NEW YORK – Verdi can be played on original instruments, too.
While performances of Baroque music using period instruments are now commonplace, Will Crutchfield and Teatro Nuovo are opting for historical pieces to showcase the seldom-heard earliest version of “Macbeth.”
“You wouldn’t expect mid-19th-century architecture to mimic that of the present day,” explained cellist Hilary Metzger. “The musical instruments and the techniques required to play them back then were quite distinct.”
Last weekend, Teatro Nuovo staged “Macbeth” and Bellini’s “La Sonnambula” at Montclair State’s Kasser Theater in New Jersey, with performances repeated this week at New York City Center. “La Sonnambula” is set to be performed on Thursday.
“I feel like I’m in Scotland,” said soprano Alexandra Loutsion, the Lady Macbeth. “Modern instruments have a sharpness to them and a pristine quality that period instruments don’t.”
Crutchfield, 68, was a music critic for The New York Times in the 1980s. He established Bel Canto at Caramoor in Katonah, New York, in 1997, then launched Teatro Nuovo as general and artistic director in 2018, showcasing scholarship and furnishing foundations for singers.
“I got bitten with the bug of historical recordings, and I realized very early on, oh, we think are doing traditional Italian opera nowadays but really what we call traditional means the 1950s,” he said. “What they were doing in the 1900s was totally different, radically just night and day different from the 1950s. … and that just made me really curious. OK, if it was that different in 1910, what was happening in 1880, what was happening 1860?”
Verdi emerged from Bel Canto era
Crutchfield noted Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini and Verdi all were born from 1792 to 1813, and early Verdi is in the Bel Canto manner.
“The only reason we think of Verdi as belonging to another era is because he was still composing in his 80s and writing masterpieces after the others were long gone from the scene,” Crutchfield said. “He is based on the same tradition. He learned his craft from hearing their operas.”
“Macbeth” premiered at Florence’s Teatro della Pergola in 1847, just before Verdi’s middle-period masterpieces. Verdi and librettist Francesco Maria Piave revised it for a run at Paris’ Théâtre Lyrique in 1865 that was performed in French. The latter version, translated into Italian for Milan’s Teatro alla Scala later that year, is the most common score used.
Jakob Lehmann conducted the original version from the University of Chicago/Casa Ricordi critical edition. At Wednesday night’s performance, Loutsion sang a high-octane “Trionfai! Securi alfine,” a coloratura showpiece that Verdi replaced with the more dramatic “La luce langue,” and baritone Ricardo José Rivera was menacing and mellifluous in “Vada in fiamme,” which ended the third act and was dropped in 1865 for a duet between the Macbeths.
“The lady is a bit more unhinged in this one,” Loutsion said. “It’s basically about how she’s gotten everything that she wants and she’s triumphed, and nothing’s going to stop them now.”
Orchestra seated in early 19th century arrangement
First violins were seated with backs toward the audience, facing the second violins, whose backs were to the stage. Cellos, double basses and brass were split on sides of the woodwinds in a seating Crutchfield adopted from Naples’ Teatro San Carlo.
“Back in Verdi’s day, the first violins were the teachers and the second violins were their students,” Metzger said.
Double basses have three strings instead of four, string instruments use gut instead of metal, woodwinds are made of wood and brass have no valves.
“There’s a certain clarity to it and there’s a certain specificity,” chorus master Derrick Goff said. “The English horn and the oboe sound even more plaintive to me. You can really hear the way that the composers had to write very specifically for those instruments.”
An orchestra of about 53 was used for “Macbeth” and 47 for “Sonnambula,” accompanied by a chorus of 28, and the pitch was lower than used by modern orchestras. Men in the cast wore mostly tuxedos and women were dressed in black on a stage with a screen showing projections.
Majority of money comes from donors, not ticket sales
Two performances of each opera cost a total of about $1.4 million, according to general manager Cindy Marino. Ticket sales generate roughly $160,000, with the remainder raised from donors.
“We obviously want bigger choruses. We want a little bit larger orchestra,” Marino said, “but we know financially we are trying to take it easy on increasing what we need to raise and not just jumping half a million dollars in order to grow the company.”
Orchestra rehearsals started about four weeks out. The cast worked intensively on the period techniques.
“Now that I’m leaving here, I feel like I have a whole other color palette,” Loutsion said. “The luxury of being able to dig in and all of us nerd out is awesome.”
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