BENVENUTO CELLINI • LA MONNAIE
★★★★★☆
Photo: Simon Van Rompey
REVIEW BENVENUTO CELLINI BRUSSELS: SCENIC OVERHEATING
La Monnaie’s Benvenuto Cellini is a baroque bombardment, a scenic overheating, a regietheatre centrifuge spinning so fast that Berlioz’s flimsy story has to cling to the railing to avoid being thrown off course.
American director Thaddeus Grassberger cranks his stage design up to boiling point and lets chaos reign supreme in a magnificently kitsch set design that resembles a Roman theme park on steroids.
Photo: Simon Van Rompey
A mutation of the Trevi Fountain, sprouting with classical markers such as the Colosseum, Trajan’s Column and the obelisk from Piazza del Popolo, framed by Greek/Roman column and capital architecture and winding Baroque staircases that swing the imagination around the Spanish Steps.
Add an ensemble that at times feels like a hundred performers in constant motion, dressed in fantastic costumes and enveloped in thunderous orchestral music under the baton of the house’s excellent conductor Alain Altinoglu, who delivers a highly acclaimed, colourful interpretation of Berlioz’s powerful and lavish score.
Let’s be honest: Benvenuto Cellini is not a great work, but rather an operatic curiosity — a youthful experiment, a dramaturgical lightweight disguised as a heroic opera.
Photo: Simon Van Rompey
We are in Rome, 1532. Pope Clement VII gives the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini a rather impossible task: he must create a bronze statue of Perseus before the carnival is over. Cellini, who is ambitious, brilliant and notoriously pressured, naturally says yes, even though he lacks both time and metal for the job.
Photo: Simon Van Rompey
More complications: Cellini is head over heels in love with Teresa, daughter of the Pope’s treasurer Balducci, who prefers to marry her off to Cellini’s rival in love and art. The young lovers’ escape attempt fails, and Cellini finds himself in a predicament where he must deliver the work of art – or else it will cost him his life. Guess whether he succeeds.
Cellini is actually a real person, and his autobiography La Vita is filled with stormy affairs, political intrigue, jealousy, fights and megalomania. The flamboyant Renaissance artist’s story immediately sparked the imagination of composer Hector Berlioz. The result was an opera about love, power games and artistic rivalry.
Photo: Simon Van Rompey
When I met theatre director Christina Scheppelmann and director Grassberger before the performance, they reminded me that you don’t always go to the opera to cry. Sometimes you just want to have fun. And there was plenty to enjoy. La Monnaie, one of Europe’s top opera houses, delivers a lavish, festive and colourful show in an extravagant carnival atmosphere.
The soloists are outstanding, with the wonderful Spanish soprano Ruth Iniesta as Teresa, who captivates the audience with her flirtatious coloratura. Cellini himself is sung with great energy by the American tenor and bel canto expert John Osborn.
Foto: Simon Van Rompey
Five stars from GOT TO SEE THIS for a quite fantastic production, which some international reviewers call visually overstimulated – without it detracting from my experience.
