Attila

Dynamic! Muscular! Hugely Musical!!
But the staging costs this otherwise superb Atilla one star. That's because it is done in the tiny (300 seats; 30 m stage) Teatro Giuseppe Verdi in the maestro's home town of Busetto. I have seen DVDs of performances there that worked, but this one, despite valiant efforts, does not quite make it. The stage director, to make up for the lack of spaces, projects computer graphics on a screen at the rear of the stage to create the sense of more space, as well as other effects. In the second scene in the Prologue, the Adriatic Lagoons, work very well when projected, but in other cases, the effect is less than effective.

Vocally and dramatically, though, this is one "kick butt" performance!

Bass Giovanni Battista Parodi is a very effective Attila, but he is no Sam Ramey, who owned this role for years (his La Scala performance with Cheryl Studer is available on DVD and is worth owning despite a so-so tenor). But after a bit of warming up, Parodi delivers the goods...

Please, don't insult the Huns!
Everything has been said adequately and there is little to add. I think the video-graphics were inspired and give an evocative backdrop: the devastated countryside, the raging sea storm and the wonderful sunrise afterwards.I don't know which came first, this or Bill Viola's Tristan, an unbelievable artistic triumph I was lucky to witness. The problem here is the incongruity with the stage and the attempt to blend the two together.
One other thing is the ridiculous make up of the Huns. They look like some savage tribe escaped from Africa. Perhaps the esteemed designer should have studied Raphael's famed frescos. And that Jurassic Park helmet of Attila? Don't insult the Huns, please. They kept Europe under firm control for nearly 200 years until they were beaten back by a conglomerate of armies at Capernaum (listen to Liszt's Hunnenschlacht symph. poem). Contrary to popular belief, they did not die out. There is a nucleus of people in Transylvania (szekely-s) that traces back...

Stirring version of an unmemorable Verdi opera
By the time he came to write Attila for La Fenice in Venice in 1846, Verdi had firmly established, consolidated and refined a style and a structure that would be recognisable in nearly all his subsequent works. Attila is made up of a number of stock situations involving war, vengeance, romance and betrayal and Verdi packs it with big dramatic numbers and choruses that match the intensity of the emotions. There's nothing inspired here however, nothing that provides any great insights or revelations into the characters or human behaviour. Even worse, there are no great memorable arias or musical numbers.

Dramatically however there's never a dull moment in Attila. Much of the reason for that is down to Verdi's sense of arrangement and his scoring for a situation that appeals to the sentiments of a nation seeking its own independence. The qualities of Verdi's dramatic writing are all there then and the cast for this 2010 production of Attila at the Teatro Verdi di Busseto are...

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