The "Witches?" Festival (Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra) opens in Jerusalem with Francesco Cavalli's opera "La Calisto"

Tom Cohen-Calisto, Tamara Navoth-Diana (photo:Yoel Levy)

 

A new, very different festival is making its mark on the Israeli music scene. “Witches?” (July 5-31, 2021), under the auspices of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra, music/artistic director David Shemer. Offering a variety of different events, the festival aims to celebrate women and femininity in Baroque music, giving the stage to women in Baroque arts, to the representation of women in music of the 17th century and to women composers in particular. Today, few concert-goers are aware of the plight of women composers in Baroque times, creative artists forced to contend with a patriarchal environment that placed restrictions on women, sometimes even preventing them from engaging in artistic activity. The creative powers of these women composers gave rise to terrible fear in their male-centered society. The attitude of men towards them was similar to that directed at powerful women in such fields as medicine and research, these women being labelled by critics of the time as “witches”, some even burned at the stake. This dogma was what inspired the name for the "Witches?" Festival.

 

The festival’s central event was the Israeli premiere of “La Calisto”, an opera by Francesco Cavalli (libretto: Giovanni Faustini), with David Shemer conducting from the harpsichord, stage director Shirit Lee Weiss, JBO instrumentalists and singers of the Israeli Opera’s Meitar Opera Studio (director: David Sebba). This writer attended the performance at the Jerusalem International YMCA. on July 7th 2021. A supreme masterpiece of Venetian opera, one of Cavalli’s 30 Venetian operas, “La Calisto” (1651) is known for its haunting melodies and dramatic musical storytelling. Packed full of mischief, irreverence and outrageous flirtation, “La Calisto”, based on Book II of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, is a 17th century retelling of an ancient Greek myth. Sexuality and sensuality pervade the libretto, whether in the elevated and poetic tone of Endimione’s pining for his moon-goddess or, at the lower end, in the coarse humour of the little goat-boy Satirino with Linfea, the object of his lust. At the centre of everything is Jove’s use of trickery, disguising himself as Calisto’s chaste leader Diana in order to have his way with Calisto, this presenting what might be an unprecedented spectacle of lesbian encounter on stage. Rather than placing emphasis on the opera’s element of buffoonery to provide a little comic relief here and there, Shirit Lee Weiss chooses to accentuate the deficiencies and complications of all the relationships into which the characters get themselves. As with the human characters on stage, the immortals prove that they are every bit as lustful, pernicious and simple-minded as their mortal counterparts. The Meitar Opera Studio singers, outstanding young music academy graduates making their way into the world of opera, gave their all to the performance. It was sung in the original Italian, with the presence of English and Hebrew translation for the benefit of the audience. Under David Shemer’s guidance, the singers took on board the stylistic manner of singing Italian Baroque opera in a performance that left no doubts in the audience’s mind as to the loaded emotional content running throughout. Without the necessity of striking theatrical effects, both singers and instrumentalists brought the text to life, the alert accompaniment of the continuo instruments complementing Cavalli’s luscious melodic writing and lively vocal dialogue. Featuring singers were Tom Cohen-Calisto, Tamara Navot-Diana and Sivan Keren-Giunone, to mention just a few of the impressive group. 

 

“Allegory of a Beautiful Woman” was the title Tal Brit chose for her lecture on July 14th at New Spirit House, Jerusalem, in which she discussed the portrayal of women, and of Calisto in particular, in Renaissance and Baroque painting. Interspersed throughout her talk were arias from Cavalli’s “La Calisto”, sung exquisitely by Tom Cohen (Calisto), with David Shemer at the harpsichord, the arias tracing Calisto’s shifting from wonder, to love, to disillusion. Cohen’s flexible, plangent and appealing performance brought out the manifest beauty and intensity Cavalli writes into the arias of his heroine. Shemer’s eloquent playing followed and endorsed each gesture.