Amal Choucri Catta celebrates new year's eve in style Mozart's by Piccolo Teatro di Milano, Cairo Symphony Orchestra, conductor Arnold Bosman, Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 22 December; New Year Concert, Cairo Symphony Orchestra, conductor Christoph Mueller, soloist soprano Hanna Dora Sturludottir, Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 31 December The 18th-century Trattoria was bathed in pastel colours as the curtain revealed the first scene of Mozart's two-act opera , and the ochre-and-white hues of the officers' uniform are in stark contrast with the old aristocrat's faded grey. Two dashing warriors -- Gugliemo, the young bon-vivant; and Ferrando, the vulnerable dreamer -- are speaking well of their respective fiancées, Dorabella and Fiordiligi, whose love and fidelity they laud to the sky. But old Don Alfonso, the aristocrat, is wary of such praise. All women are fickle, he insists, and the two ladies in question are no exception -- "Give me one day and I will prove it." And the young men confidently accept the challenge. So opened the first night of the farewell concert of the Italia-Egitto year, which opened successfully in January 2003 with Goldoni's Arlecchino servitore di due padroni, followed by a range of performances at several different venues through the year -- and culminating with this Dramma Giocoso by Il Piccolo Teatro di Milano. An original Giorgio Strehler production, directed by Carlo Battistoni and staged by Arnold Bosman, it also features the remarkable choir of the Fondazione Lirico Sinfonica Petruzelli e Teatro di Bari, conducted by Elio Orciuolo. And a nearly perfect show it is, perhaps, for some, a little too perfect: four hours of song and recitative will prove too much for most regardless of how beautifully the arias are rendered. But the audience admired the rapid changes of set, the gorgeous costumes and impeccable stage management. Soprano Eugenia Braynova as Fiordiligi, mezzo-soprano Terese Cullen as Dorabella and soprano Janet Perry as the maid were as brilliant as tenor Mark Milhofer in the role of Ferrando, baritone Nicolas Riovenq as Gugliemo and bass-baritone Alexander Malta as the cynic Don Alfonso, who ridicules everyone, particularly women, for whom he harbours an inborn dislike. The choir too was lovely to hear, set off as it was against the eloquent simplicity of the sets. Blue waters beneath a zesty yellow sky: the two young ladies are happily contemplating their lovers' portraits when the aforementioned misogynist abruptly barges in, announcing the imminent arrival of Ferrando and Gugliemo, who have been called to combat and must leave. In the ensuing, tearful farewells, the girls vow eternal loyalty to their husbands to be, and when the selfsame finances return, almost immediately, in disguise -- they are Don Alfonso's Albanian friends -- the girls live up to their word; they arrive on an Oriental boat bearing precious gifts, but even when they pretend to take poison in response to the girls' initial rejection, the maidens, though moved, stay loyal to their absent lovers. And it begins to look as if Don Alfonso will lose the bet after all. Only in the second act do the girls begin to yield, giving in to a little -- harmless -- flirtation to ameliorate the long wait. Dorabella and Gugliemo-in-disguise exchange love tokens, but Fiordiligi does not give in -- not yet. To Don Alfonso's joy, however, she does give in at a later date; and a double wedding is arranged with Despina the maid disguised as the notary. Suddenly a military march signals the army's return, however, and the Albanians flee. The warriors arrive in uniform, "come upon" the marriage contract allegedly dropped by Don Alfonso and question the girls angrily. Dorabella and Fiordiligi shed tears of remorse, and though Don Alfonso wins the bet, they are eventually granted the forgiveness they plead. Vindicated, the old cynic returns to philosophising. Often accused of immorality, is just lightly perverse: its music is as graciously delicious as that of Figaro's Marriage, but with an undertone of bitterness added to it, a childlike cruelty mingled with jocular irony. The thing is aggressive but sweet, and some of its tunes -- the followed by Josef Strauss's Libelle, a Lehar waltz and music by Robert Stolz, Max Reger, Rudolf Sieczynski, Emmerich Kalman. Sturludottir came on quite often, singing Stolz's Du sollst der Kaiser meiner Seele sein (You Will be the Emperor of My Soul), and Sieczynski's nostalgic Wien, Du Stadt meiner Traeme (Vienna, City of My Dreams); closing the first part of the concert with a temperamental refrain from Kalman's operetta, Heia, heia, in den Bergen ist mein Hiematland (My Home is in the Mountains). In the second part this extraordinary prima donna -- born in Iceland, reared musically in Berlin, a frequently awarded European star -- was an exotic princess in a gold lamé gown, her smiles enchanting the audience as she delved into favourite numbers from such classics as Casablanca and My Fair Lady, negotiating the highest and lowest pitches with effortless fluidity. December took the audience away from Mozart's delights and back to symphonic serenity. The New Year Concert presented a northern queen sashaying brilliantly in the limelight -- an invincible goddess of the Icelandic Edda, reminiscent, in her lavish vermillion gown, of an enigmatic Aurora borealis. Her gait alert, her demeanour serene, her presence overwhelming, Hanna Dora Sturludottir, a direct descendent of Reykjavik, is undoubtedly the hottest soprano to have come in from the cold. She palpably spread warmth when she sang Meine Lippen die kuessen so heiss, from Lehar's Gold and Silver. With a naughty wink and a mischievous smile, she captivated the audience. An extravagant affair with twinkling Christmas trees and luminous stars adorning the stage, this was a memorable concert indeed; Christoph Mueller's sensational baton gave the opera's devotees all that they could dream of. The maestro's presence has brought a visible change in the attitude and skill of the instrumentalists, who were rather admirably disciplined and fully up to the challenge of the performance for the first time in a long time. Nor was the programme uninteresting, though this year it incorporated some rather unwelcome changes, with the usual operetta, waltzes and polkas filling the first half of the evening, followed by musicals and film music after the interval. And these, it should be noted, the audience had not come for. They gathered in large numbers, rather, for the Strauss waltzes, as they had done in past years -- an almost sacred ritual. The second part had opened with Korngold's Adventures of Robin Hood, followed by Sound of Music and Williams's Harry Potter Suite and Theme from the movie ET -- which, though it was intended as the finale, could not satisfy the audience's thirst for the favourite Cairo Symphony Orchestra, film music being the forte of the Cairo Opera Orchestra. And so the concert ended not with ET but with a string of encores that made one think the applause would never stop: Johann Strauss Junior's Blue Danube, and then the Pizzicato Polka. The maestro's new-year wishes gave way, again, to what the audience had been waiting for all along: the unbeatable Johann Strauss Senior's Radetzy March, without which a New Year Concert should be unthinkable. Film music notwithstanding, and with Sturludottir's brilliance, when all is said and done, the old popular favourites went down well enough, a blue, blue Danube flowed unremittingly through time. Together with Radtzky, one can only hope it will bring the audience luck through the year ahead.
