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| Avigail Gurtler Har-Tuv, Fyodor Makarov (photo:Maxim Reider) |
Having great
difficulties in getting up in the morning, Mozart is writhing under a blanket,
losing his pillow, even falling off the stage in his morning stupor. A very
different event to all the others at the 2017 Eilat Chamber Music Festival,
“Schmozart” (Concert No.9, February 3rd) a show featuring Israeli
actor and clown Fyodor Makarov as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was attended by at
least as many adults as children. Staged by the Eilat Chamber Music Festival,
it was produced by Losha Gavrielov. Makarov and Gavrielov, both born in the
former Soviet Union, share a similar background in the world of clowning.
An
imaginative take on Mozart’s life, the storyline is based on Mozart’s poor
financial state…in fact, due to his inability to pay the electricity bill, the
lights on stage actually go out. Baritone Robson Bueno Tavares (Brazil/Germany)
takes the role of Mozart’s dissatisfied landlord. To put his finances in order,
Mozart comes up with the idea of opening a school for singers. Along comes soprano
Roxana Mihai (Romania/Germany). She is immediately infatuated with Mozart but
her sentiments are not reciprocated. Mozart, however, falls in love with
another student to the school – (Israeli soprano) Avigail Gurtler Har-Tuv, whose stage personality and coloratura added flair to the performance - but
she is more than demonstrative in her rejection of him. Mozart arrives at his
wedding, hoping to marry Gurtler Har-Tuv, but ends up marrying Mihai.
Throughout
the show, the three singers, participants in the Vienna-Tel Aviv Connection (a
five-day intensive seminar for singers tutored by Sylvia Greenberg, Rosemarie
Danziger and David Aronson), gave outstanding performances of arias from Mozart
operas, the Red Sea Music Center Chamber Orchestra (conductor: Leonid
Rozenberg) delighted festival-goers with hearty Mozart overtures and we heard an international ensemble of instrumentalists, with Israeli pianist Michael Zertsekel joining the
instrumentalists and also performing solo. So, accompanying the droll story,
the audience was presented with a rich selection of Mozart works. And Fyodor
Makarov’s skilful, imaginative and entertaining clowning presented Mozart as an
optimistic and appealing character, if not thoroughly naïve!
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| Photo: Maxim Reider |
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