Written in 1819 and belonging to the opera seria chapter of Rossini’s career, the florid score of La donna del lago doesn’t so much respond to as resist its unabashedly romantic libretto. Within twenty years of the opera’s composition Sir Walter Scott’s Highland epics had spawned a further two dozen operatic spin-offs, but far from venturing onto psychodramatic territory as Donizetti did in Lucia di Lammermoor, Rossini only seldom permits the emotional immediacy of an unadorned vocal line. The ensemble numbers yield only fleeting moments of self-contemplation for the characters to examine their actions and it is mostly in the orchestration, continued in the vein of Rossini’s Otello and a world removed in many places from the customary sunshine and verve of his comedies, that a genuinely dramatic urgency is to be heard. Ultimately Rossini’s cautious classical instincts prove dramatically fatal as there is not enough thematic material to go around the cast and characters are often found expressing violently conflicting sentiments to the same recurring musical strains.
While the score may well be more sympathetically appreciated as a vehicle for a first-rate bel canto cast, there can be no talking in relative terms of the level required; Rossini’s ruthlessly difficult vocal writing spares no mercies and demands luxury casting for each of the four big roles. The cast fielded for this production all tried valiantly but, with one exception, came repeatedly unstuck. As Elena, the female lead and titular lady of the lake chased across the Scottish Highlands by three amorous suitors, Malena Ernman got the better of her coloratura runs by the opera’s closing rondo, the first and somewhat belated moment in the entire opera when the role did not sound like a poor fit for her voice. Her congested timbre disappeared in ensembles and earthy low notes stuck out weirdly in writing not specifically intended to show off this register, while the agility needed for all the virtuosic roulades, which are strewn liberally throughout the opera, was missing until the end.
As Uberto, Elena’s first admirer and King James V of Scotland travelling incognito, Luciano Botelho showed an old school Rossini tenor sound which tended towards stringiness when under strain and succumbed to an unhealthy strangled tone for the cruel demands of the Act II trio (written for the singular abilities of Giovanni David, the flowery running jumps taken up to repeated top Cs were cut by Rossini when he moved to Paris, as might also have been wise here). Veteran Rossini tenor Gregory Kunde, singing Rodrigo, the handsome rebel warrior Elena’s parents would prefer her to marry, was on deafeningly heroic form befitting his dim strong-man character, but sounded oddly hoarse in his more tender arioso singing. Varduhi Abrahamyan’s turn in the breeches role of Malcolm, Elena’s one true and rather reticent love, was the only leading performance not in need of qualifying beyond occasionally questionable Italian; her smoky mezzo had appealing vocal presence to it in the lyric numbers and negotiated the omnipresent fioritura frills with the most ease of all the cast. Maurizio Muraro threw his patriarchal weight around as Elena’s overbearing father with invariably booming tone and Bénédicte Tauran was fine as Elena’s unprepossessing confidante Albina.