Respighi: Marie Victoire - Opera in 2 acts and 5 pictures

soliści;
Jurowski, Michail;
Orchestra and Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

CPO 777 121-2

After some initial criticism Respighi’s Marie Victoire has gone on to be hailed as one of the most important productions during Kirsten Harms’s tenure at the German Opera of Berlin and as a beacon in the Berlin opera history of the first decade of the twentieth century. This fourth of Respighi’s total of ten operas was composed during 1912-13. Marie Victoire was supposed to celebrate its premiere at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome in early 1915, but these plans were thwarted, with the foreign policy of World War I surely playing a principal role here. It was first eighty-nine years later, in the spring of 2004, that the premiere of Marie Victoire was held in Rome, and it then went on to be performed with great success in Berlin in 2009. After its German premiere Opernwelt wrote, »The German Opera of Berlin demonstrates its high level of achievement with the rediscovery of Respighi’s opera – with passion both for the music and for the stage action.« And the conductor Michail Jurowski perfectly summed up the significance of this impressive work as follows: »Respighi’s music emphasizes the drama, not the culinary opera. The interaction of text and music, of scene and song, is decisive. The composer discovers new musico-dramatic worlds. He turns away from Puccini and to the music dramas of Richard Strauss and Sergei Prokofiev, thus marking the beginning of the modern opera in Italy. In La fiamma Respighi deliberately writes in an archaizing style in order to bring to life the gloomy atmosphere of medieval Byzantium. In contrast, in Marie Victoire we hear a music more reminiscent of the tone of Pini di Roma: wild, with grand surging in orchestra. Perhaps the music has too much ›French lightness‹ for the friends of the Italian verismo; for the admirers of French impressionism from about the same period it perhaps has too much ›Italian verve‹ – but in fact one understands why it was that Alberto Franchetti, after listening to Marie Victoire, told his young colleague Respighi that with this work the new path of the opera had been found.«

CD x 3

Muzyka klasyczna

CPO

26-09-2012

761203712120

MusicWeb International: 'Recording of the Month' (2013)