Cilea:Adriana Lecouvreur

 Opera no

Cilea: Adriana Lecouveur

Soloists

Welsh National Opera

Richard Bonynge

This was another opera which I knew by reputation but which, as far as I know, I had never heard a note of. I found it rather a mixed bag. I really enjoyed the opening scene, which is a very lively picture of backstage preparations in the theatre - it had a lightness of touch which suggests that Cilea might have had a real talent for comedy. But I did find much of the opera either rather dull and cliche ridden or else too melodramatic. I know that this is verismo opera and you shouldn’t expect subtlety but Cilea did rather lay in on thick with a trowel. 

I hadn’t realised that Cilea lived on until 1950, though he gave up writing operas in 1907 after the failure of his last opera Gloria. He really must have seemed like a figure from another age by the time of his death.

This ends this little venture into the post-Verdi world of Italian opera, a repertoire which I knew almost nothing about. Puccini’s Fanciualla del West was by far the stand out work, though I found much to enjoy in several of the other operas, particular those by Ponchielli and Cataliani. Both of them died comparatively young and it is interesting to to speculate how the Italian opera might have developed had they survived to a good age.

For the next phase of the project I am crossing the Atlantic and embarking on a exploration of American opera might- again an area of the reportoire that is largely unfamiliar to me.

Catalani: la Wally

Opera no 120

Catalani: La Wally

Soloists

Monte-Carlo opera

Fausto Celva

This was the real thing. I knew the opera by reputation (and because becuase of its rather unfortunate title for an English speaker) and I had heard the famous Act I aria Eben? Ne andrò lontana but otherwise Catalani was an unknown quantity as far as I was concerned. I think that I had assumed that it would be a completely over the top ‘scream fest’ with the characters emoting at the tops of their voices. It fact what surprised, and pleased me, was the variety in the opera. Yes there was plenty of drama but also a lot of light and shade with plenty of local colour. The opera is set in Switzerland (the story is impossible of course and end with the heroine throwing herself down a ravine…) and perhaps because of that I heard faint echoes here and there of Guillame Tell. Certainly some of the music had a French tinge.

The end was gripping. The lovers are reunited after the tenor comes back from a near death experience but then after they come together then get caught up in a snowstorm. He falls down a ravine and she follows him with a final declaration of love. Catalani whips up the tension here very effectively and uses the chorus (perhaps remembering the storm in Rigoletto) to ratchet up the atmosphere. It certainly grabbed my attention - though it did wonder as I was listening how on earth it could ever be staged!.

This was Catalani’s last opera - he died at the age of 39 soon after writing it.. It does make you wonder what else he might have achieved had he lived into old age.

Wolf-Ferrari: I Gioielli della Madonna

Opera no 119

Wolf-Ferrari: I Gioielli della Madonna

Soloists

BBC Sympbony Orchestra

Alberto Erede

Susanna’s secret was one of the real discoveries of last year’s project https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/11/wolf-ferrari-il-segreto-di-susanna.html so I was looking forward to discovering this opera. It is a very different sort of work - whereas Susanna’s Secret was a charming light-hearted farce this is a full on verismo melodrama.  But crucially for my enjoyment is was full of light and shade. The dramatic moments showed that Wolf-Ferrari could stir up the emotions as well as any of his contemporaries but these were tempered with some lovely lyrical passages and moments of lightness and wit. Altogether it was a winning combination. We also got several of those short orchestral intermezzi which are so typical of the composer and which have helped to keep him in the repertoire even if performances of the operas themselves are not as frequent as one would hope.

Mascagni: Iris

Opera no 118

Mascagni: Iris

Soloists

Munich Radio Orchestra

Giuseppe Patane

Inevitably I had to follow Leoncavallo with Mascagni - their names are forever linked because of Cav and Pag. Iris is an example of the wave of all things Japanese that made such an impact on European art and music at the end of the 19th century.

The plot is brutal and, inevitably, ends with the death of the heroine as so many of these late romantic operas do. I found some if it rather hard to take - particularly when the histrionics - weeping etc - started. Mascagni attempts to use some local colour in places, but this ended up sounding rather too kitsch in places for me. Perhaps the best part of the opera is the beginning - where there is an impressive hymn celebrating the sun - the sun plays an important symbolic role in the opera and at the end the heroine is absorbed into the sun.

So while I am pleased to have head this once I've no great appetite to want to hear it again soon.

Leoncavallo: Zaza

Opera no 117

Leoncavallo: Zaza

Soloists

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Maurizio Benini

In talking about Opera no 116 (la Gioconda) I mentioned that Ponchielli was very much a one-work composer.  The two most famous operas in that category must be Cav and Pag and I will look at their composers next in this project.

Leoncavallo will forever be associated with Pagliacci but that was by no means his only opera. Last year I discussed his version of La Boheme https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/search/label/Leoncavallo and found it an uneven work where the lighter moments were probably more effective than the melodrama. That is the case here as well I think. The first act of this opera takes place backstage during a performance and it was full of colour and good humour. The mood gradually darkened through the peice and perhaps the music became a little more clichéd, though it was undoubtedly highly effective.  I certainly enjoyed listening to this opera and wondered whether it could still command the stage - it has been revived more than once recently. It certainly shows that Leoncavallo was more than a one-trick pony.

Ponchielli: La Gioconda

Opera no 116

Ponchielli: La Gioconda

Soloists

Munich Radio Orchestra

Marcello Viotti

La Gioconda is famous for the Dance of the Hours, not least because of its use in the Disney film Fantasia. Judged by that ballet alone you could be forgiven for thinking that the opera would be a light-hearted confection. It is in fact a a piece of raw ‘blood and thunder’ melodrama. It’s not exactly subtle - in fact in places if is remarkably crude - but the dramatic music has a real impact - none more so that the ensemble at the end of Act Three which really pins you to the back of your seat. It must really be quite something to experience live in the theatre. La Gioconda was the most successful Italian opera to be composed in the interregnum between Aida and Otello and while its star has somewhat faded it is still a force to be reckoned with.  Ponchielli never had the same success again and died relatively young in his mid fifties. Other than Puccini most of the important post-Verdi Italian composers seemed to be able to manage only one bit ‘hit’ and struggled to build a body of work that remains in the repertoire. We will explore some of this in this part of the project.

Puccini: La Fanciulla del West

Opera 115

Puccini: La Fanciulla del West

Soloists

La Scala Milan

Lorin Maazel

Puccini was still a little suspect as a serious composer when I was at University - Kerman’s description of Tosca as a ‘shabby little shocker’ was an extreme view perhaps but not completely a typical of attitudes of the time.  Since then thankfully things have changed and we now recognise Puccini as a composer of real substance. Last year I included his Il Tabarro in my project. That was a real discovery and so I was looking forward to hearing this opera for the first time.  I was not disappointed. This is a truly amazing score which shows Puccini birding effortless the world of late 19th century Italian opera with modernism. Much of the music belonged in the world of Louise or Pelleas. The harmonic pallets is very wide and the orchestration constantly inventive.

So what is this this not performed nearly as often as the other major Puccini works? First of all there is some oddness about an Italian composer setting an opera during the Californian gold rush with references to the Pony Express and other colloquialisms sounding very out of place in Italian. Secondly perhaps the pacing is rather slower than we expect from Puccini. One can imagine the audience at the first performance at the Met starting to look at their watches and wondering when Caruso is going to appeal - the scene setting, though marvellous in its way, does take a long time. Then it has to be admitted that the opera doesn’t have the big hit tunes one expects in Puccini. There are lots of lyrical moments of course but the action doesn’t really stop to allow for arias. This recording is of a live performance and one can feel the sense of relief midway through Act 2 when they finally get to applaud a tenor solo - the applause goes on for ages and though Domingo’s performance is superb one senses that it wouldn’t have got the same level of applause had there been a succession of applause moments throughout the work.

So a fascinating work with many really impaired and dramatic passages and a wonderful quiet end as the hero and heroine walk off into the sunset.. This is one of those operas where ithe heroine doesn’t die in the final scene. I’m so glad that I have added this to my collection of Puccini operas. 

Pergolesi: La Serva Padrona

Opera no 113

Pergolesi: La Serva Padrona

Soloists

Capella Samaria

Pal Németh 

This is a famous example of the Neapolitan style of comic opera. It was in fact written as an intermezzo for performance between the acts of one of Pergolesi’s serious operas, but took on a life of its own. It is a lightweight piece which looks forward to Opera Buffa. It is quite short and if you strip out the dialogue there is only about 25 mins here. It is quite fun but Pergolesi does make a little go a long way - the arias tend to be based on a single idea which comes round and round again. I suspect that Pergolesi would be amazed that he is remembered for this slight pice, which he probably dashed off in a few days, rather than for his substantial body of serious works.

La Serva Padrona turns up in the history books, as a performance in France in 1752 set off the so-called Guerre de Bouffons, where the intellectuals led by Rousseau debated the relative merits of the simplicity of Italian opera with what some saw as the over complexity of French opera. I know which side I would have been on, as I will show in the next opera in this project.

Conti: David

Opera no 112

Conti: David

Soloists

Il Complesso Barocco

Alan Curtis

There is a question mark over whether I should have included this piece in this project because its exact status is unclear - it seems to sit somewhere between an opera and oratorio and it is unclear whether, and to what extent, it was ever staged. But I am glad that I included it because there was some splendid music here. The overall style is Handelian, with plenty of impressive arias covering a wide variety of moods and emotions. The recitatives are also notable and together they add up to a really satisfying whole. But perhaps ever more notable are the splendid choruses which end each act. These really do pack a punch with some unexpectedly chromatic harmonic effects. Whether these would have been sung by the solosits (as in Handel opera) or by a choir (as in his Oratorios) seems to be a matter of dispute but whatever the historical position they do work very well here sung by a small chorus. 

Although Handel represented the peak of baroque Italianate opera his project has clearly demonstrated that other composers, much less well known, were snapping at his heels. 

Hasse: Marc’ Antonio e Cleopatra

Opera no 105

Hasse: Marc’ Antonio e Cleopatra

Soloists

Le Musiche Nove

Claudio Osele

This was a great find. I knew the name but I had never heard any of his music. Hasse was German but spent much of his earlier life in Italy. This is an early work and is a really good example of the Italian opera style.  Indeed I thought that it was of a quality which compared with Handel at his very best. There is great variety here in melodic invention and dramatic with some striking passages of accompanied recitative. Some of the arias were spectacular in particularly a long aria for Cleopatra near the beginning of Act 2. There wasn’t a weak moment in the score.

Hasse lived at a transitional period in operatic history. By the time of his death (1783) he was in the world of Gluck and Mozart and it seems that he felt that he was something of a fish out of water. I’d be interested to hear some of his later music to see how his style developed.  

Paer: Leonora

Opera no 69

Paer: Leonore

Soloists

Bayerisches Symphonieorchestra

Peter Maag

This is a much longer version of the story that the Mayr which I listened to previous - there is about 2 1/2hrs of music here altogether. Again there is striking music in the arias for the main characters but a lot of the rest of it is rather thin. All very competent of course as one would expect from a composer whose work was widely performed in his lifetime but much of the invention seems rather routine. Paer also didn’t quite know when to stop - the overture came to what seemed like a resounding end and then continued on for another couple of minutes and several of the arias were overextended to give the singers plenty of coloratura opportunities - this is an Italian opera after all!. The role of Marzellina is far too prominent and showy - she appears needlessly just after Florestan and Leonora have discovered each other and instead of leaving them to get re-acquainted  she sings an elaborate duet with Leonora. Any sense of dramatic tension is lost.

Within the confines and conventions of Italian opera there is a plenty here to enjoy but this is never going to be a credible alternative to Beethoven. That is too much to expect.

Mayr: L'amor conjugale

 

Opera no 68

Mayr: L'amor conjugale

Soloists

Opera Fuoco

David Stern

There is a fascinating group of Operas from round the turn of the 19^th century which all share the same basic story as Fidelio. I want to explore some of them in this part of the project. Winton Dean’s chapter on Beethoven and opera has been a very helpful guide here.

Mayr was an important composer who features in the history books largely because of his setting of Medea in Corinto and this version of the Fidelio story. The character names are changed but the basic  plot is broadly the same. Much of the music is Mozartian in style – though the more you hear of opera  of this period them more you realise just what a genius Mozart was – but there are some places which looking forward to early 19^th century opera. It is rather an unbalance work. It is quite short and some it is is quite light, but there are two huge arias, one for the Lenora and one for Florestan characters. These are both impressive and show real expressive breadth. Curiously some of the music in the latter part of the opera seems almost to be a straight lift from Cosi fan Tutte – surely it can’t be coincidence. Dean doesn’t comment on this and I’ve not found any reference to it elsewhere. Very odd.

Would this opera be worth listening to if it were not for Fidelio?  I’m not sure. Some of it is impressive but elsewhere it shows a mastery of the standard tropes of late 18^th century opera without anything particularly distinctive.  

Handel: Rodelinda

Opera no 51

Handel: Rodelinda

Soloists

Raglan Baroque Soloists

Nicholas Kraemer

Handel is another of those composers to whom I came late. I wrote about this in last year’s blog https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/search/label/Handel and now Handel, with Rameau, is one of the composers I turn to more than almost any other. 

I know several of the operas well but Rodelinda is one which I have not seen and I although I was familiar with some of the arias and the overture I hadn’t heard the whole opera before. What a superb work it is. Winton Dean in his seminal book on Handel’s operas says that Rodelinda is the third major masterpiece produced by Handel in less than twelve months, an achievement without parallel in the history of opera.

His enthusiasm for the piece is completely justified-  this is a superb work which shows Handel at his very best. Aria after aria proceeds with an almost unbroken series of pieces of the highest quality. We get all of the moods from tragedy through to exuberance and excitement. It all seems effortless - the Vivaldi in the previous opera seemed rather laboured by comparison - but of course it is Handel’s genius that makes it all possible. Some of the music is absolutely ravishing and expressive. Handel’s harmony seems straightforward on the surface but in fact it is highly sophisticated with some extraordinary chromatic inflections.

This is the end of this short exploration of Baroque opera.  I don’t find myself naturally sympathetic to the earlier composers but towards the end of the Baroque era Handel and Rameau in their very different ways are among the greatest of all opera composers and I return to them again and again. But the next stage of the project moves into very different territory. German romantic opera.

Vivaldi Ercole sul Termodante

Opera no 50

Vivaldi Ercole sul Termodante

Soloists

Europa Galante

Fabio Biondi

As far as I know I have never heard a single note from any of Vivaldi’s operas. Until recently they were more or less unknown territory but many of them have now been recorded. 

I didn’t have high expectation of this piece. I had in my head the cliche that Vivaldi wrote the same concerto 600 times and thought that it might apply also to his operas. In other words we were going to get lots of painting by numbers as Vivaldi turned the handle on his compositional machine.

To start with my fears seemed justified because I found the first few numbers very routine and uninspired, but the piece grew on me. Vivaldi introduced some interesting harmonic diversions here and there and there was quite a few few places where there were some unexpected rhythms. I felt that the slower and more lyrical music worked better than the faster sections. He has a real flair for the pastoral idiom whereas I thought that some of the faster, more extrovert music was way over the top - the singers, particularly the tenor., really struggled with some of it.

Stylistically the nearest point of reference to this music is probably the operas of Handel, but I don’t think that this is the same league. Pleasant at parts of it certainly it didn’t really make the impact that Handel at his best really can achieve. Handel is next in this project so a side-by-side comparison will be interesting.

This is the 50th opera in this project. When I started I wasn’t sure how how I was going to pace things but I have managed to get half way after only 4 months. So at this rate I might well get to something closer to 150 operas. Still I won’t set a target and I’ll see what happens - I’m not going to run short of composers or operas.

Cavalli: La Calisto

 Opera no 46

Cavalli: La Calisto

Soloists

Glimmerglass Opera

Jane Glover

I can't say that I got much pleasure out of this opera. Like the Monteverdi (opera 45) I have vague memories of seeing the Glyndeborne production on television but I don’t remember any of the music itself,

The music was not unpleasant in any way but I didn’t find much to latch onto. One of the problems was that I didn’t have a libretto so  couldn’t really follow what was going on other than at a very basic level, The other was that this was a recording of a live performance so at times gales of laughter almost drowned the music - there nothing unfunnier than a joke that you can’t understand.

This was an abridged edition of the opera edited by Jane Glover, who was one of the first female conductors to achieve any sort of fame in this country. She also wrote the leading book on Cavalli in English. To me the edition sounded idiomatic - not too plain but not over elaborate either. It is just unfortunate that I didn’t find the music very interesting.

Monteverdi: Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria

 Opera no 45

Monteverdi: Il Ritorno  d'Ulisse in Patria

Soloists

Concerto Vocale

René Jacobs

Of the three surviving Monteverdi operas this is the least known. I do have a vague memory of seeing at least some of it on television in the days when opera on mainstream TV channels was not a rarity, but I certainly did not remember any of the music.

This is a generation on from the Peri (opera no 44) and the format is gradually becoming something more like we expect from opera. There is more distinction between the arias the the recitative and an altogether greater sense of dramatic pacing.

Of course there are many editorial decisions to be taken in performing an opera like this. I followed it with the manuscript score on line. Much of this is only written in two parts - a vocal line and a bass line. There is no indication of instrumentation let alone dynamics or speeds. The performance I heard years ago would have been in the Raymond Leppard version which now does seem over romanticised. But a performance with just a basic continuo line would be very hard work.  The conductor here, in his extensive booklets, talks through some of the problems and explains that he had attempted to steer a middle course between the extremes, though he accepts that some people will be scandalised by what he has done!  I'm no expert in the music of this period but it seemed to me most of the time that he had got it about right. But it did seem to become a little more interventionist as it went on - at times I did think that the instrumental additions were overdone - particularly some duetting passages for cornetti - effective as they undoubtedly were. 

It would be fascinating if a set of performing materials for this opera ever turned up. It might give a completely different perspective to our experience of Monteverdi the dramatist.

Peri: Euridice

Opera no 44

Peri: Euridice

Soloists

Ensemble Arpeggio

Roberto de Caro

This is where is all started. Euridice is the earliest serving opera. (Peri’s earlier opera Dafne has not survived). It is of course very different to any of the operas I have listened to so far in this project. It is largely made up of recitative with some madrigal-like passages for combined voices and a few purely instrument moments. To be honest I was expecting to be rather bored by in fact much of it was rather compelling. The vocal line is very flexible and there are some surprising harmonic twists and turns. The most obviously dramatic moment is the repeated interjections of the chorus after the news of the death of Euridice - this was genuinely moving.

Of course any performance of a piece like this has to be conjectural. We don’t really know how the music sounded originally, what instruments were used and how the text was articulated. But to me this performance did seem credible - it was quite stripped back and a long way removed from the sort of reconstructions that Raymond Leppard did 50 years ago when performing Monterverdi and Cavalli. Though who is to say that those composers might have loved the way he approached his realisations. There was only one moment where some additional recorded parts seem to come in from nowhere and twitter away for a a while before disappearing again. 

This sort of opera is probably very difficult to bring off in the theatre but as a purely aural experience it was attractive and well worth hearing. It is a good start to the next part of this project.

Bellini: I capuleti e Montecchi

Opera no 28

Bellini: I Capuleti e Montecchi

Soloists

Vienna Symphony Orchestra

Fabio Luisi

My knowledge of Bellini is fairly limited. I saw Norma years ago and included La Sonnambula in my project last year https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/10/bellini-la-sonnambula.html but that is about it. This, Bellini’s version of Romeo and Juliet struck me as almost two operas joined together as one.  When Romeo and Juliet are not singing much of the music seems to me to be routine rum-ti-tum without any special merit. But the music for the lovers - both women in this version - is on another plane altogether. There is some ravishing music here which shows Bellini’s supreme command of the long melodic line and ability to colour what is essentially straightforward harmony with telling chromatic inflections. The orchestration is also highly effective - particularly the use of the harp and long solos for the cello and the clarinet. Bellini is able to conjure a dream-like atmosphere in a way few other composers have matched. The entrance aria for Juliet is particularly haunting, as is the final duet. Again though, as I have noted before, the very end is rather disappointing - a few bars of noisy ‘painting by numbers’ trivial music for the chorus. A real pity, but it does goes with the territory with operas of this period.

At its best this was a superb opera - just a pity that it is not all at the same level of invention.

This concludes this brief look at Italian opera in the pre-Verdi era. I’ll return to Italy later in this project but next I will spend some time on Czech opera.

Donizetti: Maria Stuarda

 Opera  no 27

Donizetti: Maria Stuarda

Soloists

Chorus and Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna

Richard Bonynge

Don Pasquale is one of my favourite operas but other than that my knowledge of Donizetti is pretty patchy. Perhaps there is just so much to go at that it is all a bit overwhelming. 

I remember seeing the famous confrontation scene between Mary and Elizabeth (which of course didn’t happen in real life) on a TV broadcast years ago and I knew the prayer that Mary sings before her execution - other than that his was new piece for me.

There was a fair amount of rum-it-rum routine in the more vigorous sections of the opera - something one has to get used in Italian operas of this period of course - but the lyrical material is highly attractive - there are some wonderful moments throughout the score. The confrontation scene is dramatic but the final pages are probably the best  in the opera. The prayer is intensely moving and there is some heartbreaking music here - perhaps the very last moments are rather weak and hackneyed - composers of this period often didn’t quite know to end pieces.

So I was glad to have heard the opera. Whether it will lead to my exploring the rest of Donizetti’s output remains to be seen. 

Ricci: Crispino e la Comare

Opera  no 26

Ricci: Crispino e la Comare

Soloists

Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia

Jader Bignamini

This is a rare example of an opera by two composers. The Ricci brothers both had independent careers as opera composers but came together to write some works jointly.

I was aware of this opera but I had never heard it before. It is something of a romp. Some of the music is routine but it has charm and some energy - though it rarely pales in comparison to the Rossini in the previous entry in this project) and it was well worth listening to. There are some extended ensembles including a trio for the male characters which is highly amusing. I remember talking to the great Bonaventura Bottone (who sang with the Nottingham Opera  Group) about this trio. Early in his career he took part in a performance of the opera at the Wexford festival. In rehearsal they found this trio very long and rather dull and wanted to make cuts, but in fact on stage it turned out to be the hit of evening!

Apparently Luigi wrote all of the music in 3/4 and Federico the music in 2/4! I suppose that is one way of dividing up the responsibilities. Alas the brothers fell out badly and Luigi did not attend the premier! It will be interesting to listen to some of the opera which which they wrote as individuals. Some recordings of extracts are available.