Opera: The Power of Positive Vocalizing

La Scala, the fabled, 189-year-old queen of the world’s opera companies, made its first appearance in North America last week at Expo 67. For per formers and audiences alike, the event turned out to be a compound of agonies and ecstasies.

Like the other opera troupes that have visited Montreal this year, La Scala had problems in trimming its sets and staging to fit the cramped dimensions of Montreal’s Salle Wilfrid Pelletier. Unlike the others, it met the crisis with passionate disorganization: breaks between acts stretched out to 45 minutes, while bumps, crashes and muffled Italian curses were heard through the curtain. The productions themselves often recalled the bad old days when tempos dawdled indulgently, singers postured in front of improbable sets and acting was of the clutch-sob-and-stagger school. But by sticking to the 19th century Italian repertory and putting it over with some splendidly full-throated singing, the company also evoked the good old days, when Verdi and Puccini called La Scala home, when such singers as Enrico Caruso and Adelina Patti blossomed there and Conductor Arturo Toscanini whipped its performances to a peak of fire and finesse.

Belting Their Best. La Scala’s two Verdi productions, Il Trovatore and Nabucco, illustrated the company’s faults—and how it turns them into virtues. Both performances tended to be concerts in costume. Nicola Benois’ massive, upward-sweeping sets were effective in a traditional vein. Nabucco, in particular, had moments of rousing stagecraft, especially when a 35-ft. purple statue of Baal split down the middle and the surrounding temple exploded, filling the stage and auditorium with steam. But mostly the singers forgot about the drama and one another, turned toward the audience, and simply belted out their best. Frequently it was more than good enough. Drenched by the robust melodiousness of Soprano Elena Suliotis and Basso Nicolai Ghiaurov in Nabucco, and of Tenor Carlo Bergonzi and Mezzo Soprano Fiorenza Cossotto in Trovatore, the Montreal audiences hardly seemed to notice anything missing elsewhere.

La Scala’s novelty for this tour was Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, a bel canto relic that the company recently revived after a century of relative neglect. A retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story that owes little to Shakespeare, Capuleti, with Bellini’s intimate scale, pervading sweetness and utter predictability, is a distinct contrast to Verdi’s powerful, primitive themes and vaulting imagination. But the company —notably the two leads, Tenor Giacomo Aragall and Soprano Renata Scotto—traded the flawed gusto of its Trovatore and Nabucco performances for restraint and quiet artistry, making Capuleti the only production of the week to come off with cohesiveness and unity of effect.

In all, La Scala struck a magnificently old-fashioned note at Expo. In this age of realistic music-drama, far-out staging and intellectual musical analysis, La Scala’s reaffirmation of the Italian faith in the power of positive vocalizing was both quaint and oddly persuasive. The company may never fully awake from dreams of its own past glory, but the question is, does anyone really want it to?