The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (31 page)

Under Mussolini and the Fascists, opera remained a beacon of national pride, but with Puccini’s death in 1926, the tradition had reached some sort of climax.
After the war, Luigi Dallapiccola made earnest attempts to raise the tone with operas that had absorbed the transalpine influence of Schoenberg and Berg, and in more recent years Luciano Berio has made some interesting experiments with the subversion of conventional narrative and musical structures.
But Italian opera now lives on its past: it is not, and probably never again can be, what it was in the mid-nineteenth century.

Gioachino Rossini

(1792–1868)

L’Italiana in Algeri
(
The Italian Girl in Algiers)

Two acts. First performed Venice, 1813.

Libretto by Angelo Anelli

Rossini was still only twenty-one when he wrote this, his eleventh opera and first major success in the field of comedy.
Written in less than a month, to an existing libretto, it has an irresistible farcical energy and youthful sparkle which the more mature composer never quite recaptured.

Plot

Mustafa, the boorish Bey of Algiers, discards his wife Elvira and orders her to marry his recently captured Italian slave, Lindoro.
Mustafa is then captivated by an Italian lady, Isabella, who has come to Algiers in search of her lover Lindoro, accompanied by her irritating elderly admirer, Taddeo.
Isabella uses her wiles to outwit both Mustafa and Taddeo, and after various intrigues – involving Isabella’s invention of an order of husbands called the ‘Pappatacci’ who do nothing except eat, sleep and leave their wives in peace – she and Lindoro escape to Italy.
Mustafa asks Elvira’s forgiveness.

What to listen for

The confrontation of east and west, Christian and Muslim, is an old operatic theme (Mozart’s
Die
Entführung
is the most obvious example), but in musical terms Rossini seems uninterested in suggesting oriental colours.
The score is thoroughly Italian in spirit, and the role of Isabella is rich in vocal opportunities for a mezzo-soprano like Marilyn Home or the pre-war Spanish singer Conchita Supervia, who combined dazzling personality with a firm coloratura technique and sense of slyly flirtatious fun.
Her arias range from the lyrical ‘Per lui che adoro’ to the rousing Tensa alla patria’, but it is
in the vividly comic duets and ensembles that her personality is most forcibly expressed.
The dotty first-act finale, in which all the characters express their differing states of confusion in imitation of the orchestra, can send an audience rocking with laughter.

In performance

One of the most successful modern productions, seen in Vienna and at Covent Garden and the Met, was directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle – a staging full of choreographed comic business which managed to be witty rather than irritating.
Later attempts to suggest a feminist tinge to Isabella’s strategy and more sinister imperialist undertones in the plot have foundered:
L’Italiana
is essentially farce, complete with racist and sexist stereotypes, and it is lightness of touch rather than depth of interpretation that counts in presenting them.

Recording

CD: Agnes Baltsa (Isabella); Claudio Abbado (cond.).
DG 427 331 2

Il Barbiere di Siviglia
(
The Barber of Seville)

Two acts. First performed Rome, 1816.

Libretto by Cesare Sterbini

Beaumarchais’s original play, a companion piece to
The
Marriage
of
Figaro,
had been adapted into operatic form ten times before Rossini attacked it.
His version was composed at tremendous speed – nine days, according to one story – and although its première was a fiasco, it quickly became the most popular of all comic operas, hugely admired by Beethoven, Verdi and Wagner.

Plot

Seville, in the mid-eighteenth century.
Young Count Almaviva is in love with the vivacious Rosina and has been serenading her under the name of Lindoro.
She is duly impressed, but the affair can progress no further because she is kept under lock and key by her guardian, the elderly Doctor Bartolo, who wants to marry her himself.
The quick-witted but mercenary barber Figaro comes to Almaviva’s aid and together they hatch a plan: Almaviva will disguise himself as a drunken soldier and knock on Bartolo’s door with a demand for billeting.
The ruse works insofar as Almaviva gains admission to the house and reveals himself to Rosina as ‘Lindoro’, but suspicions are aroused and mayhem ensues.

Almaviva returns to Bartolo’s house, this time disguised as a stand-in for Rosina’s music teacher Don Basilio.
A lesson of sorts ensues.
Figaro arrives to shave Doctor Bartolo and steals the key which will allow Rosina to escape.
However, Bartolo gets wind of the elopement plan, and decides to marry Rosina at once.
But after further confusions and misunderstandings, the ever resourceful Figaro is still one step ahead, and he persuades the Notary to marry Rosina to Almaviva while Bartolo is out fetching the constabulary.
Bartolo is eventually consoled by Rosina’s dowry.

What to listen for

One reason that this opera is so frequently performed is that is relatively easy to cast.
Rosina was originally written for a mezzo-soprano, but it can easily be sung by a soprano; Figaro is a gift for a high baritone (although few can articulate the light, crisp semiquavers in the duet with Rosina, ‘Dunque io son’), Bartolo is great fun for a bass with a comic touch.
It is in the duets, trios and ensembles that most of the opera’s comedy effervesces: the Act I finale, ‘Fredda ed immobile’, is one of Rossini’s most riotous inventions and the quintet ‘Buona sera, mio signore’ in Act II one of his wittiest.
The characterization in the opera is sharp, even though several of
the melodies are lifted from other works of very different plot and mood (including Rosina’s ‘Una voce poco fa’, originally composed for a tragic opera about Elizabeth I).
The opera also illustrates Rossini’s genius for making something brilliant and beautiful from material that on paper looks simple and even mechanical.

In performance

An opera which needs extensive rehearsal if the ensembles and repartee are to cohere and flow at the right spanking pace – if there is any drag or slump in the performance, the clichés (such as his trademark long crescendo) which underpin Rossini’s inspiration begin to show through.
Most productions opt for some degree of period realism, but occasionally something more surreal is attempted.
Ruth Berghaus, for instance, in a controversial production staged in Munich, set the opera on a huge naked female torso, its bosom serving as Rosina’s balcony; other directors have looked to the masters of cinematic farce – Chaplin, Keystone Cops, Fellini – for their inspiration.

Recordings