Wexford Opera House
The new Wexford Opera House resonated to the kind of sounds that most often thrilled audiences in the old Theatre Royal this year, the first time an opera by Donizetti, the most often featured composer in the festival’s history, was presented in the new house.
Maria Padilla,first performed at Milan in 1841, is what you would have to call a near miss. It's got good tunes and the kind of vocally challenging lines audiences love. It's got an unusual balance of male roles — the lover is a baritone, the tenor is the heroine's father. It's got a mad scene. It's got a major duet for the two female leads. It's richly orchestrated. It undertakes some adventures of harmony.
On the other hand, it’s got an unsatisfactory plot. The pacing is not always successful. The tried and trusted formulas sound, well, just too formulaic. It’s at best almost a near miss. If it were a real near miss, we would, I suspect, hear rather more of its spectacular moments, extracted as standalone items.
The Wexford performance was at best a near miss, too. Director Marco Gandini gave the impression of not knowing what to do with the piece, working regimented patterns through Mauro Tinti’s abstract sets (steel cubes and chairs) and Silvia Aymonino’s stark costumes: modern dress (under medieval armour for the soldiers), with the women of the chorus looking like the members of an extravagantly-coiffured folk choir.
Conductor David Agler managed only a humdrum orchestral rendition of the rich score, and spent far too much of his time out of synch with the stage.
So, unless you were gripped, as Donizetti was, by the conflicts of a plot that never really takes a grip, it was one of those evenings where the singing was the thing.
Soprano Barbara Quintiliani offered a full-toned, often thrilling Maria, though she didn’t manage to tuck every last note neatly into its right place. Mezzo Ketevan Kemoklidze was in appealingly fresh voice as her sister Ines.
The smoothly-burnished tenor of Adriano Graziani as the girls’ father Ruiz, the character who loses his reason, easily won the audience’s hearts. And baritone Marco Caria was thrillingly full-on as the two-timing lover and husband who eventually gives a rapturous Maria exactly what she wants. Be warned, however, the festival’s printed synopsis wrongly predicts an entirely different ending.
