dancing together between acts, visiting each other's boxes and chatting - they are wary, as well they should be considering that the seamstresses who have been working on the opera's costumes have also been stitching up Italian flags that the crew is concealing around the opera house.

The end of the opera, as performed under this conceit, works perfectly, for the audience as well, when soprano Csilla Boross, a triumphant Abilgaille, comes out on stage and throws back a bouquet from the box. In true La Scala fashion, singers begin singing again - a full-cast performance of the song of the Hebrew captives, "va, pensiero," which La Scala audiences of the time did in fact demand. (La Scala is not quite perfectly represented on stage here - it would have been interesting to see the cast take up the Milanese tradition of repeating arias upon demand during the performance itself.) If you weren't impressed by the opera prior to this point, the fun will now begin - if you were, however, and indeed you should have been, the post-show, as it were, is an enthralling cap to the production that does succeed in placing the opera in its true historic context, which has nothing to do with the Israelites or with Assyria.

Boross is a fine Abigaille, full of treachery, deceit, and fine voice. Margaret Mezacappa, a recent Academy of Vocal Arts graduate, who sings Fenina, her younger sister, is charming but seems at the same time both slightly out of her depth and underused, even though it's certainly not the main role. The warrior Ismaele is sung by tenor Adam Diegel, who's performed the part before with the Met and acquits himself nobly yet again. Baritone Sebastian Catana, who sings Nabucco, has also performed in that role before, and brings a marvelous voice and a welcome familiarity with the demanding part - it's never easy playing mad. However bass Morris Robinson, who sings Zaccaria, the Israelite High Priest, is more than a vocal match for Catana, as well as a worthy political opponent, and the main delight of the performance may be the ability to hear and to compare their performances as the two leaders. If you're a tenor fan, you may prefer Diegel's performance to theirs, but lovers of the lower registers will find their souls amply fed during this production.

There is some fine and painstaking attention to detail in this production in attempting to recreate the feel of a mid-19th Century La Scala. The sets are presumably reproductions of sketches left of the sets from the original performance - they are not as perfectly representational or elaborate as opera sets of the following century, but they are quite spectacular in design and color, and proof that a properly-designed two-dimensional set can work in a modern production (and far better, one thinks, than the annoying current tendency towards minimalism for the sake of minimalism). It also permits such delights as watching an early La Scala stage crew lighting the moon for a night-time set prior to the beginning of a scene. However, the devil also is in the details, and there are a few small ones that jar - a Hebrew soldier's shield still bears markings under its paint from a prior production in which the shield was evidently used by a Christian knight (really, it pays to sand away prior designs before painting), and Zaccaria's prayer shawl lacks the requisite tzitzit in the corners still worn by Jews on their tallit. But though surprising, these are still minor.

A worthwhile production in all respects, it's a fine season opener for Opera Philadelphia and holds the promise of more to come (including the American premiere of SVADBA in November). At the Academy of Music through October 6. Call 215-893-1018 or visit operaphila.org for tickets.

Photo courtesy of Opera Philadelphia

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