Nabucco was Verdi's third work for the stage and proved his first great success when performed in 1842. It deals with the Hebrew's attempts to break free from the yoke of their Babylonian oppressors and is nowadays numbered among Verdi's most popular works, not least on account of its famous Chorus of Hebrew Slaves, which has one of the best-loved melodies in the whole history of opera.
Director: Tiziano Mancini
Conductor: Michele Mariotti
Stars: Leo Nucci, Bruno Ribeiro, Riccardo Zanellato, Dimitra Theodossiou, Anna Maria Chiuri, Alessandro Spina.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2651808/
(I'm using the year (2009) in the title from the set's booklet, the year this performance was captured. I'm not going to try to update IMDb, which is using the video premiere as the release date, probably according to their rules.)
3rd Verdi opera.
First performed at Teatro alla Scala, 1842.
Time: 587 BC
Place: Jerusalem and Babylon
Filmed at Teatro Regio di Parma.
Those are Nabucco and Abigaile (Nucci & Theodossiou) on the poster, and they illustrate my first gripe: the costumes. She's wearing a gown that might be of ancient design (although that one looks more medieval Europe than ancient Babylon to me), but he's dressed to work in a sweatshop in early 20th century New York. But the problem is bigger: the entire chorus is dressed in sweatshop-ready garb, complete with neckties of middle-20th century design. It's as though to get a job in the chorus, you had to provide your own drab black dress (women) or black suit, white shirt, black daytime tie (men). I'd like to have gotten over it, but I ran this opera several times, and every time I saw those clothes, I winced. The primary characters were all dressed for ancient times; the chorus modern.
L.Nucci (b. 1942) is a long-established star with an huge discography, mostly of audio recordings, with some of the biggest stars of the last 40 years. Apparently this is one of his signature roles, and the audience gave him an appropriate response. But D.Theodossiou (Abigaille) was the superstar, and the notes she hit, and her acting, justified that. The audience roared and showered her with individual roses during curtain calls.
The story has some similarity to Aida (premieres 1871), in that royal princess is being held captive as a slave, is in requited love with a dignitary of her captors, and has a bitter rival (Abigaille) who does bad things in part to blackmail the love interest to switching to her team. But here, the rivals are sisters, both daughters of King Nabucco... until Abigaille finds out she's really not his daughter, but the child of slaves brought up to believe she's part of the family. The biggest plotpoint, however, is that Nabucco goes crazy, and Abigaille is able to seize power, for a while.
From the Great Course: writing Va pensiero, the great choral song, and the workmen's reaction during rehearsal, is what hooked Verdi back into composing. It's well-done here, but the acting and training of the Met Opera chorus (see video linked above) is vastly superior.
The video director got cute, and showed off some video trickery that was inappropriate: overlaying one camera angle atop another. So we got 2 views of a soloist blended together for several seconds. It was NOT just a transition, but a gimmick to make things "fresh", or something. Just made me aware there was a director mucking with my experience.
Per the 2012 featurette, without naming the source of world-wide most-performed rankings, this is 4th among Verdi's operas, 17th among all operas. (On the other hand, I found another source-less list of the top 100, and Nabucco was absent. Operabase Statistics)
Ran this multiple times, and never got pulled into watching it well.
The conductor is adorable: young, energetic, humble.
Unitel, cond. Mariotti; 7
