Opera Philadelphia’s ‘Nabucco’ (2nd review)

A poster from the 1842 world premiere of Nabucco, on display in the lobby of the Academy of Music, announces that members of the Austrian military are entitled to reduced ticket prices if they attend in their uniforms.

Imagine how these foreign soldiers must have reacted to what was presented on stage. Verdi and the librettist Temistocle Solera turned a Biblical story into a screed against the domination of Italians by foreign occupiers.

Essentially, the opera counseled the Italian people to throw off the tyranny of the Austrian Empire. Risorgimento—the Resurgence— was the political and social movement that eventually united the disparate states of the Italian peninsula into the Kingdom of Italy.

Nabucco portrays the plight of the Jews as they are conquered and exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian King Nabucco (in English, Nebuchadnezzar). Most of Verdi’s early operas (he was 29 at the time) concerned the subjugation of one people by another and exalted individual liberty. This passion made him a hero within the movement.

99 percent fiction

Its historic impact aside, Nabucco’s characters lack depth, and the music is less accomplished than what Verdi would write a few years hence. Ernani (1844) and Macbeth (1847) contain better arias and much-richer development of characters and ensembles.

What Nabucco does possess in abundance are choral numbers, most notably “Va, pensiero,” the lament of the Hebrew slaves, full of lines about “My homeland, now lost to me” and a plea to “Let the shackles around us be broken.”

The plot is 99 percent fictitious. Some of it was invented by the author of the Biblical Book of Daniel, who reported that Nebuchadnezzar briefly went mad during his reign. Actually, fragments from the Dead Sea scrolls say that it was Nebuchadnezzar’s father, Nabonidus, who was smitten by God with a fever for seven years.

Nebuchadnezzar, by contrast, lived in good health to a ripe old age. He ruled the Assyrian Empire and reigned from about 605 BCE to 562 BCE, during which time he built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and also destroyed the First Temple and deported Jerusalem’s Jewish population to Babylon. When he died he was succeeded by Amel-Marduk. There’s no record of his having been being deposed by any woman similar to the opera’s Abigaille.

Soldiers in the aisles

Most of Nabucco’s characters and their various machinations were concocted by the librettist, Solera. Verdi’s music, meanwhile, was formulaic. (In operas of that era, every aria had to end with a breakneck fast concluding cabaletta.)

So director/designer Thaddeus Strassberger was indeed clever to mount this Nabucco as a period piece. Austrian soldiers paraded down the aisles, while costumed ladies and gentlemen were ushered across the stage and prominently seated in two of the proscenium boxes. Strassberger’s sets towered in the spirit of Verdi’s time.

Csilla Boross, as Abigaille, who seizes power from the king, displayed an exciting voice that cut through the orchestra and chorus. Her high notes were thrilling, though her descents in octave leaps or in scale passages showed weakness at the bottom.

Half-ghost, full voice

Sebastian Catana was a sympathetic Nabucco with a nice voice, but he lacked the vocal or acting stature to suggest that he was the most powerful man on earth. When his character broke down and sang that he was a ghost of what he once was, I wished that Catana could have sung in a haunting half-voice to indicate that.

Morris Robinson was unusually fine as Zaccaria, the high priest of the Hebrews, singing three bass arias with firm tones from the top to the bottom of his range. The tenor Adam Diegel, in his local debut, displayed a ringing voice; and the experienced mezzo Margaret Mezzacappa and bass Musa Ngqungwana were excellent in their supporting roles. Corrado Rovaris conducted with the lilt and swagger that the score requires.♦


To read another review by Peter Burwasser, click here.
To read another review by Dan Rottenberg, click here.