SALZBURG, Austria — Hector Berlioz was devastated when his "Benvenuto Cellini" was booed off the stage 169 years ago. With a recent performance, however, he would have been vindicated.
The finicky Salzburg Festival audience couldn't get enough of the new production of his classic work. Earsplitting applause alternated with prolonged and thunderous foot stomping at the end of the more than three-hour production.
And no wonder.
Berlioz's musical pyrotechnics were generally considered ahead of his time, and "Cellini" was no exception. After a three-performance run, it was not staged for a dozen years, and subsequent performances also drew a mixed reception during his lifetime.
But his music has become accepted since then. And when you link a conductor and orchestra that understand Berlioz with singers who can master his often arduous passages and an inspired stage and directing crew, the effect is magic — as was the case here.
All the pieces fit. But the loudest "bravi" went to the behind-the-scenes people, with good reason.
Philipp Stoelzl's directing and staging expressed visually what Berlioz was saying musically — a message amplified by Kathi Maurer, responsible for costumes, Duane Schuler, lighting, and the duo of Stefan Kessner and Max Stolzenberg, in charge of video.
Together, they painted scenes that would have stood without the opera. Busy cinematographic backdrops of the brooding big city, complete with helicopters crossing the night sky, flashing neon signs and flashy fireworks captured the edginess of the setting — the roguish Cellini fighting all odds to gain the hand of his sweetheart Teresa and triumph over his rival, Fieramosca.
Cellini, the Renaissance goldsmith, set against a Manhattanesque skyline? There's more apparent improbability.
Cellini himself appears in the first scene in a helicopter to woo Teresa, waiting on a tenement rooftop. Ascanio, Cellini's apprentice, is the near spitting image of C3PO, the gold-hued Star Wars robot. The Pope arrives in a cherry-red roadster, with a flashing cross hood ornament, and exchanges high-fives and knuckle-raps with Cellini, who looks more biker than master artisan.
And there's much more that should be jarring — but isn't. Just like "West Side Story" is a remake of "Romeo and Juliet," Cellini as presented here lost nothing in the translation. This is an opera that lives from frenetic pacing, fantastic costumes, innovative staging and sets, and all was present in this production.
Apropos frenetic: Valery Gergiev, conducting members of the Vienna Philharmonic, was that — and more. Hands aflutter, he infused boundless enthusiasm into his conducting — the kind called for by the score, skillfully blending brasses, woodwinds and strings or surgically separating them into crisp entities as needed and delivering musical magic in the myriad of unfettered tempos dictated by Berlioz.
On stage, Maija Kovalevska was the best of a delightful cast. As Teresa, she sang with conviction, purity and broad range. Coquettish one minute and passionate the next, she was the perfect object of Cellini's affections.
Burkhard Fritz was the perfect Cellini vocally as well as dramatically. Laurent Naouri was well cast as Fieramosca, as was Brindley Sherratt as Balducci, Teresa's father, Mikhail Petrenko as the Pope, Kate Aldrich as Ascanio, and Roberto Tagilavini, Xavier Mas and Sung-Keun Park in smaller roles.
Also fine — the robust Vienna State Opera Choir in its many reincarnations, as foundry workers, costumed carnival revelers and domestics.
Berlioz would have been pleased.