Lyric Opera 2021-2022 Issue 2 The Elixir of Love

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 30 Pure pleasure: Lyric Music Director Enrique Mazzola on bel canto opera and The Elixir of Love THE TERM BEL CANTO (“BEAUTIFUL SINGING”) IS GENERALLY UNDERSTOOD TO INDICATE THE ELEGANT ITALIAN VOCAL STYLE OF THE LATE EIGHTEENTH AND EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURIES. WOULD YOU AGREE THAT THE ART AND PRACTICE OF BEL CANTO ARE SOMETIMES MISUNDERSTOOD TODAY? This is a simple but dif cult question, and I’m not sure I can give a comprehensive answer. What is clear to me is that bel canto has been underappreciated. In many of today’s European opera houses, when you suggest, “Let’s do a bel canto opera,” the rst thing people say is, “We don’t need many rehearsals [because] it’s so easy to perform.” Wrong! Actually, to do a bel canto opera properly, you need more rehearsal than with a Wagner opera. That shocks many artistic and stage directors when I say it. There would be no Wagner or Richard Strauss without Bellini, without early-Romantic Italian opera. The seeds of late nineteenth-century Romantic opera were sown in By John von Rhein Maestro Enrique Mazzola at the piano for Lyric’s 2020/21 digital performance project“Sole e Amore.” Kyle Flubacker