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Wednesday, April 25, 2012

La Nave is coming . . .

No, it's not Fellini's La Nave Va, although you might think the story was derived from the fevered brain of the Italian film director.  Written as a play in 1908 by Gabriele D'Annunzio (who surpassed any film director's maddened visions), La Nave is a dazzling work that oozes with turn-of-the-last-century Italian decadence and angoscio (if that is the word they'd use for angst).

Italo Montemezzi used the play as a basis for his opera, adapted by Tito Ricordi, in 1918. With massive sets and large casts, it played throughout Italy, and then came to Chicago Lyric Opera with Rosa Raisa, conducted by the composer, just after World War One.

Set in 6th century Venice, the story depicts the debasement of one ruling family and the rise of another. As they pass, so to speak on their trajectories, a woman from the defamed family, named Basiliola vows that she will capture the love and affection, if not unilateral power, of the upcoming Marco Gratico. An unlikely pairing from the start, as we see her father and brothers, blinded, some with their tongues cut out, paraded by.

A massive boat is being built and is almost ready to be launched, an overt symbol of Italy's yearning to take part in the world's power struggle to colonize at the time.
With all the charm of a cobra, Basiliola works her wiles on Marco, dancing before him half-nude, seducing him in a pagan rite on the very steps of the basilica in Venice.  In a rather sado-masochistic frenzy, she shoots prisoners in a pit with arrows, and they beg for more, as though they were kisses.

At the final crisis, Marco becomes ruler of Venice and Basiliola, in an attempt to save face with a noble death, asks to be sacrificed.  In the original play she is burned at the stake, but the opera has an even more spectacular ending with her being nailed to the prow of the ship that takes off for parts unknown, to bring glory to Italy as a world power.

La Traviata it ain't.



And yet, it is a wonderful operatic tour de force, not seen in this country for ninety or more years, and never recorded. This year Teatro Grattacielo will be performing it in concert, and it is not to be missed.