Exactly fifty years separate these two compositions, 1909 and 1959 respectively, but the two female characters could not be more different: one, in Il segreto di Susanna, seeks emancipation by smoking, a man's bad habit; the other, in La voix humaine, cannot emancipate herself from her man and is prey to desperation, abandoned by her beloved. Two different variations of the female universe: the first at the beginning of the century and now utterly outdated, the second more striking with its relevant concerns about attitudes towards women highlighted in the press.
Having as a prototype La serva padrona, with which it is sometimes paired, Susanna's Secret is Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's sixth work. The composer was born in Venice to a German father and an Italian mother from whom he took their respective surnames and he split his career between his hometown and Munich. This fine-tuned chamber music jewel debuted in the Bavarian capital in German as Susannes Geheimnis and since then it has been the most performed work of a composer whose style remains far away from both the contemporary atonal experiences of the Viennese School and from the Verismo which dominated in the Italian musical theatre.
As in Pergolesi's intermezzo, here too we have a couple: two aristocratic newlyweds, Count Gil and Countess Susanna (the wink to Mozart is certainly not unwanted). Even a mute servant is present, who has a pivotal part in the action. The same domestic quarrels, outbursts of rage, misunderstandings and inevitable final reconciliation form the feeble plot of this tiny opera. The subject, that at the beginning of the 20th century was telling of the first feminist claims, is much less relevant in 2018.
The production now at Teatro Regio di Torino was created at the Opéra Comique in Paris in 2013. Ludovic Lagarde's staging is bland and Antoine Vasseur's scenery – a completely white modern, minimalist environment washed by Sébastian Michaud's coloured lights – doesn't help to make the plot more plausible. The director makes the mistake of immediately unveiling the woman's "secret", showing her from the very beginning addicted to cigarettes supplied by the over-zealous servant. The whole performance was thus transformed into an exaltation of tabagism, while in the music the message is much subtler and is delivered to a delicate chromatic theme that passes from the flute to the violin to the clarinet suggesting the spiralling smoke that rises from Madame's forbidden cigarette.
Conducting the resident orchestra, Diego Matheuz counterbalanced the "German" instrumental preciousness with the melodious Italian bel canto of the score: themes that anticipate Zerbinetta's theme in Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos act in sequence with lyrical outbursts that would not be displeasing to Puccini. On stage, together with actor Bruno Danjoux, the servant Sante whose interventions are peppered of a light humor, there were Vittorio Prato, who lent his beautiful light baritone timbre to the jealous husband with a sensitive smell for smoke, and Anna Caterina Antonacci, whose vocal presence was a bit too prominent for the wife, traditionally a light soprano role.
Antonacci is much more credible in Francis Poulenc's tragédie lyrique in one act based on Jean Cocteau's text, the signature role of the greatest actresses of the last century – just two names: Ingrid Bergman and Anna Magnani – in theatres, at the movies and in opera houses, starting with soprano Denise Duval who created the operatic character in Paris. Antonacci has sung this role in many different productions.
Lagarde's work also proves to be much more convincing in this second work. As the curtain rises after the intermission, we are in the same environment as before, but now it is flooded with white lights, and it's rotating, so you can follow the comings and goings of Elle, here obviously on a modern cordless, from one room to another of her apartment, the bedroom dominated by a refrigerator filled to the brim with bottles of mineral water(!), the bathroom with water flowing inside a bath that never fills, the living room. On the walls there are large video-paintings showing details of female eyes streaked with tears.
Antonacci's performance once again proved skilful: the music seems to come from the words themselves, articulated with an identification and an expressiveness that never alters the perfect diction of her French, while Matheuz' orchestra masterfully delivers this succession of cleverly measured breaks and outbursts of despair alternating with declarations of love. The Turin audience responded warmly to the performance of the singers and of the director, who were joined by Vittorio Prato and Bruno Danjoux in the final curtain calls.
Della condizione femminile in due atti unici del '900
Esattamente cinquant'anni separano queste due composizioni, 1909 e 1959 le date dei rispettivi debutti. I due personaggi femminili sono donne che più diverse non potrebbero essere: una, quella di Il segreto di Susanna, cerca l'emancipazione nel fumo, vizio principalmente maschile; l'altra, quella di La voix humaine, dall'uomo non riesce invece a emanciparsi ed è preda della disperazione per l'abbandono dell'amato. Due diverse declinazioni dell'universo femminile: la prima, quella di inizio secolo è del tutto inattuale, la seconda, quella di Poulenc, una sua attualità invece ce l'ha, con i casi di violenze sulle donne che costellano la nostra cronaca.