Attila and his “barbarians” are bedecked in desert camouflage, and perform the precision strikes of special operation forces. This Seattle remake of the Strasbourg production has remythologized Attila yet again for the 21st century audience. The opera’s libretto and the Napoleonic era German play on which it is based are steeped in fictional elements, the “scourge of God”, as this leader of the Huns came to be identified, mythologized to serve the geopolitical viewpoints of the German dramatist and of Verdi himself.
However, the actual 5th century ravages of the historical Attila in France, Germany and Italy have had a millenium and a half to become encrusted with myth and legend. Two of the characters – Attila and Ezio (Aetius) – are historical personages and there are fragments of historical fact at least alluded to in the opera’s libretto. The opera’s central theme is warfare, and all four of the story’s principal characters are battle-scarred. However, Seattle Opera hs extensively revised both the concept and the production, creating new costumes (including often stylish new military dress for the principals) and creating a series of visual projections that are often the dominant image of a scene. The physical production incorporates the concept and basic set created by Bernard Uzan for the France’s Opera National du Rhin in Strasbourg, and has most recently been seen at the Israeli Opera Tel Aviv. The Italian baritone Marco Vratogna, in his Seattle debut as the Roman general Ezio and the big-voiced tenor Antonello Palombi, rounded out an accomplished Verdian quartet that would be welcomed on any operatic stage in the world.
The treacherous role of Odabella was impressively sung by the Venezuelan soprano Ana Lucrecia Garcia, whose meteoric rise internationally is one of the current operatic phenomena. The Seattle Opera assembled a strong international cast for the work’s Seattle premiere. One year ago the Seattle Opera teamed Italian Conductor Carlo Montanaro with basso John Relyea in a new production of a relative rarity – Massenet’s “Don Quichotte” Montanaro has returned to Seattle as Relyea’s conductor as the young basso adds yet another relative rarity to his repertory – the title role of Verdi’s “Attila”.
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