Recording
Le donne vendicate. Niccolò Piccinni
Lindora: Letizia Calandra
Aurelia: Rosanna Casucci
Il Conte: Vincenzo Sanso
Ferramonte: Giovanni Guarino
Orchestra da camera Collegium Musicum
Rino Marrone, conductor
Live performance, Teatro Piccinni di Bari, March 2000
Bongiovanni (distributed by Qualiton Imports) GB 2282-2 (1 CD)
The New Grove Dictionary of Opera calls Niccolò Piccinni (1728-1800) "one of the central figures in Italian and French opera in the second half of the eighteenth century." It is true. In Italy, he produced operas prodigiously for Naples and Rome, and when he received an invitation to Paris in 1776 he soon became a serious rival to Gluck. That rivalry, largely fostered by what we would today call the "Paris media," attracted enthusiastic and noisy partisans of both sides. Mozart was in Paris in 1778 and referred to both composers in letters to his father, without becoming involved. In any case, the celebrated rivalry soon subsided, and in the new century Piccinni was posthumously reduced to a marginal operatic figure.
Grove estimates Piccinni's operatic output at about 130 works, of which more than 110 were serious operas. They usually dealt with familiar operatic plots: Il [End Page 106] gran Cid (1766), Cesare in Egitto, Didone abbandonata, Don Chisciotte (all in 1770), Roland (1778), Iphigénie en Tauride (1781), Pénélope (1783), with texts frequently by Metastasio or Marmontel. The list points to sensible dramatic judgment, moderated perhaps by excessive productivity.
Not one of these serious works resonated with the Italian public more than did those based on the comedies of Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793), especially La Cecchina, ossia La buona figliuola (1760), whose success gained Piccinni recognition in other European countries as well. 1 By no means as successful as that singular phenomenon, Le donne vendicate (also known under the title Le contadine bizzarre), was written for Naples in 1763 with a text adapted from the Goldoni play by Giuseppe Petrosellini (the librettist of Paisiello's Il barbiere di Siviglia). Goldoni's original play, which called for eight characters, was premiered in 1751 at the Teatro San Cassiano in Venice. 2 Petrosellini's operatic libretto reduced the number of characters to four plus a mute participant. For a commemorative presentation in Piccinni's bicentennial year of 2000 at Bari, the composer's native city, further streamlining resulted in an "intermezzo for four voices" in the revision of Lorenzo Tozzi. (The notes in the accompanying booklet inform us that not all parts of this opera survived; Signor Tozzi includes a terzetto from another Piccinni-Petrosellini collaboration, leaving the total length (69:13) suitable for a curtain raiser--perhaps a Rossini one-acter.)
The opera's plot is fairly simple. Count Bellezza (as the name implies) is a conceited dandy, infatuated with his own good looks. He is also a male chauvinist given to opinions derogatory of women, which is why two intelligent and strong-willed sisters decide to teach him a lesson. Lindora's tutor, Ferramonte, offers to defend the feminist virtues even to the extent of challenging the Count to a duel. Unfortunately, Ferramonte is a coward, and the duel never takes place. Nevertheless, the Count is chastised by the ladies, who turn their backs on him. Ferramonte winds up with Lindora (whom he has secretly loved), and Aurelia goes off to a party on the arms of Flaminio, the mute, who has watched the charade.
Le donne vendicate is an engaging trifle, and Piccinni should not be judged by this isolated example. The music displays a certain elegance and fine craftsmanship. There is also sensible economy at work. The recitatives are brief and to the point; each character has at least one aria, and there are two duets, a terzetto, and an ensemble finale, the kind Piccinni is said to have been among the first to employ in Italian comic opera. Not a single da capo aria is in sight; generally the texts of each aria are repeated fully with musical alterations. Petrosellini's libretto is quite clever: both ladies flaunt their sophistication by peppering their conversations with literary references to Dido and Aeneas or Tancredi and Clorinda (Aurelia is supposed to be a novelist).
All four singers in this performance are young, experienced
performers. Letizia Calandra has a florid aria (number 14), which
she performs quite well. Vincenzo Sanso interprets the Count with a
buffo character perhaps excessively highlighted rather than with
the conceited-dandy tone the text seems to imply.
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According to the notes, baritone Giovanni Guarino has done Rossini and
Donizetti character parts all over Italy, and his experience shows. The
Collegium Musicum (not a period-instrument ensemble) plays extremely
well, and the live recording is (save for minor balance problems) quite
enjoyable. Let us hope that La buona figliuola will soon surface in
a good performance to remedy the neglect into which this worthy composer
has fallen.
George Jellinek
George Jellinek, author; critic; host of the nationally syndicated radio program The Vocal Scene
Notes
1. Patrick J. Smith's The Tenth Muse (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970) gives a generous account of Goldoni's activity and operatic significance.
2. The Teatro San Cassiano was Venice's first public opera house. It opened in 1637.
