What separates Rossini’s Il turco in Italia from the opera buffa crowd is the presence of the Pirandello-esque character of the poet Prosdocimo, who is writing the plot of the opera and interacting with its characters even as the plot unfolds onstage. Unlike most stagings, in which Prosdocimo hovers around the edges, Mariame Clément’s new production for Glyndebourne places him bang in the middle at his messy writing desk. As Prosdocimo imagines the characters, they glide in and out from the wings; their exaggeratedly colourful costumes change as he tears up what he’s written and starts again. While he is in control of his characters, they occasionally fight back to hilarious effect, as in the splendid patter trio when Narciso and Geronio threaten him that the result of his shenanigans may be “un poeta bastonato” (a beaten-up poet).
Giving a nod to the fact that Rossini and Felice Romani’s original opera is decidedly lampooning of the whole opera buffa genre, Clément goes one step further and lampoons modern creative writing and literary criticism courses, projecting a whole alternative story (written by Lucy Wadham) of the “creative process” going on inside Prosdocimo’s head. It’s brilliantly innovative, it’s hilarious and it’s remarkable in being completely consistent with the libretto. In muttered conversations in the interval, people were asking if this was the original opera: indeed it was, just with the addition of many visual cues (and a non-speaking role for Prosdocimo’s somewhat subversive girlfriend, acted entertainingly by Anna-Marie Sullivan). Clément obviously really relishes the comedy in the piece, providing us with a steady stream of visual gags – Rodion Pogossov, our Don Geronio, deserves some sort of award for best ever buffo singing accomplished while performing cheerleader manoeuvres with a string of sausages (for Act 2, designer Julia Hansen has transformed the stage into a lovingly crafted Italian deli).
It was all huge fun, served with a generous helping of top notch Rossinian bel canto. As Fiorilla, Elena Tsallagova not only looked and acted beautiful and flirtatious, but the runs and decorations cascaded out of her voice like water from a fountain sparkling on a sunny day: there’s no hint of a hard edge and each phrase has lovely shape and weight. Michele Angelini came close to matching that beauty of timbre and elegance of phrasing as her luckless cavalier servente Don Narciso: it’s a role that plays little part in the drama and was bolted on by Rossini when a star tenor became available shortly before the 1814 premiere of Il turco, and Angelini made it into rich entertainment.