Nozze istriane (review)

Nozze istriane. Antonio Smareglia
Marussa: Svetla Vassileva	Menico: Enzo Capuano
Luze: Katja Lytting	Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro Verdi di Trieste
Lorenzo: Ian Storey	Tiziano Severini, conductor
Nicola: Alberto Mastromarino	Bongiovanni (distributed by Qualiton Imports) GB 2265/66-2 (2 CDs)
Biagio: Giorgio Surjan

This set comes as a welcome surprise. Nozze istriane is a veristic opera, dating from 1895, but—unlike, say, Cavalleria rusticana, with its carter's song, Easter hymn, and brindisi—it is through-composed, without obvious closed musical structures. The music develops real intensity, but in subtler ways. The explanation for the score's unusual character may be found in the composer, who bears little resemblance to other practitioners of the Italian Giovane Scuola, but if he brings to mind any of his contemporaries it would be Alfredo Catalani, the composer of La Wally.

Some years ago I tried to interest a young musicologist in developing an article on Smareglia for this journal. Ultimately nothing came of the project, because at every turn she was told that Smareglia was a notorious jinx. A glance at his career would seem to bear this out.

Antonio Smareglia (1854-1929) was born in the town of Pola in Istria, the Austrian-occupied peninsula south of Trieste. He was therefore an Austrian citizen by birth, and his first language was German. His mother was Croatian, and as a child he learned folksongs from her heritage. He first studied music in Vienna but soon was in Milan, where he lived in the circle of the Scapigliatura, forming a close friendship with Arrigo Boito and Franco Faccio. His first operas, produced in Milan in the 1880s, soon disappeared. Not finding hope for success in Italy, Smareglia tried his luck in Vienna. Hans Richter conducted Smareglia's Der Vasall von Szigeth in 1889 at the Hofoper, and the work was so favorably received that it was mounted at the Metropolitan Opera in December 1890, in the last season the repertory was sung all in German there; after four performances, however, it was dropped. To the best of my knowledge, Der Vasall (about demonic dastardliness in thirteenth-century Hungary) remains the only one of Smareglia's ten operas staged professionally in the United States.

Luigi Illica, best remembered today for his association with Puccini, had written the original Italian text for Der Vasall; in 1894 he got back together with Smareglia to discuss a projected work derived from Flaubert's La tentation de Saint-Antoine. When Illica heard that Gemma Bellincioni and Roberto Stagno (famous for their creation of the roles of Santuzza and Turiddu in 1890) had been engaged for the winter season of 1895 at the Teatro Verdi in Trieste, he persuaded Smareglia to choose a plot in the then popular veristic vein. The composer and the librettist spent four months in the town of Dignano, the setting of Nozze istriane, absorbing local color and traditions of the region, then part of the Hapsburg Empire.

Although it has never been performed at La Scala, the Rome Opera, or the Naples San Carlo, Nozze istriane has proven the most durable of Smareglia's operas. Since its premiere it has received eight revivals at the Teatro Verdi; the most recent, that of December 1999, is the source of the recording under review.

Like Verdi's Otello, Nozze istriane opens with a storm. Villagers pray to Saint Biagio, their patron saint, to protect their crops from hail. (Ironically, Biagio is the name of the trouble-making marriage-broker in Illica's plot.) Once the tempest has passed, Biagio approaches the tight-fisted misogynist Menico with a proposition from a wealthy farmer, Nicola, who is willing to renounce dowry benefits if Menico will permit him to marry his handsome daughter, Marussa. Marussa, however, is loved by and in love with Lorenzo. When Menico eavesdrops on the lovers as they pledge themselves to one another by exchanging gifts, the furious father sends Lorenzo away and orders Marussa to her room.

In the second act Biagio and Menico search...