I don’t like the late start of operas in Italy. 9.15 pm seems to be the usual procedure and by the time one has got home it’s closer to 2 am. The way to get round this in Lucca is to attend a Sunday 4 pm matinee. It’s also a great chance to savour the crisp winter sunlight on the city walls and browse through the city’s antiques market.

 

 

Despite the name of its heroine, ‘Wally’, (which should not be pronounced in the English way but in the Italian one as ‘Val-ley’- short for ‘Valpurga’) Catalani’s last of six operas – composed in a  sad life cut short at age thirty-nine by TB – proved a thrilling experience at Lucca’s Giglio theatre last Sunday. The Tyrolean scenario, by Puccini’s librettist Illica after Wilhelmine von Hillern’s novel Die Geier-Wally, provided the composer with opportunities for Austrian Ländler (at the time of the opera Südtirol still belonged to the Hapsburg empire), yodeling arias and atmospheric scoring depicting the icy mountains which, in the end, kill off the heroine and the hero with an avalanche.

Indeed, Catalani’s instrumentation of these alpine landscapes, using just the highest and the lowest orchestral timbres in octave unison, was also adopted by Prokofiev in the ‘Battle on the ice sequence’ in his ‘Alexander Nevsky’ score and in Vaughan Williams’ seventh ‘Antarctica ‘ symphony. The inevitable wind-machine makes its eerie entrance too…

 

 

Even if you’ve never seen ‘La Wally’ you’ll recognize at least one aria from it.  It’s the heart-melting aria Ebben ne andrò lontana made well-known to the world through Wiggins Fernandez’ rendition in Jean-Jacques Beineix‘s 1981 cult movie Diva.

I’ve written extensively on Catalani here and in ‘Grapevine’ magazine. His is a life plagued by false promises, unrequited love and a killer disease. See:

https://longoio.wordpress.com/2013/06/01/catalanis-calamitous-life/

and

https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/magnificent-san-michele-mass/

Here is the cast list for the performance I attended last Sunday:

I felt Serena Farnocchia was superb as the protagonist (befitting a winner of the coveted Luciano Pavarotti prize, Find out more about her at

http://www.serenafarnocchia.com/HOME_ITA.html)

Of Wally’s two competing lovers I was a little underwhelmed by Gellner but fully convinced by Hagenbach. Supporting cast and choir were resoundingly adequate. Regarding the scenario I was disappointed by the few fluffs of artificial snow announcing the annihillatory avalanche. Actually, only Hagenbach is suffocated by the snow since Wally, Tosca-like, leaps to her death into a ravine.

Wally, unusually for many nineteenth century heroines, is a wild child of nature with no time for sentimental Traviata-type gushings. She knows what she likes and abruptly repudiates those lovers she can’t stand. True, there is heartrending emotion in her famous act one aria but Wally does point forwards to Minnie, heroine of Puccini’s 1910 ‘Girl of the Golden West’. In this respect, Catalani’s opera does not reduce women to a vessel at the mercy of opportunistic men but creates a new feminine dimension fully equal to the machinations of the male sex – surely a timely insight today in view of all those exploitation accusations in the news.

What would Catalani have gone on to create had he lived longer? This is the unanswerable question which could be put with regard to so many other musical geniuses, Mozart and Schubert for a start. One thing is certain, however: Catalani’s premature death must count as one of Italy’s and Europe’s greatest artistic losses. I looked almost tearfully at the under-rated composer’s memorial plaque in the Giglio’s foyer:

 

For the next two operas concluding the Giglio season click on

http://www.teatrodelgiglio.it/it/stagione-in-corso/lirica/la-fanciulla-del-west/