Classical music and jazz: Preview - Rossini's Il Turco at the Royal Opera House
Published: 8 April 2010
by HELEN LAWRENCE
ROSSINI'S Il Turco in Italia is an extraordinary piece. Not so much for its music – Rossini’s familiar formula, never less than charming but not especially memorable – but for the story.
Written in 1814 when Rossini was only 22, it is an eye-opener on the social mores of the time, a bedroom farce as amoral and licentious as anything one might find on TV today.
In an added twist reminiscent of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, the author observes the characters’ antics like a puppet master, to construct his next play.
The controlled anarchy is brilliantly played for all its worth in the Royal Opera House’s first revival of the 2005 production by
Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier.
The production is updated to the 1960s with simple
cheap and cheerful sets, colourful costumes, cars and scooters.
Not so much La Dolce Vita (as suggested in the programme) as Marx
brothers meet Coronation Street.
The large cast are exemplary, led by the superb Thomas Allen as the “author”, with Ildebrando d’Arcangelo as the handsome Turk; Aleksandra Kurzak as Fiorilla – think “a singing Barabara Windsor”; Alessandro Corbelli as her bumbling, cuckolded old husband; and Colin Lee as her lover.
The Royal Opera House chorus and orchestra, led by Maurizio Benini, provide brilliant support.
• Il Turco in Italia is at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, until April 19, 7.30pm,
To book call 020 7304 4000 or see www.roh.org.uk