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Rachvelishvili and Aladashvili Musically Understand Each Other

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So, let’s start with the pianist, instead of leaving him as a footnote to the review. Aladashvili drew attention first and foremost with his playing, technically adept and winningly expressive, which meant that his impish antics were delightful; if he weren’t such a fine musician his behaviour would have been irritating. When someone called out (in Italian) ”Anita, you’re the best!”, he turned to the audience and said (in English) “And me?”, followed by a big grin before holding a hand in front of his face as though hiding his blushes from being so impudent. During the encores, a voice yelled, ”!” and he started playing the introduction to the Habanera before they segued into a different aria entirely (Saint-Saëns’ Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix; gloriously sung and well-suited to her voice). When they did arrive at Carmen, he began by playing a few notes of another piece before turning his iPad upside down, transforming the notes into the familiar dum de-dum dum intro to the Habanera. It was great fun and he’s an absolute delight.

To say that Rachvelishvili is impressive only because of her extremely powerful voice, or her uniform yet extended registers, is to ignore her keen musicality, attention to detail, and her delicately coloured and engaging interpretation. She grabbed the attention of the sometimes prickly La Scala audience the moment she first opened her mouth and they stayed in her grasp until her last note; no one was rushing out to get their coat this time.

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Verdi The Radical: How The Free-spirited Composer Shocked The Opera World

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Verdi

Verdi’s aggressive retort may be understood as yet another facet of an insurrectionist nature: he had, from the very beginning of his creative life, a well-articulated mission to escape and subvert the rigid culture of Italian opera composition and its concomitant mercantilism. The independence and strength of his relationship with Strepponi seemed to intensify that ambition, which he reiterated in a letter of 25 February 1850 to librettist Salvadore Cammarano, regarding a never fully realized opera based on Shakespeare’s King Lear: ‘You know that we should… treat it in an entirely novel manner… without regard to conventions of any kind’.

Such clearly articulated personal and artistic radicalism would soon manifest itself in his choice of outré subjects and situations for the three operas written between April 1850 and March 1853. In Rigoletto (1851), a hunchback’s beautiful daughter is abducted and raped; in Il trovatore (1853), a mad gypsy’s vengeful act of throwing an infant into a fire leads to fratricide; and in La traviata (1853) a consumptive courtesan’s love for a man above her social class climaxes in a passionate reunion and a tragic death.

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