IV Mstislav Rostropovich Festival opened

Classic Festival

Photo: Kommersant / Vasily Shaposhnikov / buy photo

"Requiem" performed by the Bolognese Teatro Comunale evoked warm feelings among the ex-mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov

Photo: Kommersant / Vasily Shaposhnikov / buy photo

The IV Mstislav Rostropovich Festival opened with a concert in the Great Hall of the Conservatory. The orchestra and choir of the Bolognese Teatro Comunale performed Verdi's "Requiem" - an offering to the memory of Galina Vishnevskaya. SERGEY KHODNEV reports.

The Mstislav Rostropovich Festival, which last year unexpectedly launched a luxurious series of concerts by world-class Western orchestras, continues to reap production successes in the same direction. The festival may only last a week, but this time its posters include an impressive tour of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maris Jansons (two concerts in Moscow, one in St. Petersburg), performances by the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with Charles Duthoit, and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra with Raphael Fruebeck de Burgos.

The visit of the Teatro Comunale musicians, which happened almost for the first time in Russian concert practice, actually fits well into this line. The Bologna Theater is an old institution (in fact, it is several decades older than La Scala and La Fenice), respected and, despite its seemingly non-metropolitan position, very prestigious: all questions relate to the history of Italy, where great theaters appeared much earlier than a single state. Another thing is that in recent decades the international prestige of the Teatro Comunale as an opera house can be challenged (at the same time, as usual, starting a sad conversation about European finances and the situation of opera houses in Italy in general). Something else is important here: theater is a theater, but the Teatro Comunale orchestra is, of course, as they say, afloat, and its presence - both in various festival posters and in record company catalogs - is much more noticeable than the presence of orchestras of other Italian theaters of seemingly the same echelon .

Although the Bolognese orchestra rarely goes beyond the operatic repertoire. Not that, however, anything else was expected from him, and the same “Requiem” now impressed precisely as a picture of fulfilled expectations. Fundamental, colorful, moderately theatrical, the tempos are convincing, the dynamics are firmly built, the orchestra takes its toll not so much in the ardent apocalypticism of “Dies Irae”, but in the lush lyricism, the choir sings with a well-balanced sound and produces perfect pianissimo - exactly like this “Requiem” what you expect from decent Italian performers. No discoveries, no insights, just a great tradition presented in an inviting manner - who knows, maybe 33-year-old Michele Mariotti, the current chief conductor of the Teatro Comunale, has some private interpretive considerations on his mind, but at least at the current Moscow concert he looked more like a deft moderator at the head of a high-quality orchestral and choral team, which already has this music in its blood.

The quartet of soloists also seemed to try to present the Italian natives and the Italian vocal school in the best light: in addition to the Venezuelan tenor Aquiles Machado, bass Riccardo Zanellato, mezzo Veronica Simeoni and, finally, soprano Barbara Frittoli were announced. But in terms of vocals, the final picture turned out to be more colorful: the heavy impression from the loose, deep singing of Aquiles Machado was somehow balanced in terms of precision and elegance of sound by the work of Riccardo Zanellato and Veronica Simeoni, but, on the other hand, from the correct routine cartonality and there was nowhere to go in their parties. And Barbara Frittoli, having caused a lot of trouble for the organizers, took sick leave three days before the concert, and a graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, soprano Tatyana Serzhan, was urgently invited to replace her (she sings her signature Lady Macbeth all over the world, including the Salzburg Festival). Oddly enough, it was in her work that the most obvious scale was read as a result - not only very operatic, but also very Italian.

"Requiem" supported the tradition