...is, following my visit to Opera Holland Park, London last night, Wolf-Ferrari's I Gioielli della Madonna - an absolute blockbuster of a score. Further comments to come...
I'd nominate Riccardo Zandonai's »Francesca da Rimini« which was performed in Freiburg in Germany two weeks ago as a concertante performance and it's absolutely amazing! Never heard such a richness of melodies and bombastic sound. Maybe exept for Korngold's »die tote Stadt« but it absolutely amazed me.
there are by the way several complete performances on youtube to listen to.
Sebastian
Very glad that you enjoyed Wolf-Ferrari last night, Alan.
I recall the good old days when the BBC regularly broadcast a specially prepared performance of often unsung operas. You could even send a SAE to the BBC a few days before the performance and for the cost of a stamp would then receive a libretto, usually with an English translation, and notes on the opera. I think this was all the brainchild of Elaine Padmore? Compare that with the quality and usefulness of the contemporary BBC.
Anyhow there was a pretty stunning broadcast of I Gioielli della Madonna in the late 1970s / early 1980s, and among the cast were BBC stalwarts such as Pauline Tinsley, Andre Turp, Peter Glossop, Henry Howell, John Winfield and Ann Pashley / BBCSO / Alberto Erde.
That performance was subsequently released on Bella Voce BLV107.242. Think I'll drag it off the shelves and remind myself of it tonight.
I'm not aware of any specific reason for it, but Wolf-Ferrari has pretty consistently been elbowed to one side...and quite unfairly.
And alas, Sebastian, I think you give the game away with your "bombastic sound" of Francesca da Rimini. I might possibly be persuaded by performances other than the two I have on CD, but I'm afraid I've always found the opera a right old raucous racket with not much of musical interest in it. It is generally acknowledged as his most successful opera - which judging by the others I've heard seems spot on right. But I'm 'open ears', and a production in Freiberg suggests that just possibly there may be a CPO recording in due course (5-6 years with my knowledge of CPO).
My other two candidates would have been Francesca da Rimini (which I saw at OHP) and L'Amore dei tre re, but neither has quite the sheer veristic brutality and orchestral heft of Gioielli - nor, frankly, do they have music that is as melodically memorable. The Introduction to Act 2, for example, is quite breathtaking in its melodic originality while being at the same time utterly 'in the tradition'.
OHP London are to be congratulated on such a risky undertaking in today's economic climate. They had extended their pit to encompass an orchestra of 70 - and the chorus filled half the stage! The decibel count at climaxes must have been huge. The three lead-roles, Maliella (sung by young Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw), Gennaro (tenor Joel Montero, from Mexico) and Rafaele (baritone Olafur Sigurdarson, from Iceland) were thrillingly sung - this was truly casting on a world-class level (Covent Garden couldn't have done better).
All in all, I was blown away. Why there isn't a commercial recording of this masterpiece I have no idea.
I'm a big fan of Massenet's 'verismo' operas, Therese and La Navarraise. Short, loud and delightfully overwrought, they pack a lot of memorable melody (and non-musical sound effects: gunshots, insane laughing, churchbells, etc.) into a compressed time frame that intensifies action and passion. Navarraise is really the more out-and-out verismo of the two, managing to squash betrayal, war, Spain, murder-for-a-dowery and madness into its short running time, but compression is not an unalloyed joy... the characters are pretty sketchy and the swift accumulation of disaster verges on parody. Still, it's lots of fun, and it won't do to think too deeply about such things.
Therese is more successful, I think: an aristo love triangle set during the Terror, wonderful love music, very loud, violent orchestral stuff (also a delicate, rather ghostly minuet in the composer's Manon mode,) and, naturally, a screaming mob. The old Bonynge recording with Tourangeau is excellent (well, forget Madame T's diction) with a hair-raising finale. The heroine, standing at her window, sees her noble (all senses of the word) husband being dragged to the guillotine, forgets all about fleeing to safety with her louche tenor lover, and calls out "Vive le roi!" so that she can die with him. The mob rushes in to seize her and the final thunderous hammer-blows of the orchestra leave no doubt about her fate. Her last word, "Marchons!" (directed by Massenet to be sung 'fierement, heroiquement') never fails to move me. Great stuff. (There's a new recording, btw, but I haven't heard it...)
David
They are indeed great stuff. But Gioielli is an absolute blockbuster by comparison, and considerably more advanced harmonically as befits a work by a composer born over thirty years later than Massenet.
The only Wolf-Ferrari opera I have heard is Sly. I really like that one. Giordono's Siberia and Madame Sans-Gêne are really good. Mascagni could be my favorite verismo opera composer though - Amica, Isabeau, Parisina, Iris, Le Maschere, Silvano, and Guglielmo Ratcliff in addition to Cav. I'm going to have to check out I Gioielli della Madonna now.
I find myself wanting to hear (though this is probably off-topic and not verismo, just Wolf-Ferrari) The Secret of Susannah...
I'd agree with edurban on "Therese"'s quality...one of Massenet's best and, perhaps, the ultimate verismo opera. It always amuses me how Massenet, who was so commercially aware, shamelessly imitated other composers' successes. "Therese" is obviously a rip-off of "Andrea Chenier" and there are many other examples. I've done a couple of reviews of recordings of "Therese" for Amazon.co.uk
Thérèse may be Massenet's answer to the Italian veristi, but it doesn't approach the brutal power and wild eroticism of Wolf-Ferrari's masterpiece. Do get hold of the only recording available if you don't know it...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gioielli-della-Madonna-E-Wolf-Ferrari/dp/B00005A9T8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376238629&sr=8-1&keywords=jewels+of+the+madonna (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gioielli-della-Madonna-E-Wolf-Ferrari/dp/B00005A9T8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376238629&sr=8-1&keywords=jewels+of+the+madonna)
BTW, for once Massenet just doesn't have the tunes that Wolf-Ferrari has...
O.K., Alan. I don't know the Wolf-Ferrari so I'll try it. I will certainly be impressed if it's stronger than "Therese" melodically.
There's no comparison. Massenet was far stronger melodically in works like Werther, Manon, or even Esclarmonde.
Well...yes...it's not in the same league as "Manon" or "Werther" but, of Massenet's later operas, I would rank it near the top...higher than "Don Quixote" though below the wonderful "Jongleur de Notre Dame". I certainly have no difficulty remembering "Therese"'s melodies. It's through composed as a real music drama, of course, so the melodies are not highlighted as they are in "Manon" for example.
It's still very pale stuff indeed in comparison with the red meat of W-F's masterpiece - which is what one would expect really given that W-F was born 34 years later than Massenet.
Some tantalising excerpts can be sampled here:
http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/Ermanno-Wolf-Ferrari-1876-1948-I-Gioiella-della-Madonna/hnum/8164396 (http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/Ermanno-Wolf-Ferrari-1876-1948-I-Gioiella-della-Madonna/hnum/8164396)
And try this performance of the famous Intermezzo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7OcDfspgZM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7OcDfspgZM)
Right! Thanks! My appetite could hardly be any whetter! I just haven't been particularly impressed by the other W-F operas I've heard.
Gioelli is a one-off in W-F's output - a work he could never top, I suspect.
Has anybody here heard the "Souvenirs of Verismo Opera" CDs put out by IRCC in the 90s? I'm waiting for vols. 1 & 2, and I posted a question earlier on Ubaldo Pacchierotti, whose L'ALBATRO is represented in vol. 1. Vol. 2 has quite a bit of GIOIELLI, but I've read some passionately enthusiastic reports on Renato Virgilio's JANA (1907) of which the CD also has several excerpts (the remainder is a long set of ISABEAU extracts - again, not exactly standard fare). I think the IRCC series ran to at least 4 CDs of period recordings, most of which are from operas that have remained unstaged since the early 1920s. Two resourceful Italian scholars have recently written a biography of Virgilio, of whom I know nothing (except he may have been Sardinian, seems to have lived a long time, and frequently got into quarrels with publishers and impresarios), and from what I've been finding in the Eastman School library _verismo_ is still pretty sketchily researched, at least in English. There seems to be rather a lot of music awaiting reinvestigation here, not to mention exactly who wrote it.
Some modification: JANA is from 1905 and is set in Sardinia (Virgilio was from Barletta and trained in Naples). Evidently posters of the opera are better known than the opera itself (like ISABEAU).
I've ordered Gioielli, and await its arrival with b.b., as Bertie Wooster might say.
David
Quote from: Alan Howe on Tuesday 13 August 2013, 09:17
Gioelli is a one-off in W-F's output - a work he could never top, I suspect.
I have yet to listen to I Gioielli but I Quatro Rusteghi is a masterpiece for me.
I especially appreciated the venetian vernacular since I'm from the region.
So exquisite.
Gioielli was a "one-off work" simply because Wolf-Ferrari was always more voted for comic opera.
Quote from: pcc on Wednesday 21 August 2013, 08:00
Some modification: JANA is from 1905 and is set in Sardinia (Virgilio was from Barletta and trained in Naples). Evidently posters of the opera are better known than the opera itself (like ISABEAU).
Yeah, I'm too interested in Jana but I've yet to find/buy that volume of Souvenirs from Verismo.
Poor guy, he died in poverty far from home.
Quote from: Jor on Sunday 08 September 2013, 17:21
Gioielli was a "one-off work" simply because Wolf-Ferrari was always more voted for comic opera.
That may well be so. And it could explain why
Gioielli comes as such a surprise when one hears it for the first time. It's my operatic discovery of 2013.