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.
