34 2GM Monday May 23 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
T
he divas wore T-shirts
and the orchestra were
in jeans at Rome opera
house as rehearsals
began for Verdi’s Ernani,
which opens next month.
Rather than take to the stage,
which was closed for set
designers to get to work, the
singers sat in a box overlooking
the orchestra, standing up to belt
out arias when their cue came.
In another box perched two
orchestra members, one with a
large drum, the other with
cymbals. “We are still spreading
the orchestra out because of
Covid,” a staff member explained.
In his office Francesco
Giambrone, the general manager,
enthused about the decision to
propose Italian opera as a
candidate for Unesco recognition.
The long rehearsals for Ernani
were part of the reason, he said.
“What makes Italian opera
different is there are always two
to three weeks’ rehearsal before
an opera. They go much faster in
northern Europe — there’s opera
every night at Covent Garden,
which does a great service to
opera lovers, but here we perform
for ten days then shut down so wecan take time to rehearse the
next opera.”
Calling opera one of Italy’s
“most authentic and original
cultural expressions”, Dario
Franceschini, the culture
minister, launched the attempt to
get it put on Unesco’s
“intangible” culture list, which
includes the art of truffle hunting
and stilt jousting in Belgium.
“Naples pizza is already on the
list but opera is not,” Giambrone
said, raising an eyebrow. More
proof of the hard work going into
Ernani was evident behind the
shuttered stage, where staff
pepped up by tiny plastic cups of
espresso were hoisting scenery.
The team often use panels up
to 24 metres long that are still
hand-painted at the opera’s
workshop overlooking Circus
Maximus. “We are old
school — elsewhere
that is all printed,”
a stage hand
said.
The Unesco
candidacy is
motivated by
the fact that
opera was
invented in
Italy, in
Florence in
about 1600, and
the country has
produced greats
such as Puccini,
Rossini and Verdi.
Today Italy hosts 14 big opera
houses — “France has four orfive”, Giambrone said — and
another 27 decent-sized venues.
“In the 1860s even the smallest
town had a 60-seat opera theatre.
Verdi wrote a version of Aida
specially adapted for his small
home town,” he added.
Verdi’s operas fired Italian
unification in 1861 and he was so
loved that 300,000 people turned
out for his funeral procession.
Giambrone said the power of
opera then was not only about
the catchy tunes or patriotic
plots. “Opera helped to spread
the Italian language. It arrived in
villages thanks to arias. Locals
would speak dialect as well as the
new language of opera. That is
why opera is inside us.”
Can there be another language
that was propagated through
music? And what a language it is.
During a break from rehearsals,
Anastasia Bartoli, a soprano,
attempted to explain why it is the
natural tongue for opera. “It’s the
vowel sounds in Italian, they are
so rounded, they create what I
call a spherical sound,” she said.
In the wake of the pandemic
Bartoli is aiming to reach greater
heights with her voice now she
no longer has to sing with a mask
on during rehearsals: “It was like
a footballer being asked to play
with both legs tied together.”
As Italian opera now prepares
to be judged by Unesco’s
culture tsars,
Giambrone said it
was as fresh and
relevant as in
the 1860s.
“Opera is
about war,
peace, love
and jealousy
— totally
topical,” he
said. Crowds
are not what
they were, though.
“Somehow it
became elitist. I am in
favour of lowering prices
and relaxing dress codes — what
is wrong with flip-flops? The only
thing I ask is that people don’t let
their telephones ring when
Violetta dies in La traviata.”Tom Kington
ROMERome’s opera is one of 14 big
houses dotted across Italyto be judged
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osts 14big operaFROM OUR
CORRESPONDENT
Pizza has it, so do truffles, and now Rome
wants opera to be recognised by Unesco for
its unique contribution to Italian cultural life
A senior officer in Iran’s Revolutionary
Guard was killed by gunmen on motor-
cycles in Tehran yesterday in an attack
that bore the hallmark of Mossad.
The death of Colonel Hassan Sayad
Khodayari was confirmed by the Iranian
news agency Tasnim, which is linked to
the Revolutionary Guard. He was shot five
times as he sat in a car outside his home.
Intelligence sources said Khodayari was
one of the commanders of the Revolution-
ary Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force
over the past decade and was involved in
planning attacks against Israeli targets in
Europe, Africa and Latin America.
He was a close aide to the former com-
mander of Quds Force, General Qasem
Colonel Hassan Sayad
Khodayari was shot
in his car five timesBEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/GETTY IMAGESColonel shot dead by
hit squad in Tehran
Soleimani, who was killed by an American
airstrike in Baghdad in January 2020.
Iran blamed “elements linked to global
arrogance” — a reference to the US and
Israel — for the “terrorist act”. The Revo-
lutionary Guard described him as a
“defender of the sanctuary”, a term used
for those working for Iran in Syria or Iraq.
The Iranian state news agency IRNA
published pictures showing a man
slumped in the driver’s seat of a white car,
with blood around the collar of his blue
shirt and on his right arm. He was strapped
in with his seat belt and the front window
on the passenger side had been shot out.
Yesterday’s operation was similar to the
killing of Iranian nuclear scientists who
were shot in Tehran by suspected Mossad
agents on motorcycles. Mossad can carry
out such killings only on the explicit orders
of the Israeli prime minister.
Khodayari is believed to have been
linked to plans by the Revolutionary
Guard’s covert Unit 840 for a series of
murders in Europe, including of an Israeli
diplomat in Istanbul, an American general
in Germany and a French journalist.
Mossad uncovered the plans and interro-
gated a suspect at his home in Iran.The day of the dog Dogs enjoyed special treatment on Saturday on a pet-friendly bullet train from Tokyo to the
resort town of Karuizawa near Nagano in central Japan. Dogs usually have to travel in a carrier on the shinkansenIran
Anshel Pfeffer Jerusalem