Guillaume Tell Recorded live at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, August 2013
The hero of this admirably complete August 2013 Guillaume Tell from Pesaro is homegrown maestro Michele Mariotti. The inimitable overture is (mercifully) unstaged and terrifically played, with splendid cello and flute solos: the fine standard never flags. Rossini’s extraordinary 1829 score audibly presages Meyerbeer, Berlioz, Glinka, Verdi and Wagner, among many others. Graham Vick’s direction privileges class conflict, with a clenched fist on the red-and-white forecurtain. The Edwardian costumes place Austrians in white evening garb; the black-clad Swiss polish the floor while the rulers savor a filming (much of that to follow) — the fisherman Ruodi, in a boat with a blonde and fake scenery, with Tell and his family providing tech support. Vick deploys geographical and historical kitsch liberally but not (always) pointlessly. Ron Howell’s pretentious, mannered choreography, however, beggars belief.
Graham Vick
Director
Étienne de Jouy
Writer
Gioachino Rossini
Original Music Composer
Nicola Alaimo
Guillaume Tell
Simone Alberghini
Melcthal
Juan Diego Flórez
Arnold
Amanda Forsythe
Jemmy
Simón Orfila
Walter Furst
Marina Rebeka
Mathilde
Luca Tittoto
Gessler
