Hurrah! Another Metastasio double-feature! Yes, it takes place admist the Olympic Games, but do not expect a notably sporty opera. What IS the most sporty opera I've seen? Gotta be Roxy und ihr Wunderteam, and even that's not very much so.
Well so, it's Ancient Greek times, and Princess Aristea is going to wed the winner. Lycidas was previously in love with another princess, Argene, but her dad rejected him, and he's given up his hopes there. He's bad at sports, so he wants his pal Megacles to enter in his place. He's only too happy to do that, particularly because Lycidas had previously saved his life. But! It turns out that Megacles and Aristea are already in love, and this leaves Megacles hell of conflicted. Meanwhile, Aristea has a friend staying with her, a shepherdess who turns out to be Argene in disguise, having run away not wanting to marry anyone other than Lycidas. So stuff happens, and as you'd predict, the appropriate couples all end up coming together, concluding with a rather dizzying plot twist where Lycidas is the king's son. I mean, not that things like that are unusual, but it's very abrupt and disorienting as presented here.
I enjoyed both of these. Predictably. Which one is better? GOOD LORD I DON'T KNOW. At least with that Artaserses, there were significant casting differences to talk about, but here they're mostly the same: the four lovers all played by women, the king and Lycidas' tutor Aminta by men. The only significant disparity--presumably how the operas were written--is that the minor character of Alcandro is played by a contralto in the Pergolesi and a Baritone in the Galuppi. My subjective opinion, possibly, is that the Galuppi features more barnburning arias, but maybe I'm just saying that because I saw it more recently. Another advantage Galuppi has is that he's named "Galuppi," which is probably the greatest composer name there is. So...yup.
Of course, we can talk about production differences. The Pergolesi is...not awful, but a bit strange. The stage is set up like a cross, with the audience sitting in the four ninety-degree angles created thereby (there's also a balcony from which characters sometimes declaim). This is a bit inexplicable, but fine; the part that creates a (small) problem is that for whatever reason, the singers are all wearing these floofy Ziggy-Stardust-esque wigs that make it sometimes difficult to tell who is who. I really don't know what possible purpose this serves. The Galuppi is less stylized--or at least stylized in a more comprehensible way. The background has what look like charcoal drawings of trees and classical columns, and parts of it take place behind these gauzy curtains, such that you can only sort of see the characters, who are dressed in nineteenth-century fashion. I definitely preferred this version, but it's all good.
I feel like a thing that I would appreciate would be if some expert wrote a book explaining, in layman's terms, the characteristic features and--most importantly--the differences between all these little-known baroque composers writing in such a similar milieu: your Caldara, Hasse, Vinci, Pergolesi, Galuppi, Jommeli, and so on. Only problem is, such a thing would be so specialized that i's hard to imagine it being in layman's terms. But regardless, I would do my best to understand! I guess I'll have to settle for Word Search Puzzles: Composers of the Baroque, Classical and Romantic Eras (Pocket Word Search Puzzle Books) (Volume 17).
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