Rossini: Semiramide – Zedda

Somewhere around the second act, when the shade of Nino finally rises from the tomb and the chorus recoils in terror, you remember why Rossini thought of this score as his farewell to Italy — and why it has always resisted easy conquest. Semiramide is a monster of an opera, nearly four hours in its complete form, stuffed with coloratura that would break a lesser company in half. This release, taken live in Ghent, does not break. It flies.

Start with Alberto Zedda, who has spent a career — the better part of sixty years — rescuing Rossini from the cuts, interpolations, and plain vandalism that accumulated over a century and a half of rendition tradition. Here he leads what is essentially the full score, longueurs and all, including the Idreno-Azema music that most conductors still toss overboard without a second thought. The wonder is that nothing sags. Zedda shapes the piece with an architect’s eye; the overture’s famous horn writing has real bloom, real weight, and by the time we reach the great Act One finale the whole structure feels inevitable rather than merely long. There is a sweep to it that is almost — dare one say — Wagnerian, which sounds like critical heresy applied to Rossini but is meant, here, as the highest compliment. Pacing is everything in this opera, and Zedda understands that better than almost anyone conducting today.

Myrtò Papatanasiu’s Semiramide announces herself early — that first ensemble, where the queen must cut through a stage full of massed voices, and she does, cleanly, with a sound that has steel in it but never turns metallic. This is not a voice of Sutherland-ish opulence; no cushion of sheer vocal luxury to hide behind. What she offers instead is precision: ornaments that mean something, phrases shaped with intelligence rather than generic prettiness. “Bel raggio lusinghier” could easily become a vocal obstacle course performed for its own sake. Papatanasiu makes it an expression of hope, fragile and then triumphant, the fioritura arriving as emotional necessity rather than decoration bolted on afterward. I confess I didn’t know her name before encountering this performance. I will be watching for it now.

Ann Hallenberg’s Arsace is, if anything, even more complete. Few mezzos alive have this particular combination — the bel canto craft, yes, the trills and the scales clean as cut glass, but also the sense of line, of long breath, that lets pathos emerge without her ever pushing for effect. Her entrance aria balances yearning against martial resolve in exactly the measure Rossini wrote for and that too many singers flatten into generic brilliance. Together, the two women’s duets have an electricity that the finest studio recordings — I think of the old Decca Sutherland/Horne set, still a reference point for different reasons — sometimes achieve only intermittently. Here it’s sustained.

Below them: more mixed results, though nothing embarrassing. Josef Wagner’s Assur has darkness and menace without quite the last ounce of vocal menace the role wants in its mad scene — a touch underpowered at the bottom, though dramatically astute. Robert McPherson dispatches Idreno’s wicked tessitura with more accuracy than most tenors manage, which is no small thing given how routinely that music gets cut for exactly this reason. Igor Bakan’s Oroe is solid, unglamorous, exactly what the High Priest should be. Julianne Geerhart does what she can with Azema, a role Rossini himself seems to have regarded as an afterthought.

The Ghent orchestra plays with more polish than history might have led one to expect from what is, after all, a regional house rather than La Scala or Pesaro. Winds are especially fine — the clarinet solos have real character, the horns don’t bark. Choral singing is committed if not always perfectly blended, which, given this is a live document rather than a patched studio confection, seems a fair trade.

Does this displace Sutherland’s Decca recording, with Richard Bonynge presiding over an orchestra and cast of almost absurd glamour? No — that set remains a monument, not easily toppled, and Horne’s Arsace is still something close to definitive. But as a complete, dramatically coherent Semiramide, one that trusts the opera’s full scale rather than apologizing for it, this Ghent recording belongs on the same shelf. Zedda, at an age when most conductors have long since retired, here sounds like a man discovering the score for the first time. That alone is worth the four hours.