After being disappointed by that misbegotten production of Il prigionier superbo, I wanted to have a better Pergolesi experience, so here's his third opera seria.
It's to a libretto by Metastasio. Dozens of others were set to the same one, of course, but as far as I know, this is the only one available in video format. Here's my question: what was the last opera ever to use one of his libretti? You don't get an answer by doing a google search for "last opera with a Metastasio libretto." Nobody else seems interested in the question. There's this from 1823, which seems really late, but anything after that? I feel like by the nineteenth century, people had mostly embraced the romantic idea of individual genius. Sure, you likely weren't writing your own libretti, but you wanted your work to seem unique to you; there wouldn't have been much appeal to the idea of your opera jostling around to compete with dozens of other with the same words and story.
Who knows. I ask that because I've been kind of preoccupied lately with this idea: why doesn't some contemporary composer write an opera to a Metastasio libretto? Not imitating the style of baroque music (although if someone wants to do that, that's cool too), but just setting this text in a radically different musical idiom. Wouldn't that be fascinating? Don't you want to see Thomas Adès' Semiramide riconosciuta? I know I do.
Well, this one is set in Roman Times. Knock me down with a feather. The Roman emperor is Adriano (ie, Hadrian), and you will NEVER GUESS where he is. He's just conquered the Parthians, and the Parthian prince, Farnaspe, is petitioning him to release his imprisoned fiancée, Emirena, playing on the well-known Roman qualities of mercy and justice (you can complain about historical revisionism in these things if you want, but the very fact that composers of the time considered these the most noble of qualities seems to me worth celebrating). However, Adriano is also in love with Emirena, in spite of already having a wife, Sabina. The situation is also complicated by the fact that Adriano's adjutant Aquilo is secretly in love with Sabina, which leads him to encourage his infatuation with Emirena so he doesn't reconcile with his wife. And finally, there's Emirena's father Osroa, who tries to assassinate Adriano and is imprisoned. But don't worry, in the end everyone is reconciled and/or forgiven and Adriano and Sabina are back together again.
The more opera seria I see, the more I realize how formulaic the genre is. It was undoubtedly a good thing that opera evolved from this. But crud, man, it's a solid formula. It may be that it will never surprise me, but I'm more or less guaranteed to enjoy it a lot, as is the case here. My subjective perception is that, production aside, this is a stronger work than Il prigionier superbo. The production is straightforward, but really, sometimes that's quite enough. The most notable thing here is that it features an actual goddamn falcon onstage. Looking at the cover, I wasn't sure whether it was real or not, but it totally is. Well, technically it's a Harris's hawk, but those are commonly used in falconry, and that's clearly the intended impression. Its name is Aron, and there are two credited falconers--all for a bird that appears onstage at the beginning and end for no more than a minute or two. That kind of extravagance seems Met-esque, but hey, I'm glad to see falconers getting work. I can't imagine there's a lot of it these days.
Oh yeah, we also have the intermezzo, Livietta e Tracollo. Unlike La serva padrona in Il prigionier superbo, this is presented probably more like it originally would have been, with the first half after Act I and the second after Act II. It concerns this robber, Tracollo, who, disguised as a woman, is captured by Livietta, a woman disguised as a man. Later, he's out of jail and disguised as an astrologer. She pretends to faint. He tells her where, allegedly, he's hidden his treasure. They agree to get married. That is about that. It's fine; why wouldn't it be? You can probably see why it isn't as famous as La serva padrona; there's not much of a story, and the mucking about I didn't find that fascinating. Also, authentic or not, I found that as presented here it kind of dulled the momentum of the superior Adriano in Siria. Whatevs! It's fine.
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