So there's this astronomer, Ecclitico. He's friends of sorts with a clueless rich guy, Buonafede, who doesn't understand what the deal is with the moon; Ecclitico and his servants are easily able to trick him into thinking he's seeing little vignettes of people through his telescope. So that's cool, but there's a problem: he's in love with Buonafede's daughter Clarice, his friend Ernesto is in love with his other daughter Flaminia, and his other other friend is in love with his maidservant Lisetta, and Buonafede won't hear of it; he's smitten with Lisetta himself, and he wants his daughters to marry richer guys. So what to do? Well, the only solution is to trick Buounafede into thinking he's travelled to the moon and have him meet the Emperor of the Moon and teach him that lunar customs dictate that he should let these woman get married as they wish. Once he learns he's been tricked, he's mad, but then he forgives everyone, as you do in opera buffa, this being the absolute buffiest exemplar of the genre.
Really, this is probably the single goofiest plot in the operaverse. I've certainly never seen nor heard of goofier. But who's complaining? NOT ME! The music is fantastic; I don't know whether I like it more than Orlando Paladino, but I'd say it's at least comparable. And as silly as the plot is, it's interesting to see how people were thinking about these sorts of scientific advancements in the eighteenth century.
There are actually--perhaps surprisingly--two different productions of this available on disc. The more readily available is this one. It's supposed to be a modernized, twenty-first-century production, but as multiple reviewers have pointed out, this isn't really an opera that lends itself to that kind of updating. It's very much rooted in earlier scientific ideas; Buonafede being as gullible as he is in the eighteenth century pushes the boundaries of credibility; having him so in the here and how shatters them into thousands of tiny, glittering shards. So instead, I went with this one (which seems not to have an imdb page), and I think I made a good decision. It's not exactly a period production, but it works extremely well. Especially when the characters are allegedly on the moon, they have these outlandish, steampunk-ish costumes that really contribute to an effectively dreamlike atmosphere. Very Voyage dans la Lune. This is from Conservatorio Bruno Maderna, which may not be the first place you think of when you think of opera houses, but they do a very effective job. Even though no one in the cast is a household name, they're all excellent. Of especial note are Carlo Torriani as Buonafede, buffing it up like a real buffer; and Gaia Petrone as Lisetta, playing a standard soubrette role to the hilt. Also, Catia Pizzi as Ernesto (en travesti in a former castrato role), man--I mean, the singing's fine, but she REALLY impresses by how convincing she is as a man, which I thought she was until she started.
Point is, Haydn fucking owns. This was good enough that I actually kind of want to see the other available production, conceptually shaky though it may be. More Haydn operas, please!
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