Luca Tittoto
Actor
Movies2
Movie10.0MusicFrancesco Cavalli, a natural successor to Monteverdi, was the most famous and influential Italian opera composer during the mid-17th century. Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister to the king, commissioned Cavalli to create a Parisian spectacle to celebrate the wedding of the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV and the Infanta of Spain. Ercole amante (‘Hercules in Love’) was the flattering subject chosen for this regal extravaganza combining larger-than-life characters with mythology, and genuine human emotions with natural and cosmic phenomena. The result is a sumptuous Baroque spectacle, conceived on a vast scale in this lavish production by directors Valerie Lesort and Christian Hecq.
Movie6.5MusicThe hero of this admirably complete August 2013 Guillaume Tell from Pesaro is homegrown maestro Michele Mariotti. The inimitable overture is (mercifully) unstaged and terrifically played, with splendid cello and flute solos: the fine standard never flags. Rossini’s extraordinary 1829 score audibly presages Meyerbeer, Berlioz, Glinka, Verdi and Wagner, among many others. Graham Vick’s direction privileges class conflict, with a clenched fist on the red-and-white forecurtain. The Edwardian costumes place Austrians in white evening garb; the black-clad Swiss polish the floor while the rulers savor a filming (much of that to follow) — the fisherman Ruodi, in a boat with a blonde and fake scenery, with Tell and his family providing tech support. Vick deploys geographical and historical kitsch liberally but not (always) pointlessly. Ron Howell’s pretentious, mannered choreography, however, beggars belief.
Rossini: Guillaume Tell
2013 · 2 votes