With last Sunday “Effetto Venezia” is finally over, at last. It usually ends mistreating an opera in “Piazza XX Settembre”: in 2010 we had a “Caballeria Rusticana”, a production of the Mascagni's opera with the action set in Spain instead of Sicily, while last year's “La Traviata” was lucky to be left in Paris, because the theme of “Effetto Venezia” 2011 was France.
The story of “L'elisir d'amore” (The Elixir of Love) by Gaetano Donizetti traveled from a hamlet in the Basque Country to a Greek seaside village, becoming Το ελιξίριο της αγάπης (an uneducated guess of mine).
In Dulcamara's “Udite, udite, o rustici” (Listen, listen, o peasants) they even made a clumsy effort to make the Greek setting more believable changing the price of the quack's concoction from “scudi” (shields) and “lire” (pounds) to drachmas. They missed the fact that a “scudo” was three “lire”, so the price at the end of the aria fluctuates erratically, but I was probably the only one who noticed.
On Saturday, the night before the representation, I watched part of what would have been the dress rehearsal, but, as you can see, the costumes weren't obviously there. Opera is born for theaters and the poor acoustic of the square was enhanced quite badly with the use of electronic amplification. This didn't bother much the audience at the actual performance: most of the presents clapped hands frantically at every possible occasion and this says more of the kind of operagoers we have than of the execution (a perfect term) of the opera itself.See also: Caballeria Rusticana
External links: The Elixir of Love - Gaetano Donizetti (Wikipedia)
Search labels: Effetto Venezia
