The share of foreign guest musicians has noticeably shrunk in the difficult realities of today’s Ukraine. Nevertheless, the tours of Italian performers are on the rise thanks to the efforts of the Italian Institute of Culture in Ukraine and personally its director Nicola Franco Balloni. In particular, with the support of the Italian Embassy and this institute, the National Philharmonic Society is holding a series of programs aptly titled “Suono Italiano” (“Italian Sound”) throughout the concert season. Celebrated Italian musicians perform classical and contemporary pieces of mostly (but not always) Italian origin.
Every concert has some special appeal and is a true musical event. The soiree held the other day in the Mykola Lysenko Hall of Columns was no exception. Its undeniable leader was the well-known baritone and mentor Davide Rocca. A winner of many prestigious international competitions, he is a renowned expert in baroque-era operatic music and quite a valued and sought-after repetiteur for opera buffa interpretation. The singer’s repertoire is impressive: from Claudio Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (he debuted in the part of Ottone in 1993 on the Fiesola Music School’s operatic stage) to contemporary chamber pieces and compositions by Ennio Morricone. No wonder then that Rocca has performed at the most prestigious theaters and concert halls of Switzerland, Algeria, Turkey, the US, Egypt, Lebanon, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Greece, etc. He makes a lot of tours across Italy and has repeatedly come out on the stage of the famous La Scala. Rocca is soon going to Brazil to teach.
The initiative to invite maestro Rocca to Kyiv belongs to Zoia Rozhok, a National Opera soprano. She has been teaching vocalism for several years at the Solo Singing Department of the National Music Academy of Ukraine. The singer never tires of improving her performing mastery and attends master classes of world celebrities. For example, past year she attended Davide Rocca’s master class and hit upon the idea of a joint performance. The project found support in Ukraine. A few days before the concert, Rocca held four master classes for National Music Academy students and astonished the audience with his devotion and aspiration to conveying a true emotion and penetrate into the inner world of heroes.
The Ukrainian-Italian duet was accompanied by the Symphonic Pop Orchestra of Ukraine directed and conducted by Mykola Lysenko. You will agree that it takes a great responsibility to stand as conductor in a hall named after your acclaimed great-great-grandfather and perform the music in which each note is familiar to everybody. And you must not just accompany but be a “tuning fork” of sorts, a “storage battery,” and an “engine” at the same time. The orchestra began the program with the overture to Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro and continued with a brilliant performance of three more: to Don Giovanni by Mozart, La Forza del Destino by Verdi, and The Barber of Seville by Rossini. Although the orchestra has just come back from a difficult tour of eastern Ukraine, it is in an excellent shape and was a worthy partner to the singers.
The soloists sang by turns the arias and duets from Mozart’s oeuvres (Rocca was once trained to sing his works at the Pescara Music Academy) and Italian classics (Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi). The vocalist was artistic, expressive, mobile, pliable, ingenuous. Having a flawless diction, he seemed to be singing easily, without any tension, although it was difficult in reality – the singer was at his best in the aria of Bertolo in The Barber of Seville, when his patter made your heart almost sink. In duets he was “turning on” his partner, but she was sensitive and responsive and readily responded to his minutest “demands” (sometimes she was even overdoing it with mimics). They drew the heaviest applause for the duet of Violetta and Germont in Verdi’s La Traviata, where a fragile heroine shows a surprising strength of spirit and self-sacrificingness, while Germont displays a sermonizing attitude and meanness disguised as paternal care. In general, Zoia Rozhok showed a professional singing manner and expressiveness (a coquettish Zerlina, a perky Rosina, a tender and credulous Gilda, etc.).
On the whole, this concert had several goals to achieve: first of all, to bring about an esthetic delight, which was done successfully (the proof of this was a thunderous ovation the singers got from the grateful audience at the end). Secondly, this was an excellent school for opera buffs about the particularities of Italian sounding, breathing, phrasing, etc. Signor Davide Rocca showed a true “Italian sound” and promised not only to tell the world the truth about this country, but also to come back here again.
Iryna Sikorska is a musicologist
