Opera Philadelphia’s ‘Nabucco’ (3rd review)

I used to adore Verdi’s Nabucco. The Biblical story, the rousing Verdi choruses, the moving “Va, Pensiero” chorus of the Hebrew slaves, a universal anthem for oppressed peoples everywhere— what’s not to like?

One performance in Philadelphia years ago was all I needed to buy a recording (Riccardo Muti conducting, Renato Scotto as Abigaille), which I’ve happily played at home ever since, most recently last week.

Of course my fondness for Nabucco was nurtured back in the blissfully ignorant days before supertitles were projected above the stage— a time when your ears and eyes could revel in the sights and sounds of an opera without focusing too closely on the words emanating from the singers’ mouths.

Not until this week’s Opera Company production of Nabucco, with supertitles that clearly explained the libretto, did I realize what a convoluted and contrived mess this story is. Consider:

Irrelevant hostage

As Nabucco’s invading Assyrian army approaches Jerusalem, the Israelites’ high priest Zaccaria assures the terrified Hebrews that he possesses a powerful negotiating card: Nabucco’s younger daughter Fenema, whom Zaccaria is holding hostage.

Zaccaria barely finishes explaining his strategy when Nabucco’s soldiers burst into the city and begin slaughtering the locals without even inquiring as to Fenema’s health or whereabouts.

Notwithstanding the Assyrians’ blood lust, they inexplicably refrain from killing Zaccaria or the Israelite military leader Ismaele, thereby enabling Zaccaria to spend the rest of the opera scolding the Assyrians for their criminal behavior.

Even before Nabucco’s army arrives, his evil older daughter Abigaille somehow manages to slip into the temple in Jerusalem, there to confess her love for Ismaele, who’s in love with Fenema. It’s a great potential love triangle— two Assyrian sisters fighting over a Hebrew general— but Ismaele promptly fades into the woodwork for pretty much the rest of the opera.

Like Clarence Thomas

In the second act, several months later, Nabucco trots off to war again and makes Fenema regent queen of Assyria in his absence, thereby arousing the not illogical jealousy of her older sister, Abigaille. But then Abigaille discovers that she’s not Nabucco’s blood daughter at all— she’s a slave by birth, whom Nabucco has adopted.

Why did Nabucco adopt Abigaille in the first place? Don’t ask.

You might think Abigaille would feel grateful to have been made a princess instead of a slave. But Abigaille reacts to this news of her good fortune by vowing to destroy her own kingdom— sort of like Clarence Thomas, who’s still bitter at Yale Law School for admitting him as an affirmative action student.

Converts to Judaism

Meanwhile, the queen regent, Fenema— presumably annoyed at her adoptive sister Abigaille for hogging the spotlight— inexplicably embraces Judaism, which is sort of like Binyamin Netanyahu converting to Islam. Exactly why Jehovah makes a better god than Baal, like so much else in Nabucco, is never made clear.

Nabucco, meanwhile, goes temporarily mad, and he too embraces Jehovah, forfeiting the loyalty of his soldiers, who lock him up. But when Nabucco sings to the Hebrew god Jehovah, “You are the one true god almighty, and I’ll adore you evermore,” his soldiers— who just imprisoned him for such sacrilege— inexplicably set him free.

(If I’ve used the word inexplicably to excess, forgive me. Nabucco ought to be subtitled Inexplicable City.)

Evil beauty

The good news is that great music and compelling performances ultimately distracted me from the supertitles, which is how opera should work. My attention, like most everyone else’s in the Academy of Music, was ultimately commanded by the Hungarian soprano Csilla Boross, who played Abigaille as a combination of Iago and Cruella de Vil— an irredeemably evil beauty whose compelling presence dominated the stage, wielding every physical weapon at her disposal— her snarling voice, her imposing body, her formidable bazooms— like lethal weapons.

I found myself remembering Justino Diaz’s mesmerizing performance years ago as another famously evil figure, Baron Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca. At intermission that night I overheard one Philadelphia matron gush to another, “That Justino Diaz can conspire against me any day!” Which is sort of how I felt about Csilla Boross.♦


To read another review by Peter Burwasser, click here.
To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.