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An Old Fashioned Widow Macerata
Sferisterio Arena
07/18/2025 - & July 27, August 2, 9*, 2025
Franz Lehár: La vedova allegra
Mihaela Marcu (Hanna Glawari), Alessandro Scotto di Luzio (Conte Danilo Danilovitch), Alberto Petricca (Barone Mirko Zeta), Cristin Arsenova (Valencienne), Valerio Borgioni (Camille de Rosillon), Cristiano Olivieri (Vicomte Cascada), Francesco Pittari (Raoul de Saint Brioche), Giacomo Medici (Bogdanovitch), Laura Esposito (Sylviane), Stefano Condolini (Kromow), Federica Sardella (Olga), Davide Pellissero (Pritschitsch), Elena Serra (Praskowia), Marco Simeoli (Njegus), Camilla Pomilio (Lolo), Giulia Gabrielli (Dodo), Silvia Giannetti (Jou‑Jou), Lucia Spreca (Frou‑Frou), Sara Bacciocchi (Clo‑Clo), Roberta Minnucci (Margot)
Coro Lirico Marchigiano “Vincenzo Bellini”, Christian Starinieri (chorus master), FORM‑Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana, Marco Alibrando (conductor)
Arnaud Bernard (stage director), Riccardo Massironi (sets), Maria Carla Ricotti (costumes), Fiammetta Baldiserri (lighting), Gianni Santucci (choreography)
(© Luna Simoncini)
Operetta is an often looked-down-on art form, considered by many to be lowbrow opera. Though composers including Johann Strauss Jr. wrote first‑rate music, it’s also true that much of operetta, though melodious, is of modest substance. Nonetheless, it’s important for two main reasons.
The first is that it was an important gateway in the development of music in the twentieth century. With the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and with rising tensions in Central Europe, there was massive emigration from Austria and Germany to the United States. Artists and intellectuals of the Viennese diaspora brought their remarkable modernity to America, particularly to the teeming artistic meccas of New York and Los Angeles. Broadway greats Oscar Hammerstein II (The Sound of Music, South Pacific, Carousel, Oklahoma!, The King and I), Jerome Kern (Show Boat) and Frederick Loewe (My Fair Lady, Paint your Wagon, Camelot, Brigadoon) were all sons of German immigrants of Viennese ancestry.
The other reason is that operetta, unlike opera, has remained a popular entertainment form. Whereas opera has acquired a snob allure (as one can easily deduce, especially at premieres), operetta’s purpose is to be unapologetically enjoyed.
Though not a huge fan of most operetta, I enjoy their positive energy in performance. In Vienna and Madrid, I make an effort to keep a night open for an operetta or its Spanish variant, the zarzuela.
Though there were a few operettas by Italian composers, such Leoncavallo’s La reginetta delle rose (1912) and Carlo Lombardo and Virgilio Ranzato’s Il paese dei campanelli (1923), those most frequently performed in Italy are translations of Austrian ones. For historic reasons, some places in Italy (Trieste comes to mind) have a more entrenched operetta tradition than others. As in much of the world, operettas are less frequently performed there.
In the not-so-distant past, such opera stars as Anneliese Rothenberger, Fritz Wunderlich, René Kollo and Hermann Prey sang Austro-German operetta. Likewise, Montserrat Caballé, Teresa Berganza, José Carreras and Alfredo Kraus regularly performed zarzuela alongside their standard opera appearances. In Italy, Tito Schipa, Lina Pagliughi, Giuseppe di Stefano and more recently Denia Mazzola have sung operetta. Alas, this lovely tradition of top opera stars performing operetta has all but disappeared (except in Spain).
Given their scarcity and “underground” popularity, performances of operetta still have the power to surprise. For example, this is the first time an operetta was performed at the Macerata Opera Festival. Judging from the absence of empty seats at this performance, it would seem The Merry Widow was more popular than either Macbeth or Rigoletto presented in this year’s edition of the festival.
The biggest problem with operetta is its tendency to be cheesy. Fortunately, this was not the case here, as the director was Frenchman Arnaud Bernard, whose recent trio stagings on the theme of “Manon” (Massenet’s Manon; Puccini’s Manon Lescaut; and the rarely-performed Auber’s Manon Lescaut) for Turin’s Teatro Regio were most insightful.
Though mercifully not cheesy, Bernard’s production was nonetheless old-fashioned, with the kind of humour one would have expected fifty years ago. Some of the jokes were those I heard as a child. Bernard’s main concern seemed to be to amuse and to dazzle. The sets for Act II at Hanna Glawari’s seaside home in Normandy were original. Inspired by impressionist paintings, the pastel colours and both Riccardo Massironi’s sets and Maria Carla Ricotti’s costumes were pleasingly original.
The operetta opened with the music of Chopin’s “Marche funèbre,” at the end of which Hanna Glawari merrily took off her black veil and hat in celebration, setting the pace for the rest of the performance. Though effective, this introduction of extraneous music was repeated in Act III with a half hour of music by Offenbach, culminating in the French Can‑Can. This was enjoyable for most of the public, but the added music and two intermissions for an operetta featuring just ninety minutes of music was excessive. The performance started at 9 p.m. and ended at 12:30 a.m. Unfortunately, despite the effort to entertain, it felt longer than Götterdämmerung or Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg largely thanks to much tedious spoken dialogue.
Though most of the singers were unfamiliar to me, they were uniformly adequate. Importantly, they were all first‑rate actors, essential for this genre. It was annoying that microphones were used for long periods of dialogue lasting half the work. At times, conductor Marco Alibrando got carried away and the orchestra played too loudly, covering the modestly-endowed voices of the cast.
Romanian lyric soprano Mihaela Marcu stood out. She was a luminous Hanna Glawari, vocally brilliant, and appropriately aristocratic in demeanour. Her rendition of Vilja’s song was the vocal highlight of the evening. Italian tenor Alessandro Scotto di Luzio was a charming Count Danilo Danilovitch. The role required more charisma than vocal virtuosity, and Scotto di Luzio happily had loads.
Special attention was paid to choreography. It could be said the production was more successful as a dance revue than theatre or even musical theatre.
In the future, if the Macerata Opera Festival wishes to present more operettas, a more modern, bittersweet staging might be more à propos.
Ossama el Naggar
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