“Toscanini Was a Meanie”
If you’re seeking an evening of beautiful concert music built
around scattered personal comments by a great conductor, you might be
interested in the latest offering from Ensemble for the Romantic Century, now
playing at the Duke on 42nd Street. This company, whose continuing creative forces
are writer/pianist Eve Wolf, director Donald T. Sanders, and set and costume
designer Vanessa James, has returned with Maestro, another of its unique concert cum dramatic
presentations. These are usually built around a famous musical, literary, or
visual genius, the current subject being Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957). However, while musically masterful, it's also dramatically dreary.
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| John Noble. Photo: Shirin Tinati. |
The stage—suitably lit by Beverly Emmons and Sebastian Adamo—is
set up with musicians’ chairs and music stands, as well as old-fashioned Victrolas, along with a minimum of locale-defining
furniture: a desk, desk chair, and upholstered, green leather chair. At stage right
is a grand piano placed before a windowed wall over which a projected verbal ribbon
occasionally runs by. It shows lyrics to the recorded singing occasionally being
played or presents information related to film clip projections (compiled by
David Bengali) that often dominate the rest of the upstage area.
At times, you may find yourself so intent on the historically
interesting clips that you neglect to look over to the titles explaining them. Some
projections, however, are often little more than abstractions meant to express
the emotional states suggested by the music. Their vagueness does little one
way or the other to justify their existence.
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| John Noble. Photo: Shirin Tinati. |
Veteran John Noble (Denethor in The Lord of the Rings trilogy), made up to resemble the fiery conductor
with his familiar mustache (but minus Toscanini’s goatee) and a white,
phony-looking, overly abundant, leonine wig, is first seen conducting a
rehearsal in 1949 with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. As an orchestral recording
of Verdi’s Aida is heard, we, the
audience, become Toscanini’s musician-victims, being tongue lashed as he points
to individuals among us (think J.K. Simmons in Whiplash). It seems that Toscanini was a meanie whose dictatorial streak toward his own musicians contrasts ironically with the disgust he eventually expresses regarding the
fascist dictators of Italy and Germany, whose grasp he escaped by immigrating
to America.
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| John Noble. Photo: Shirin Tinati. |
You’d be better off reading Toscanini’s Wikipedia entry than
seeing Maestro if you’re principally
interested in learning about his life. A few basic facts are conveyed,
including his sexually frigid relationship with his wife—to whom he remained
married until she died—and his philandering, mainly with his longtime mistress,
the much younger Ada Mainardi.
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| John Noble. Photo: Shirin Tinati. |
Chiefly, however, the content concerns his reaction to Europe’s
growing crisis under Mussolini and Hitler, his public rejection of their
politics, his advocacy for Jewish musicians, and his move to America, where,
having bought a home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, New York, he became a major celebrity,
especially through his TV appearances.
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| Mari Lee, Henry Wang, Zhenni Li, Ari Evan, Matthew Cohen. Photo: Shirin Tinati. |
This being essentially a one-man piece, there’s no give and take with
others, not even in an epistolary way; there’s also practically nothing about
his musical ideas or conducting style. We take it for granted that he was a
great musician but have to read the extensive program notes to find out why.
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| John Noble. Photo: Shirin Tinati. |
Perhaps the deepest feeling the piece inspires comes from how some of the historical film clips echo contemporary American concerns. In particular, those showing the night in 1939 when 22,000 members of the German American Bund packed
Madison Square Garden cannot help but remind us us of certain present-day political rallies.
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| John Noble. Photo: Shirin Tinati. |
Noble, using a a wavering, indeterminate accent, plays the
maestro as an imperious, flamboyantly expressive man who wears his heart on his
sleeve. Given the dearth of what he has to say, though, and the absence of real
conflict, he never gives us a living man of flesh and blood. Instead, we get the colorful, theatrical stereotype of a high-strung, demanding artist.
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| Maximilian Morel. Photo: Shirin Tinati. |
What saves the event, as it did for earlier ERC productions,
is the music, exquisitely performed by a quartet of string virtuosi, Mari Lee,
Henry Wang, and Matthew Cohen on violin, and Ari Evan on cello, with Zhenni Li
doing wonders on the piano. Li and Maximilian Morel also share a memorable “Rhapsody
in Blue,” and Morel joins the others toward the end.
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| John Noble. Photo: Shirin Tinati. |
The small orchestra offers classical selections from—other
than Richard Wagner—an Italian composer-based repertory of Giuseppe Martucci,
Aldo Finzi, Ottorino Respighi, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Giuseppe Verdi, and
Guido Alberto Fano. No attempt, though,
is made to explain the relationship between any of these chamber music
performances and the life and work of Toscanini, whose métier was symphony orchestras.
Instead, regardless of any biographical significance it may have, the music
seems to have been chosen more for its emotional, not historical, connection to
the times through which the conductor lived.
Maestro runs over two hours, at which length it would
probably have bored even the maestro himself.
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
The Duke on 42nd St.
229 W. 42nd St.
Through February 9
