On February 27, the Sofia Opera thrilled audiences with the opening night of another spectacular new production: Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff. The spectacular production team behind this triumph included: Conductor Grigor Palikarov, Director Marco Gandini, Set Designer Italo Grassi, Costume Designer Anna Biagiotti, Chorus Master Violeta Dimitrova. The production's wit and sophistication, functional set design, stunning costumes, active, intelligent acting, and detailed theatrical and musical realization, make this a not to be missed event.

Days before the premiere, the esteemed Italian director Marco Gandini, a student and associate director of iconic Italian director Franco Zeffirelli and honorable British director Graham Vick, spoke to Radio Bulgaria.

His resume boasts stage work in the world's most renowned theatres, including the Teatro alla Scala, the Rome Opera House, the San Carlo in Naples, the Arena di Verona, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Marinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, the Kremlin Theatre in Moscow, and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens.

Maestro Gandini's experience with Falstaff includes a total of four productions. The first dates back to 2010 at the Rome Opera. This was followed by a production in Tokyo with Japanese artists. The production was so successful that it was immediately taken to the Teatro della Maestranza in Seville, Spain. This is the first time a Japanese opera production has been engaged by a major European theatre. In Seville, Marco Gandini met the Bulgarian baritone Kiril Manolov, whose performance as Falstaff was magnificent. The director's third realization was in collaboration with the Budapest Festival Orchestra. In Sofia is his fourth and brand new production of Falstaff, which is absolutely special for Maestro Gandini, because it brings together all the experiences of the previous ones.

This is Marco Gandini's second time in Bulgaria after last year's production of Luigi Cherubini's Médée, which he conducted for the first time in this country. When asked how he felt then and how he feels now, he answers with a smile:

"I feel very good! It was a great honor for me to stage Medea - such an emotional and complex opera, at the National Opera Theatre in Sofia. My feeling was absolutely positive from the beginning, because I was sure that the singers here in Sofia have a deep knowledge of Greek mythology and a deep understanding of this myth of Medea in particular. I absolutely thank Maestro Plamen Kartalov for thinking of me for this important production and this important debut.

My feeling now, after the success of Medea, is that we are like a family: the relationship with the stage, the singers, the technical staff, the chorus is very beautiful. It is almost as if we have done many productions together. There is a mutual trust and respect. I really appreciate the performance of the stage crew, the technicians, the chorus and the orchestra, led here by Maestro Grigor Palikarov, who is becoming like a friend to me. He is one of the most distinguished Bulgarian conductors, I like his work, his musicality... honestly, it seems as if we have known each other for a long time, not as if this is the first time we are working together. We don't even have to talk because we have the same feeling for music. And that is very easy and beautiful because everything goes straight, fluidly, without interruption, so we go straight to the point. He is a great maestro and I hope to work with him again in the future."

In his 40-year career, Gandini has worked with many Bulgarians, and it is with pleasure and respect that he remembers the great Bulgarian singers he has met on world stages. First and foremost is Raina Kabaivanska - he says he will always carry her in his heart. They met in the early 1990s at a revival of a historical production of Tosca. It was his first time directing, he was very young, and Kabaivanska was very supportive. The production was a great success.

Another unforgettable experience for the director was againTosca at the Rome Opera with Kabaivanska and Pavarotti. Gandini recalls with delight his meetings with Svetla Vassileva, Sonya Yoncheva and his "dear friend Orlin Anastassov," of whom he says: "In Italy we were all fascinated by his artistic presence and his beautiful voice. He says that the late Ghena Dimitrova was amazing in Italy in the 1980s and especially in the 1990s. He boldly claims that operas such as Turandot, Gioconda, Tosca, Nabucco have never had a greater performer than the Bulgarian soprano. Last but not least, he remembers Nicolai Ghiaurov, with whom he worked three times, all in La Boheme with Mirella Freni.

"Maestro Gyaurov was incredible, a kind of "shaman". He could enchant anyone with his voice. What was striking about him was his voice, of course, but also his enormous modesty! He was very humble - a quality that I think has practically disappeared in today's so-called big stars. 

I remember an amusing episode at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. I was there with Zeffirelli staging Carmen. There was an Italian-American singing teacher at the service entrance with one of his students, a girl. As Nicholas came out, the teacher, all excited, said to his student, "Do you see this gentleman? He is Mirella Freni's husband." I was shocked! I guessed the student might have been be a soprano, so that's why the teacher spoke like this. But I jumped up and scolded the teacher in Italian, saying, "How dare you speak like that? And what are you pretending to teach your student when you don't even know that this gentleman is the greatest bass in the world and you don't even introduce him as such!

Freni and Gyaurov were an amazing couple! Loving each other, they were two gigantic artists and two wonderful, simple people. In this particular episode, Nikolai intervened, stopped the discussion and told me very calmly and smilingly, with his deep, warm and soothing voice, "Marco, it doesn't matter, forget it, I'm happy to be Freni's husband!" I almost cried. In this way he showed with the utmost humility his great respect and love for his wonderful wife and great singer Mirella Freni. I really learned a lot from that episode."

"For this edition of Falstaff, we have two exceptional casts of singers," says Marco Gandini of the contemporary Bulgarian voices the audience will hear in his new production, "When I say exceptional, I don't just mean the individual voices, but also the homogeneity of the group, that is, how all the voices work together. So one cast is very exceptional and the other cast is equally exceptional. They give a fantastic performance. We must not forget that Falstaff is a very difficult opera from a musical point of view - not so much vocally, but in terms of rhythmic precision and the quality of phrasing. The theater management has chosen the best singer for each role. Even the performers of the most comic roles are truly phenomenal. We laugh all the time, every time they do something different, so it's pure joy to watch them".

What struck Marco Gandini about the quality of the Bulgarian voices was the distinctive vocal weight. There is something massive and full-bodied about these voices that creates a kind of gravitational force.

The director recalls a prophetic interview with Renata Tebaldi in the 1970s, in which the great prima donna predicted that the future would see fewer powerful voices like those of the singers of the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, she warned, there would be "vocine" - Italian for "little voices". And indeed, today we are witnessing this shift in the world's great opera houses, where a certain type of vocality and technique is slowly disappearing.

In contemporary Bulgarian singers, however, Gandini finds that classic vocal quality - a rich, resonant voice with real weight. "That's what I admire," he says. "I love not only hearing the voice but feeling it resonate in my body."

Photos: Marco Gandini's Personal Archive, BTA, operasofia.bg

Posted in English by E. Radkova