Bonding with Andrea Bocelli

If you didn’t believe in a fairy godmother to lovers of opera who could fly to our far eastern shores from Tuscany in Italy on a magic carpet or whatever the singing sensation of our day, you had to shake off your disbelief when Ms. Rose Marie Arenas did cause to materialize in the flesh on the stage of the Araneta Coliseum tenor Andrea Bocelli.

Very rarely have the greatest singers deigned to descend on our cultural marshland from their Olympian heights, but their engagements here have been etched for a lifetime in the minds of those who have had the good fortune to attend their concerts. Who can ever forget Beverly Sills, Montserrat Caballe, Renata Tebaldi, Franco Corelli, Jose Carreras, Luciano Pavarotti, Hermann Prey and John Aler?

And now the blind tenor who Filipinos had heard only in recordings had at last come after an aborted attempt last year to bring him to Manila.

There were many flies in the ointment, if one may be allowed this cliché. Ticket prices were outrageous. The price of a ticket for a decent seat could feed a hungry barangay for weeks. One could assuage one’s conscience with the thought that the proceeds from the concert sponsored by the Father Pio Lend a Hand Foundation, Inc. would be donated to several worthwhile charities. The souvenir program, which was sold at an atrocious price, seemed to have been prepared by idiots. It contained no information about the selections performed during the concert nor translations of their texts, which were in Italian. The venue – a sports arena – was far less than ideal for a classical concert. Acoustical problems were not properly addressed. The amplified sound was excessive to the point that it was painful to the sensitive ear. It would, of course, have been perfect for heavy metal. And the audience, especially the plebeian crowd in the rafters, behaved as if they were indeed reacting to heavy metal.

Conductor maestro Marcello Rota and the Father Pio Symphony Orchestra served their numbers – the Prelude to Bizet’s Carmen and the "Farandole" from L’Arlesienne, the Intermezzo from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, the Overture to Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri – creditably enough but they received more than they bargained for from the crowd in the rafters who applauded them almost as much as the star of the evening.

Bocelli’s finest moments came during the first half of the concert when he delivered a vocal Italianized account of Rodrigo’s Aranjuez, a soulful Panis Angelicus by Cesar Franck and Schubert’s Ave Maria, a ringing "Di quella pira" from Verdi’s Il Trovatore with all the high notes securely in place, a pensive "E lucevan le stelle" from Pucinni’s Tosca. The highlight of the evening could very well be Cilea’s "Lamento di Federico" from L’Arlesiana sung with great sensitivity, beauty of tone, and depth of feeling, expressing the passion of the protagonist for the girl from Arles who haunts his dreams.

Soprano Maria Luigia Borsi was utterly ravishing in her rendition of "O mio babbino caro" from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, "Je veux vivre" from Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, and the songs by Lehar and De Curtis. Her duets with Bocelli, from Puccini’s La Boheme, Lehar’s The Merry Widow and Verdi’s La Traviata were operatic statements of the vindication of romantic love in the cynical world of our time.

For encores, Bocelli eased the clamor of his fans with three of his pop hits including Time to Say Goodbye, which he sang with heart-tugging, bitter-sweetness that one could not help shedding a tear or two, joining the entire house in a clamorous standing ovation, and leaving the arena with a light heart and a lighter purse, and not minding it all for he had heard in person one of the great singers of our time.

In the last week or so, two plays concluded their respective runs, UP Playwrights’ Theater’s Fluid and Repertory Philippines’ Caught in the Net.

Fluid by Floy Quintos, staged at Teatro Hermogenes Ylagan, is a peephole that offers a glance of six characters in search of something or other – recognition, fame, money, sex, power. These characters include Amir (Ebong Joson), a painter looking for recognition, Mira (Ana Bitong), a socialite and art collector looking for an artist she can remold to her heart’s desire, the gay lovers Alben (Lex Marcos) and Jom (Jomari Jose), looking for their own place in the sun, Renata (Frances Makil-Ignacio), a closet dominatrix-cum-art critic who reshapes men’s lives to their own respective personal dreams, and Simone (Stella Cañete/Camilla Kim) who finds herself to be everybody’s human doormat.

The amusing satire on the art scene was directed by Alexander Cortez.

Over at the Globe Theater in Greenbelt 1, Rep’s Caught in the Net ended its run with the laughter of its audiences still ringing all over Ayala Center. This comedy by Ray Cooney is a sequel to Run for Your Wife.

London cabbie John Smith (Miguel Faustmann) leads a double life – with Mary (Joy Virata) and daughter Vicki (Bianca Morris) in Wimbledon, and with Barbara (Jay Valencia-Glorioso) and son Gavin (Niccolo Manahan) in Streatham. His two worlds threaten to collide when the youngsters meet in the Internet and agree to see each other in person for tea. He plots to avoid the collision by scheming with his best friend and lodger Stanley (Jeremy Domingo), whose DOM of a dad (Manuel Aquino) is coming for a visit. Comic complications pile up as regularly as Big Ben chimes the hours, and a pile of sodium bicarbonate will not ease the bellyache of the audience, director Faustmann made certain of that.

If you missed this one, it’s just too bad. It was Rep’s best so far this season.

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