At long last, vindication is at hand for an Oscar-winning composer who sought to prove he was just as capable of breathing life into Italy’s grand theaters as gritty Hollywood films.
Naples’ Teatro San Carlo yesterday evening staged composer Ennio Morricone’s only opera, Partenope, three full decades after its composition. It is inspired by the mythical siren who drowned herself after failing to enchant Ulysses, her body washing ashore and becoming a settlement that grew over millennia into the seaside city of Naples.
When Morricone wrote Partenope in 1995, he was already the world-famous creator of the theme to the spaghetti Western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and haunting soundtracks for epic films such as The Untouchables and Once Upon a Time in America.
Photo: AP
He earned an Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2007, but his compositions never resounded in the hallowed halls of opera houses — viewed in his home country as the elite musical echelon. To his great chagrin, Partenope gathered dust for decades; Morricone died without seeing it performed.
“In the end, he read as a sign of destiny the fact he would not make his debut in the opera world,” said Alessandro De Rosa, a close collaborator who coauthored Morricone’s autobiography. “I’m sure that if he were alive now, he would have taken the challenge, and would have dialogued with the orchestra and the director, tirelessly, like a young kid.”
Director Vanessa Beecroft and conductor Riccardo Frizza had to find their way through the visionary work without the benefit of those notes.
“It would have been wonderful to be able to talk to Morricone about his musical choices... but we had to understand them from what he left us and tried to interpret them in the best way,” Frizza said.
For instance, Frizza said he chose not to use violins in this orchestra, instead favoring flutes, harps and horns, which appear in Greek mythology.
“Then you have the modern instruments, lots of percussion, with the Neapolitan sounds provided by tambourines and putipu,” he added, referencing a friction drum used in local folk music.
Teatro San Carlo on Thursday evening was filled with anticipation, as Neapolitans attended an open rehearsal. Free tickets were snapped up in just a few hours.
The mythical Partenope is part of Naples’ culture, with tradition suggesting her voice represents the city’s enduring spirit. The original Greek settlement was named for her. She is depicted at monuments such as the Fontana della Sirena, a fountain that has become one of the city’s symbols. Young children all along the Gulf of Naples, living under Mount Vesuvius’ shadow, learn the legend of Partenope from their parents.
Like Morricone’s opera, Naples itself spent decades downtrodden and overlooked, but is enjoying resurgence: The UN recognized its pizza makers as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity; it was featured on foreign media lists of must-visit destinations; writer Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels were acclaimed bestsellers that became an HBO series; and its soccer team in 2023 took home the nation’s top league trophy for the first time since Maradona played in the 1980s, then won again in May.
Naples has also been celebrating its 2,500th anniversary this year, and Morricone’s opera marks the culmination of festivities. The protagonist in his adaptation is a woman who, after her husband dies and she is separated from her best friend, refuses the consolation of being transformed into a distant constellation. Instead, she asks the gods to let her stretch her wings along the gulf on which an immortal city will arise.
The production explores the link between the ancient legend and the modern city’s identity, as two sopranos embody Partenope simultaneously, reflecting her dual nature as body and myth.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS