Stage Access Presents ROSSINI’S WILLIAM TELL Opera Review — Justice WILL Triumph!

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Editor’s Note: Read the related story, Stage Access ROSSINI OPERA Festival — PICTURE PREVIEW

Stage Access WILLIAM TELL
Rossini's William Tell is based on the not entirely apocryphal legend of a 14th Century expert archer and rebel who shot the apple off his son's head

It’s the Third Act in this 4+ hour opera, and you, too, may start musing that Rossini and librettists Étienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Bis were time-traveling ghostwriters of the New York Times bestseller The Cruelty is the Point.

Stage Access WILLIAM TELL
In the very first scenes we see the divide between the oppressed peasants scrubbing floors and laboring, and their entitled Hapsburg rulers

We are increasingly nauseous…

Here, the original 14th-century legend of William Tell is updated to the Gilded Age. Upper-class Hapsburg elites are at a debauched festivity where the main entertainment is to humiliate the local peasants of Switzerland.  The locals are forced to grovel and kiss hats (usually spit upon first) that are snatched away from them to make them clumsily fall. The hat trick is used to make them scurry like dogs. They endure uninvited gropes, and in some corners, the youngest also seemed pressed into service to satisfy pedophiles.  The degenerate overlords make fun of the local customs, finding great sport in lampooning the locals as their puppets.

And then, Stephen Miller as he is separating families at the border sings…

No wait, it was actually —

Vladimir Putin singing while enjoying reports of Ukrainian rapes…

 No, no — it was really —

Viktor Orban…

 or Erdogan..

 or Ron DeSantis lighting a match to books…

or… or…

In this reviewer’s opinion, the resonance of Gioachino Rossini’s William Tell to today’s headlines is the ever-present power infusing every scene.  Name the autocrat fascist of your choice.  In Rossini’s script, it is Gessler (in this production, bass Luca Tittoto), to whom the MAGA crowd — oh, uhh … the Hapsburg elite —croons “Peace to the Power We Love.”  Quite the vicious poster boy, Gessler sings of the obedience he feels is his due — and the only surprise comes at the finale curtain bows when his spot-on villain performance doesn’t occasion a tomato throw from the crowd. He is just the main guy.It’s actually the entire fascist — ummm, Hapsburg —crowd that is revealed as a tribe of very sick puppies.

When Princess Mathilde (soprano Marina Rebeka) lashes out “BARBARIAN!” you, too, might want to jump on your chair and shout Right On Sister!

Stage Access Reprises WILLIAM TELL at 2013 Rossini Festival with Superstar Performers

While the famed William Tell Overture might be THE music from this opera most widely known (Hint: Think The Lone Ranger), this opera is chock full of arias, duets, and trios that you might find spellbinding.  In no small way, this is thanks to the powerhouse performances by Rebeka, Tittoto, baritone Nicola Alaimo as William Tell, soprano Amanda Forsythe as Tell’s son, and most of all, by heartthrob Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez as Arnold, Mathilde’s Swiss-born love interest trying to straddle two worlds.

Stage Access WILLIAM TELL
Baritone Nicola Alaimo in the title role
Stage Access WILLIAM TELL
Soprano Marina Rebeka as Princess Mathilde
Stage Access WILLIAM TELL
(left to right) William Tell, the evil Gessler and Tell's son, sung by Amanda Forsythe
Stage Access WILLIAM TELL
Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez as Arnold
Stage Access WILLIAM TELL
(left) Mezzo-soprano Veronica Simeoni as Tell’s wife
Stage Access WILLIAM TELL
(right) Luca Tittoto at the evil Gessler

It is perhaps also the camera closeups of the performers’ faces, giving a far more intimate view than possible with even the best seats in the opera hall, that make this Stage Access Rossini Festival gem so outstanding, in this reviewer’s opinion. These are all great actors. Mezzo-soprano Veronica Simeoni as Tell’s wife, and whom we enjoy in transporting duets and trios with her fellow female leads, is especially expressive, as are headliners Flórez and villain Tittoto.

 

Stage Access WILLIAM TELL
The soprano and mezzo-soprano trios in the last act startled this reviewer with their simultaneous sweetness and power

Set Design Often Requires Suspension of Disbelief

Curiously, we are puzzled by an ever-present film camera on the stage used to capture the Hapsburg spectacle.     Even more confounding is the oversized lighting in Swiss peasant scenes that seems to be there only so it can rise to signal a sunrise. When the lovers meet on the sly, they are on and around supersized stuffed horses with frozen poses of carnival animals.

Projection designs help fill in gaps, to show the raging storms whipping up the sea or to give an inside view of Arnold’s nostalgia and love for his father.  These peeks into Arnold's interior life come via home movies of father showing son how to plant on their beloved land.

Signage frames the opera from beginning to end.  In the first scene, we see the words  EX TERRA OMNIA, translated from Latin as All Comes From the Earth. The curtain shows the clenched fist of resistance in Soviet Realism style — or perhaps an echo of symbols adorning the Italian Socialists who brought Mussolini’s end. This fist curtain foreshadows Act II when the Swiss Peasants wrap red kerchiefs around their hands and raise in salutes.   Once the carnage begins, the signs of blood are never washed from the walls, framing Mathilde’s aria lamenting her love lost to battle and the fight-to-the-death spirit of the resistance.

Live or Screen?  Stage Access Seems to Put Out a Dare

The promotional materials from Stage Access note that Rossini’s William Tell (Guillaume Tell) is rarely performed due to the high-note challenges for the tenor, so masterfully handled by Flórez.      You, too, might agree that any opera logging more than four hours is also a challenge for the audience. Follow the tip from this reviewer: Break up your viewing into two or three segments and make sure to add on an encore listen to the William Tell Overture while your heart is still swelling at the finale.

Better, lobby your local opera house to do the same, viz. break this ticket up into two performances.      Maybe they can also take a tip from Broadway’s production of Sweeney Todd and sell apple pies, apple butter, apple quiche, and more — perhaps in a long break affording ample time for a brain salad course in between a matinee and evening performance.

Meanwhile, Stage Access’s presentation of the 2013 Rossini Festival performance of William Tell is not to be missed.

 

 

Stage Access WILLIAM TELL
The famed WILLIAM TELL OVERTURE captures the emotional arc of the story-- which you too may appreciate more at the performance's end

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For more information visit the Stage Access webpage for Rossini’s William Tell (Guillaume Tell) Opera

Images courtesy of Stage Access

This story has been added to the Picture This Post roundup article on OPERAS WE LOVE.
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Amy Munice

About the Author: Amy Munice

Amy Munice is Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher of Picture This Post. She covers books, dance, film, theater, music, museums and travel. Prior to founding Picture This Post, Amy was a freelance writer and global PR specialist for decades—writing and ghostwriting thousands of articles and promotional communications on a wide range of technical and not-so-technical topics.

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