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“MEDEA” receives 5 star review / Financial Times

Five stars for a high-impact Médée at La Scala, Milan — review by James Imam / Financial Times


Maria Callas’s performances of Medea at La Scala in the 1950s and ’60s defined the way many contemporary opera-lovers listen to the work today. Those productions of Cherubini’s mythological work — written for Paris in 1797 — were in Italian, with
the spoken dialogue replaced with richly orchestrated recitatives, and the classical score conducted with the plodding weight of a Wagner opera, as the recordings attest.
On Sunday, Cherubini’s opera returned to La Scala after a 62-year hiatus, but as it had never been heard here before. This was the house’s first production of the original French version, Médée, with La Scala cutting the declamatory 1850s recitatives and substituting them with newly written dialogue that was prerecorded and relayed through speakers. The orchestra’s playing further stripped the score of excess fat, helping restore the work to its original classical proportions to ensure that the tragedy cut deep.

Ancient Corinth is the setting, the libretto recounting how the betrayed sorceress Médée murders her children and reduces a temple to rubble to avenge her ex-lover, Jason, on the day he weds another. Damiano Michieletto’s new production places the children at the centre, setting the action in a tapering, modern-day living roomthat looks larger than it actually is, as if seen from a young person’s perspective. Two ever-present children, silent extras, receive wrapped presents and shelter in aplayhouse, raising the stakes as we observe the full impact of their dysfunctionalparents’ behaviour.


As Médée succumbs to rage, Jason’s domestic realm falls apart, the pyrotechnicanti-heroine ushering plumes of stage smoke and scrawling a message on the livingroom wall, which eventually crumbles as if battered by a supernatural force. In the whispered French dialogue, written by dramaturge Mattia Palma, the children takestock of the developments with youthful naivety. The horrifying finale, relayed on avideo screen, shows Médée spoon-feeding the kids poisoned medicine at bedtimeas Jason frantically bangs on a locked door.


Some of the horror came from the pit. Rising conductor Michele Gamba’s reading of the score was transparent, compact and combustible where it needed to be. Bysteering clear of musical heft, he ensured that the natural structure of Cherubini’sscore could carry the drama, so that initial breeziness was gradually enveloped bydarkness, before bursting into a final diabolical blaze.
As Callas’s successor, Marina Rebeka had big shoes to fill, and proved equal to thechallenge. In an alternative approach to fire-and-brimstone interpretations of the past, she invested her clear voice with introspection and psychological nuance to provide engrossingly believable characterisation. She was duly showered withincandescent applause.


Perhaps inevitably, most of the other singers — Stanislas de Barbeyrac’s cocky Jason, Nahuel Di Pierro’s authoritative Créon, the Corinthian king, and MartinaRussomanno’s long-suffering Dircé, Créon’s daughter — were eclipsed by Rebeka’s triumph. Ambroisine Bré’s moving delivery of Néris’s aria, with mournful bassoon obbligato, was an exception, as were the chorus’s atmospheric contributions. With bold vision and skilful execution, La Scala has, finally, mustered a compelling production in which there is very little to fault. Catch it if you can.


★★★★★
To January 28,
teatroallascala.org

DAS OPERNGLAS: ‘ESSENCE’ review

“The selection of arias that Marina Rebeka has made for her latest album concentrates on pieces in which the soprano has something to say, or rather whose textual content finds its way with subtle creative power not only into the listener’s ear, but also into their heart and mind.The trick here: slow tempi throughout, which Marco Boemi sets with the accomplished orchestra of the Wroclaw Opera Orchestra. Not that Rebeka had to concentrate on mannerisms in order to meet all demands. No, on the contrary, she succeeds in her ever more differentiated technical mastery of the lirico-spinto repertoire with all the required legati and musical lines, the sung word special liveliness and deep, sublime expression without any pressure or forcing or forcing…”

Récital Marina Rebeka, Karine Deshayes – Paris

The triumph of belcanto


The rule of the recital is that the first numbers of the program are warm-up rounds, pages during which the artists take the measure of the hall, of their voices and lay the groundwork for a musical ascent where the emotion must gain in intensity to reach its peak after the intermission, in the second part, often during the encore. Nothing like that last night at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in what was a Belcantic celebration around the holy trinity of the genre: Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti. From the very first notes, the evening promises to be exceptional. The needle of the emotional potentiometer reaches its maximum value and never goes down again. To the point that one does not know how to graduate its report.

First of all, let us evoke the conjunction of two singers who, in this repertoire, know few rivals: Marina Rebeka and Karine Deshayes: ice and fire; gold and silver; diamond, ruby; angle, curve; yin, yang, etc. One could thus align the antonyms to give to understand the nature of their voice. But this would be to oppose the two artists and to conceal their complementarity. The three duets in the program – four if we add the duettino from the Marriage as an encore – show how much they complement each other, how they settle into their characters and once they have made their mark, they confront each other (Anna Bolena) or come together (Norma). There is nothing feigned or forced in a complicity that was forged on the anvil of the stage. Marina Rebeka and Karine Deshayes have often sung together. This is the key to an understanding that translates into a communion of timbre, a harmony of intention, the same inspiration.

Forumopera.com / Review by Christophe Rizoud

For full review click here

Album “VOYAGE” – a true discoveries

by Natasha Loges / BBC Music Magazine

Voyage
Jaëll: Lieder; Les Orientales – ‘Rêverie’; Saint-Saëns: La Madonna col Bambino; Alla Riva del Tebro; Viardot-Garcia: 12 Poems by Pushkin, Fet and Turgenev – selection; Doppel-Liebe – L’innamorata; The Willow; Sérénade; plus songs by Chaminade, Duparc, Fauré, Gounod, Ravel and Widor
Marina Rebeka (soprano), Mathieu Pordoy (piano)
Prima Classic PRIMA014   71:33 mins

This debut song recording from operatic soprano Marina Rebeka, with up-and-coming vocal coach and collaborative pianist Mathieu Pordoy, offers an original and appealing programme of mid-to late-19th-century French songs. There are real discoveries here, including a set of songs by the pioneering pianist-composer Marie Jaëll, alongside familiar figures like Widor, Gounod, Chaminade, Viardot, Saint-Saëns and Ravel.

Rebeka’s discography is opera-centred thus far, and with good reason. It’s a superb voice, with a seamless, velvety legato and a brilliant, ringing colour across entire range. She and Pordoy have a strong vision for the ‘character’ songs, such as Chaminade’s ‘Chanson slave’ (Slavic Song), Saint-Saëns’s ‘Désir De l’Orient’, Widor’s ‘Chanson Indienne’ and Fauré’s ‘Les Roses d’Ispahan’, all luxurious, sun-drenched products of French orientalism. The more introvert songs are less focused.

But the Jaëll songs are fascinating, although their expansive structures and searching texts sometimes demand more introspective colours. Rebeka sounds superbly healthy throughout, and Pordoy’s restrained and elegant playing ensures she remains centre stage, though he could spar with this splendid voice more boldly. Still, there is much to enjoy; ‘Der Sturm’ is full of variety, and Rebeka’s voice carries her effortlessly across fiendish vocal terrain. The closing Viardot set is a welcome addition to this wonderful composer’s growing discography, ‘The Willow’ especially lovely. Rebeka revels in the Russian language and is supported by glowing recorded sound.

Natasha Loges

Read a review also here: https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/choral-song/voyage-marina-rebeka/

RIVISTA MUSICA: In short it is another success for Marina Rebeka, her label and the Palazzetto Bru Zane, which deserves even more than the five stars we attribute to it with pleasure!

Those who have read the enlightening book by Orlando Figes, one of the leading experts of Russian history and culture in Europe, will be able to understand much better the assumptions of this magnificent record: not only because among the composers included therein is Pauline Viardot, but also because the English historian identifies the period of the creation of Europe’s cultural identity precisely with the years after the middle of the nineteenth century, marked by the widespread spread of railway networks. The 23 tracks on the CD bearing the title “Voyage,” released by Prima Classic (the label of Marina Rebeka) with the collaboration
of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, insist especially on the years 1860-1890s, in France those on the threshold of the Belle E´ poque and the Second Industrial Revolution: Years marked in a profound way, at the cultural level, by the taste for the ”elsewhere,” for an East whose boundaries are as ever blurred, ranging from the Hungarian plains to the Balkans, to of course India, China and Japan…

By Nicola Catto` / Rivista Musica / November 22