If you do a search for this, google helpfully corrects you:
Ah yes, that world-famous opera, Il prigioniero superbowl. I know it well.
This is most famous as the opera that was originally wrapped around La serva padrona, but destined to be much less popular. It's about this prisoner. He is a truly superb prisoner. In fact, he's such a great prisoner that all the guards signed his birthday card. And then they had a big party with cake and ice cream and presents and okay okay, "superbo" just means "proud" in Italian. WHATEVER. So what's it REALLY about? Um...dead kings many things I can't define? Well, basically, this here prisoner is a king who's been captured. By another king. As oft happens. And these kings all have various daughters and love interests who are in love with other people, and...you know. Typical opera seria stuff.
Still, if that description sounded vague, there may be a reason for that. The plot's complicated, sure, but is it difficult to follow? That is hard to say, actually, because GOOD GOD, this production. I feel like I have never seen one that I found as enraging as this. The concept is that there are some people at a party in some sort of cave or something, and they find these puppets and decide to put on a show. So there are these puppets and puppeteers on-stage, one alter-ego for each character. The production makes zero effort to concretely situate it in its place, and get this: five out of the six characters are sung by women; I might have enjoyed a few countertenors, but fine. But the real issue is, they do not make even the most token effort to have them look like men. They're all wearing dresses and have absolutely zero male signifiers--I suppose because that would violate the extremely important "concept" that we have decided we must arbitrarily lay over the proceedings. What all this boils down to is that the plot--which probably would've been pretty twisty anyway--becomes effectively impossible to follow, and all drama and emotion is completely leeched out of the story. I simply cannot imagine what the fuck the producers can have been thinking. Unlike most opera DVDs, there's no synopsis included in the manual; normally, there's no need for such a thing, but the ONE time you actually want one...there's an amazon review that goes to truly heroic lengths to summarize the plot, but even with that summary, it would take A LOT of effort to make sense of this.
It is too goddamn bad. Musically, it's what you'd expect, which is very good: lots of kickass baroque music with some impressive arias. And yet, I still feel short-changed. Unsurprisingly, this is the only way to see this opera, but having seen it, I have to wonder: DID I actually experience the opera in any meaningful way? GOOD GOD, Pergolesi died at the age of twenty-six; isn't that bad enough? You also have to run roughshod over his work? Talk about adding insult to injury.
Well, as you can see from that cover, this also includes a production of La serva padrona (that's where the image comes from). So how's that? Well...it's comprehensible, at any rate. It would be hard for such a simple story not to be. But it ain't great: it takes place in a circus. Uberto is some sort of ringmaster and/or lion tamer, and Serpina is...well, it's not exactly clear what she is, but some kind of circus performer. This is bizarre; the idea that someone working in this environment would have a "servant" makes little sense, let alone that people like this would be preoccupied with the idea of marriage. It's tolerable, I suppose, but it's not wonderful. It's a shame: the music, of course, is great, and Alessandra Marianelli is actually very charming and funny as Serpina. It's just...GOOD LORD, people. You're allowed to do a regular ol' opera production! There's nothing wrong with a little Eurotrash, but if you don't have a good idea for it, you're not required to go in that direction. I hope that the Pergolesi DVDs I have yet to see go a little less dumb and bad, production-wise.
Right, one last thing. You may be interested to know what ELSE Pergolesi fans are interested in:
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