Arrigo Boito (1842-1918)
Nerone, Tragedia in four acts
Nerone: Mikheil Sheshaberidze (tenor)
Simon Mago: Franco Vassalli (baritone)
Fanuèl: Roberto Frontali (baritone)
Asteria: Valentina Boi (soprano)
Rubria: Deniz Uzun (mezzo-soprano)
Coro del Teatro Lirico di Cagliari
Orchestra del Teatro Lirico di Cagliari/Francesco Cilluffo
rec. live, 16 February 2024, Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, Italy
Libretto & English translation available online
Naxos 8.660582-83 [2 CDs: 146]

Boito is nowadays remembered primarily for being Verdi’s librettist for Otello, Falstaff and the revision of Simon Boccanegra, and for his opera Mefistofele which still features fitfully in the repertoire. He died leaving Nerone unfinished; it was subsequently completed by two composers and Toscanini, who premiered it at La Scala in 1924 with a stunning cast including Rosa Raisa, Aureliano Pertile, Carlo Galeffi, Ezio Pinza and Marcel Journet. It was a success yet has been seen only rarely since – and then usually in concert or semi-staged form. Likewise it has received few recordings: there is a live performance on Cetra from 1957, a radio broadcast in 1975 under Gavazzeni and the one studio recording on Hungaroton from 1981 conducted by Eve Queler and not much else apart from a few excerpts, so this Naxos issue is obviously of interest  to any opera fan with a taste for late-Romantic Italian curiosities.

One reasons for its neglect might first reside in the fact that it demands a large cast of thirteen soloists – despite some doubling or even tripling of roles – yet no one in the opera is an especially sympathetic or properly developed character which vitiates the opportunities for empathy as the opera unfolds, and the plot often seems either incoherent or inconsequential. It also requires big-budget sets depicting tombs, a temple, a garden with a fountain, the Circus Maximus and a crypt – and even a horse-drawn cart. Other reasons are not so hard to find and an interesting conversation with the conductor reported in the notes identifies some of them. The composer himself called the work “too erudite to the point of becoming burdensome”; its themes of religious conflict, guilt and tyranny lack human interest. Conductor Cilluffo says, “Nerone cannot simply be defined as an opera; it is a series of experiences, a hypertext in which the suggestions are even too many, a huge number of cultural references.” In other words, I suggest, too pretentious and abstruse to be consistently entertaining. It is harmonically adventurous, through-composed, lacking “arias” as such and evidently much influenced by Wagner rather than Boito’s close associate, Verdi, in terms of both characterisation and music – although elements of Verdi’s craft are still apparent. Those features derived from greater composers are not in themselves necessarily disadvantageous but the absence of identifiable or memorable melody is more of a barrier and for the most part the music often meanders. To take one example: Simon Mago has a long quasi-aria in Act I, “Gloria al tuo Dio” which is ostensibly grand and declamatory, yet nothing about it sticks and there are too many passages which are – not to put too fine a point on it – boring, the product of “note-spinning”. Francesco Cilluffo confirms that “the vocal writing, overall…is very personal, without conventional arias” but also asserts more controversially “yet there are fascinating melodic passages”. Yes; they are there – but too sporadically.

The opening, however, is highly atmospheric with a chorus of female voices in the distance presenting an immediately dramatic situation as the matricide Nero seeks absolution in a ceremony burying his mother’s ashes. The three male voices we first hear are Georgian Mikheil Sheshaberidze’s substantial if rather grainy and occasionally strained tenor, solid baritone Franco Vassalli and grave bass Dongo Kim. Unfortunately, I take little pleasure in Valentina Boi’s screechy, wobbly soprano; her vibrato is excessive and her tone harsh – a pain in the ears. Much better is the steadier and sweeter Deniz Uzun, only it is curious that she sounds more like a soprano than Boi and the reverse is also true. Veteran baritone Roberto Frontali as the Christian leader Fanuèl is a known quality but is also rather too old for that role.

Nobody has much to sing which has a sustained line or a recognisable tune. In truth, I find some of it tedious, although sudden little moments demonstrate a teasing invention and potential, such as the highly Wagnerian orchestral passage linking tracks 8 and 9 leading to the climax in which Nero is borne in a triumphal procession and which demonstrates Boito’s gift for apotheosis – as was demonstrated in the Prologue to Mefistofele. That is an opera I love and have surveyed but by the time Nerone was written – at least, four acts of it, even if he intended a fifth –  Boito had somewhat over-refined his style to a point whereby it had become stilted, archaic and without memorability.

However, my ear is caught in the opening of Act II both by some more interesting music and the tenor of the young Ukrainian singer Vassily Solodkyy as the young disciple Gobrias. These and other flashes of interest are not, however, sufficient to sustain the listener’s attention over the next two acts, which seem to unfold almost randomly. Part of that failure is no doubt due to the fact that Boito tinkered with the score for decades but died before he could impose unity upon it, leaving the three collaborators who undertook its completion to guess at his intentions.

I confess that I found listening to it for the purposes of this review something of a chore; I returned to key passages several times in case I was missing something but having done so, I do not now feel motivated to revisit it. Perhaps this is one for the completist, but for me, life is too short.

Ralph Moore

Other cast
Tigellino: Dongo Kim (bass)
Gobrias: Vassily Solodkyy (tenor)
Dositèo/Oracle: Antonino Giacobbe (baritone)
Perside/Cerinto/First Woman’s Voice: Natalia Gavrilan (mezzo-soprano)
A Temple Slave/First Wayfarer/A Tenor Voice: Fiorenzo Tornincasa (tenor)
Second Wayfarer/The Slave-admonisher/A Bass voice: Nicola Ebau (bass)
Second Woman’s Voice: Francesca Zanatta (soprano)
Third Woman’s Voice: Luana Spinola (mezzo-soprano)

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