Bianca e Fernando review: the germ of Bellini’s genius

This early opera by Vincenzo Bellini, one of the great composers of so-called “bel canto” (literally “beautiful singing”) opera in the generation before Verdi, is most fairly described as “promising”. That might make you hurry past this DVD to his undisputed masterpieces such as Norma or I Puritani – which would be a shame, as it has real flashes of genius, is never less than elegantly turned in true Bellinian fashion, and is endowed with a feeling of noble sublimity as well as some fine singing in this beautiful if somewhat obscure production, staged by Opera Carlo Felice Genoa in 2021.

The plot is unusual in having no romantic love interest, but there are plenty of burning passions of other kinds. The title refers to a brother and sister, separated since Fernando was banished as a child by the usurper Filippo, who parades his vengeful nature in some set-piece arias. Fernando now returns in disguise to find his sister about to marry the usurper, and his father Carlo still imprisoned in a dungeon. Furious altercations between the two ensue, until the sister comes to her senses and agrees to help Fernando rescue their father.

A heartless tyrant, a noble prisoner, a dramatic dénouement in a dungeon where the innocent parties are rescued in the nick of time – it’s all quite reminiscent of Beethoven’s Fidelio, premiered 23 years previously. The Argentinian director and designer Hugo de Ana has seized on this to create a visually very striking production full of French Revolutionary and Enlightenment symbolism. Much of the action takes place in a stark white suspended hemisphere, reminiscent of those severely geometrical designs dreamed up by French Revolution-era architects like Boullée. As the chorus sings from a vantage point high up in the sphere, like gaolers in a sinister panopticon, dancers flit wordlessly about the protagonists in attitudes of supplication and sympathy, unseen to the characters themselves. When Carlo is discovered by his two children in the dungeon, we see looming over the characters a huge broken-winged eagle, presumably symbolic of dashed Republican dreams. Less easy to interpret is the smashed piano lying to one side – the Spirit of Art strangled by tyranny perhaps?

The detail may be puzzling but the production does beautifully evoke a lofty play of opposing forces – reasoned enlightenment, tyranny, the softening power of human sympathy – at work in the somewhat two-dimensional plot. The performances of the main characters, above all Giorgio Misseri – who manages to project Fernando’s determined nobility while negotiating Bellini’s cruelly high tenor part – and Salome Jicia as the tender-hearted Bianca, are excellent. The only jarring note came from the tenors in the chorus, who really should be forced to do penance for so frequently singing flat. In all it’s well worth spending the time to savour this product of an operatic genius in the bud.

Bellini: Bianca e Fernando is released on DVD by Dynamic