Pergolesi died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-six, making him the shortest-lived composer of whom I'm aware. But he did use the time he had pretty well, writing eight operas in his last three years, along with sundry other musical works. He wrote four operas seria, two operas buffa, and two short, comic intermezzos for two of said operas seria. Of course, the only one that's widely-known is one of those intermezzos, La Serva Padrona, a highly influential piece. But that's not enough for me! Fuck that noise! I want to see every opera that he wrote! And, surprisingly, I can; they're all available on disc, in one handy box (or individually, but that would be significantly more expensive). Well, I say "all;" in point of fact, this one isn't. It's because it's considered a "sacred drama" rather than an opera, but it's still an opera, fercrissake, as is Mozart's debut. You're the Pergolesi Festival--if we can't get all of Pergolesi from you, where can we get it?
Anyway, aside from that one, this is Pergolesi's first. Might as well watch 'em in order. It's about a Roman emperor, Alessandro--a very weak and ineffectual emperor, if this opera is to be believed (and maybe historically, but in fairness to the real guy, he was a young teenager while all this stuff was going on. Give him a break). At any rate, he was assassinated at the age of twenty-seven and replaced by the terrifyingly-named Maximinus Thrax, so that's a thing. Anyway, he's married to Salustia, so that's fine. But unfortunately, his mother Giulia, who had arranged the marriage, is now jealous because her dumb ol' daughter-in-law gets to be empress and not her. What did she THINK would happen after he marriage? She browbeats her son into signing a document making HER empress again, and Salustina...well, it's not clear. But Salustina's father Marizano is not happy about this and plots to assassinate Giulia, with the help of another soldier, Claudio. There's also a little subplot where Claudio had abandoned his lover Albina but she's still in love with him and wants to get him back. Salustina--being all virtuous and stuff--foils their plot to poison Giulia, while refusing to reveal the guilty party. Things continue in this vein until we get the inevitable--but hella unconvincing, even by baroque standards--happy ending.
We can cut the real-live Alexander a break, probably, in that he was thirteen or fourteen while this was happening and totally helpless to the political machinations going 'round. But here, my goodness he's a schmuck. And Giulia, sheesh. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a cartoonishly over-the-top antagonist in an opera: total Disney-villain stuff. Not that that's necessarily a complaint. Laura Polverelli certainly seems to be having fun with the role, taking it for all the camp value it's worth. My other favorites were Vittorio Prato, very convincing as the powerful general; and Serena Malfi as Salustia herself, probably implausibly self-sacrificing, but with a few good defiant moments.
It's a lot of fun. For whatever reason, I found the recitative/aria/recitative/aria structure more obvious than usual, but hell, even if it's a bit overly talky, there are a lot of good arias, even if not quite Handel/Vivaldi level. Also, for unclear reasons, Alessandro sings an aria while holding a live hen. Probably most hens never in their lives get to have experiences that interesting. I look forward to watching the rest of Pergolesi's sadly abbreviated corpus.
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