Louis Andriessen's most recent large-scale music theatre work was first performed by the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam in 2009. He calls La Commedia "a film opera in five parts", for like the his stage works, Rosa (1995) and Writing to Vermeer (1999), which were both collaborations with Peter Greenaway, he conceived and composed it with a film-maker, in this case Hal Hartley. Hartley not only shot the video footage that is projected during the performance, but also made a film of the production, which is included on a DVD packaged with these CDs of the premiere.
As the title signals, La Commedia is based on Dante, though by no means as a linear distillation of The Divine Comedy. It's more a series of reflections on his great work, five tableaux, dramatic cantatas almost, focusing on particular episodes, including the City of Dis, a portrait of Lucifer, the Garden of Earthly Delights and a final Luce Etterna. The text combines passages from the original (in Italian, English and Dutch translations), with extracts from the Old Testament and biblical plays by the 17th-century Dutch writer Joos van den Vondel.
The tone is wonderfully varied – sometimes profoundly serious, sometimes wildly exuberant or irreverent – matched to a score that is equally diverse and eclectic. As always with Andriessen's orchestras, woodwind and brass outmuscle the strings, while piano and cimbalom give extra bite to the sonorities; there are winding Stravinskian chorales, intimidating chordal progressions and slithering ostinatos, as well as allusions to three centuries of composers from Bach onwards, while the Garden of Earthly Delights veers between jazz and an Italian folk ballad, before ending up in tongue-in-cheek Hollywood schmaltz.
The performance with Reinbert de Leeuw conducting the combined Asko and Schönberg ensembles is superb: Dante's narrations are given to a mezzo, the fabulously versatile Cristina Zavalloni; Beatrice is a soprano, the fearless Claron McFadden, and the monologue by Dante's great-great grandfather Cacciaguida in the final tableau is turned into a kind of Dutch rap delivered by the late Jeroen Willems. Altogether they leave no doubt that La Commedia is a rich, important achievement by one of Europe's greatest living composers.
