View: Next message | Previous message Next in topic | Previous in topic Next by same author | Previous by same author Previous page (June 1999, week 2) | Back to main OPERA-L page Join or leave OPERA-L Reply | Post a new message Search Options: Chronologically | Most recent first Proportional font | Non-proportional font ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 23:52:37 +0000 Reply-To: "H.E.Elsom" Sender: Discussion of opera and related issues From: "H.E.Elsom" Subject: Neapolitan opera buffa, St John's Smith Square, 13Jun99 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Roberta Invernizzi, Roberta Andadalo (sopranos) Guisseppe De Vittorio, Rosario Totaro (tenors) Guiseppe Naviglio (baritone) Antonio Florio (director) Cappella della Pieta de'Turchini Cappella della Pieta de'Turchini is an ensemble of singers and intrumentalists based in Naples and specializing in Neapolitan music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. "The Golden Age of Neapolitan opera buffa" is a selection of scenes and arias from opera buffa from eighteenth-century Naples, plus two instrumental concertos. The performance was part of the Lufthansa Festival. The programme was clearly selected for its entertainment value. But the amusing fragments by a range of composers from Anon to Cimarosa also demonstrated the continuity from Commedia dell'arte to Rossini, and showed the musical richness and liveliness of the tradition behind Mozart and Da Ponte's unique genius. In a grotesque scene of courtship between a stutterer and an ugly old woman -- in fact the young and attractive Robera Invernizzi again -- the cynical intervention of a Neapolitan wide boy makes the woman accept the suitor. A breakneck patter song on the miseries of marriage (as far as I could work out -- there wasn't a translation, though the text didn't look very rude) was performed in a wonderfully camp style by the same tenor who sang the Neaplolitan, I think Rosario Totaro. And the finale from Cimaroso's Il fanatico a completely impenetrable plot unwound and rewound a couple of times in a thoroughly Rossinian emsemble. Leonardo Vinci (no relation) seems to have had a thing about mice. Totaro, again, sang an artful version of a street song about a mouse, and the other tenor Guiseppe De Vittorio sang a hilarious obsessive duet with Invernizzi in which a woman is afraid of a mouse so the man pretends to be a cat. Both make appropriate noises. There were also some good noises in the finale from an unknown opera by Leonardo Leo in which every made like clocks, bells and drums to illustrate the way the beloved treats the lover. The first encore was a duet which might have been from La Finta Giardiera in which the baritone, as an old geezer looking for a last chance for love, courts the gorgeous girl gardener, sung by a tenor, the ultra-camp and very funny Totaro again. Except perhaps for Invernizzi the singers didn't have outstanding voices. But they understand the music and performance style completely, and the pure energy and enjoyment of their singing is totally engaging. The orchestra was similarly completely on top of the music, with outstanding solo performances by Tommaso Rossi on the recorder in the concerto by Sarri, and on the harpischord by Enrico Baiano in the concerto by Durante. Somehow it didn't seem at all strange to have a concert of Italian regional music sponsored by a German corporation in London. It was the city where Handel lived and worked. At least one candidate for the European parliament opted out of Euro poll fever for the evening for a celebration of an enduring single European culture. Regards, Helen - H.E. Elsom he@helsom.demon.co.uk http://www.helsom.demon.co.uk/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main OPERA-L page ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to the LISTSERV home page at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU.