Festival Bel Canto : A Beautiful Success by Paul E. Robinson
/ October 13, 2008
At the opening
night of Festival Bel Canto patrons and donors rubbed shoulders with
Knowlton, QC locals and two former prime ministers, Jean Chrétien and
Paul Martin. In only a few months, three gifted idealists, Swiss-Quebecois
businessman Marco Genoni, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) music
director Kent Nagano and Santa Cecilia National Academy director Bruno
Cagli, created a new music festival of international scope in a very
unlikely location.
The site was
a tent seating 800 overlooking Lac Brome with a sophisticated sound
system to make up for the accoustic problems of the venue. The festival
opened with a recital by American mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore. Lamore
is an entertainer at heart. When she takes the stage her storyteller’s
face exudes joy and enthusiam
The next night
American soprano June Anderson and members of the Opera Studio of the
Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia joined Nagano and the OSM performing
excerpts by Donizetti and Rossini. The festival organizers sent the
audience home smiling and eager for more bel canto.
Kent Nagano
is a musician with an inquiring mind. He is intensely interested in
learning about bel canto as musical literature, singing style
and orchestral playing. With this in mind, he hired violinist Riccardo
Minasi, a specialist in early nineteenth-century performance practice,
to work with the OSM string players. Nagano’s musicians played with
a minimum of vibrato and were very light on their feet.
In another
concert, Korean-born Sumi Jo gave the audience a taste of the bel
canto repertoire with a superb performance of Mozart’s Exultate,
jubilate and a theatrical excerpt from Offenbach’s Tales of
Hoffman.
The organizers
of Festival Bel Canto 2008 focused on the great bel canto composers
– Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini – but only included one full-length
opera. Bellini’s Norma is generally regarded as the greatest
of the genre but it is problematic to stage because it requires an exceptional
artist to conquer the challenges of the title role. Micaela Carosi acquitted
herself admirably, as did the rest of the cast, including Canadian baritone
John Relyea, conductor Kent Nagano and the OSM.
Festival Bel Canto,
August 15 -24, 2008, Knowlton, QC
www.osm.ca/belcantoen/index.cfm
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