Postponed by the pandemic, Nabucco finally premieres at the Teatro Colón

Nabucco was going to inaugurate the lyrical season of the Teatro Colón in March 2020, but the pandemic left in a waiting period the setting of Stefano Poda, until now. With no chance of returning to Italy, the regisseur was stranded in Buenos Aires for four months.

“The conductor, and others, with more objectivity, turned around. He spoke to my house every day and the situation in Bergamo was very serious. But it was summer here and I said, without any objectivity, let’s do Nabucco.

As before giving birth, I became obsessed and thought that in one or two weeks it would be resolved”, says the stage director, set designer, choreographer, costume designer and lighting designer. Stefano Poda, in perfect River Plate Castilian that he learned during his long stays in South America.

What do you remember of that forced stay in Buenos Aires?

I don’t remember it, I live it. But what can I say again? Everything was very intense. There was a sense of brotherhood with the technicians, with all those who had worked so hard on a very complex production. We opened the season, people came back from vacation and had to re-accommodate, times were tight, we had things detained at customs.

When everything was finally resolved, the function was suspended. Dramaturgically he felt that there were no longer good or bad, that there were no Jews or Hebrews, that we were all the same. As in the pandemic, we all thought we were going to come out better and we came out worse.

Along with Reanto Palumbo

He started working with another musical director, Renato Palumbo. Was the change difficult?

-For me, the connection with the musical director is essential. Renato Palumbo accompanied me in my first opera. Later we did several things and we met again here, but now the agendas did not coincide. I am getting to know Carlos Vieu and I love him. He is supporting me a lot.

And I have to say that the Theater behaved very nobly with us, unlike all the theaters in the world, which brought up the excuse of force majeure, and with every right. Here the theater fulfilled. For me that is sacred.

You maintain that you do not believe in opera as a genre. What does it mean?

-Art always has to have a sharper perception. Since I was a child I conceived that the walls that separate the disciplines within the opera had to be torn down. The point is to reach the secret threads that bring the disciplines together. Yes, study them separately, but we are going towards a dimension of specialization that, from my point of view, is not healthy for man. I miss the humanistic dimension.

a renaissance artist

And you look like a Renaissance artist because in your productions you cover all artistic disciplines.

-Yes, the Renaissance artist had an amplitude that we have lost forever. But we do not have to lose the humanistic example.

And, according to his perspective, the theater is the last humanist cathedral.

-Yes. I’m convinced. That’s why I fight. There are no more churches, no more museums (they are only good for taking selfies). The opera today is the only time left to stay in touch with ourselves and not turn on the cell phone. That’s why I’m not interested in the public seeing my concept, it would seem like an abuse. Who am I to say more about Verdi?

Her first Nabucco, Lisbon, 1995

But surely he worked on some concrete idea in the Nabucco what you are going to present

-There is an idea that is very clear. It was clear before too, because I did many Nabucco. And each time I found a formula to experiment…

between the first Nabucco he did and the one he is going to present, there was a radical conceptual shift. What happened?

-The first Nabucco it was my first opera, it opened the season in 1995 in Lisbon, it was a time when it was fashionable to hire a young director. I abused the facility I had with the decorative. It was modern but in appearance. Later I understood that I stayed on the surface and then I made a Nabucco totally different, conceptual, without any aesthetic contemplation.

I stripped everything. But I realized that my radicalism was not enthusiastically received by the public, but by the critics. And I am interested in reaching everyone. You have to arrive with a seduction, with a situation that is comfortable. They are paths. But it takes 30 years to achieve the synthesis. And, perhaps, the public has to follow the same path.

the local version

And what will he be like? Nabucco what are you going to present here?

-East Nabucco It was a step that I left suspended. After 2020 I did another one that inaugurated the National Theater of Seoul, in Korea, and it was one more step.

Did you make adjustments to the 2020 production?

-Adjustments in me, not in the material. More rigor still, a skeleton that became stronger.

It is not very often that a stage manager also takes care of lighting, scenery, costumes and choreography. Is it difficult for you to delegate?

-I have no choice. Because I make a recreation of a parallel world. It’s not a physical world where you can tell a set designer I want this or that. In this production it is an oneiric universe, where the gesture is not the conventional one. Visions are not concrete. It is a work that comes from sculpture, from architecture, from years and years of synthesis.

How did you think of the setting?

-I always follow a timeless dimension. Music is abstraction, it is freedom. It tells each one different things, it reveals different things. This is the magic of music. I believe that my duty is, to those who already know the opera, to make them listen to it again. If you didn’t hear her, open a universe. But, in any case, tell him the story of his life, neither mine nor the character’s.

Can the very concrete history of the work be neutralized?

-The first thing to do is free the Manichaeism of the script, which is very categorical, to a humanistic vision: all the characters are all. There are no good or evil. There is an evolution, an antagonism between rationality and spirituality. The extremes of rationality -we have experienced them-, and the extremes of spirituality, too. Life is a ring, a cycle that must be accepted.

As Verdi accepted his misfortunes when he wrote Nabucco…

-It’s an important story. Verdi, at that time, was young and wanted to leave everything. The critics did not accept him and with Nabucco he begins a career that, in my opinion, will lead him to be a benchmark, not only Italian, but of humanity. We are not going to discuss the distance between Nabucco and Otello or Falstaff. His perception of the art of life has an infinite facet.

For the singers it must be an enormous challenge to face their proposals. How was working with them?

-Maddening. Because I had to teach to unlearn, with the limited times of the theater, with a logistics that is not independent cinema.

Everyone told me yes, but close to the premiere they lost their minds. I have foreseen it, it is not something that surprises me. But I have to resist until they penetrate. I believe in mysticism, you can only tell the truth to the public if you really feel it on stage.

And what place do you give to the dancers? How is the choreography?

-I form the language, according to a sense that interests me and that is consistent with everything. I don’t want to have a group of actors, a group of dancers, a choir group. On the contrary, what I want is for everyone to move, think, feel, with the same code.

How would you define yourself?

-I always say that I am like a film out of competition. I don’t know if it’s okay, but it’s who I am and it’s kind of freelancing. Yes, I work in an institutional theater because I have no other. I adapt, and with pleasure, to institutional situations as long as I have the opportunity to follow my path.

And along that path, as he mentioned on one occasion, doing Orfeo in Mendoza he had a sort of epiphany and found what he wanted to be as an artist. What happened?

I owe a lot to Argentina. I come here and I feel good. I feel Spanish as a second language, even though German is really the second. I started early and had early success. It’s bad for an artist because he stops you. I had settled into a place of comfort.

And one day, in 1999, they called me to go to Mendoza -I didn’t even know where it was-, to take The magic Flute, but I found that they had no resources. So I made an Orfeo for three local singers and a countertenor from outside. I found myself with nothing and it was like a surreal story, where you know a parallel universe, more true.

I was able to experience something of the Europe that I did not get to know: prepared people, with training, with ethics, but with a strength that had been lost outside. And the need to do. It was a magical moment. I understood that I had to start everything from scratch, work with little, get the best out of the resources I have available. And I felt free. I carry this free and independent poetics. I owe that to Mendoza.

Carlos Vieu, a challenging setting

“We are working hard. It is a great challenge. The setting is impressive. It has an extraordinary visual beauty, with a very particular lighting. The concept is very attractive, it poses the challenge of a very open stage.

“Under normal conditions, fighting an orchestra verdianNo matter how careful the conductor of the orchestra is, it is a great challenge. But more so in this Verdi of the early period: it is almost a band with strings, reinforced with internal bands that are behind the scenes…

“For which, I insist, it is a challenge with a very open stage. But we have two extraordinary casts and a stable choir that is a luxury. A choir made up of great soloists, unique in the world”, explained the director Carlos Vieu, who this year celebrates his thirty years in the profession and directing Verdithe first composer with whom he made his debut on the podium and became his specialty.

Where does the challenge of directing Verdi pass?

-Because of how to restrain the beast when I know that I have to be containing it due to the particular acoustics that are generated. A fierce sound can come out, which is what is truly expected. One of Verdi’s innovations is to duplicate with the inside band what the outside orchestra does in various numbers of the ensemble.

As if I had a double orchestra…

-Yes, and it is very difficult to do it in sync, it generates a huge reinforcement in the sound of the accompaniment against a little throat. But I think that the structure of the arias themselves is totally bel canto, but the verdiando is marked in terms of some temperamental issues in the musical discourse.

Did you have to negotiate some points with Stefano Poda?

I don’t like the word negotiate. But, yes, a series of things had to be agreed upon, such as agreeing on positions or repositioning people on stage. The setting is raised in a very solid and concrete way.

I think that I have the job of knowing that this is the case and dealing with what I have to take care of to the possible limits what depends on me. Among the different interpretive approaches is the score as an axis that polarizes. It is objective information and you cannot get out of the score.

File

Nabucco (Giuseppe Verdi-Temistocle Solera)

Musical director: Charles Old

Stage Director, Scenographer, Costumes, Lighting and Choreography: Stefano Poda

Stable Orchestra of the Teatro Colón Stable Choir of the Teatro Colón Director: Miguel Fabian Martinez

Distribution

Sebastián Catana, Rebeka Lokar Mónica Ferracani, Abramo Roselen, Darío Schmunck, Guadalupe Barrientos, Mariana Carnovali, Mario De Salvo Cristian De Marco and Gabriel Renaud.

Functions

Tuesday May 31 at 20:00; Wednesday 1, Thursday 2, Saturday 4, Tuesday 7, Wednesday 8, Thursday 9 and Saturday 11 June at 8:00 p.m.; Y Sundays June 5 and 12 at 5:00 p.m., at the Teatro Colón.

CJL