I cannot for the life of me figure out why the DVD styles him "Martín i Soler." "Y" of course means "and" in Spanish. It's a thing you see in old Spanish names. But as far as I can tell, "i" is never used like this. And it certainly doesn't mean "and" in English! AND means and! If you do a google search for "Martin i Soler," most of the results are about some ferry by that name. WEIRD.
Well anyway. An immediate point of interest that pops up is that this has a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, who must surely be the best-known librettist ever. Well, there's Wagner, who wrote his own libretti, but people don't think of him in those terms. At a stretch you might think of Emanuel Schikaneder (though of course, both he and Da Ponte are only known through Mozart). Metastasio had by far the most market penetration, but today he's only known to baroque buffs, I think. But anyway! It's interesting to see Da Ponte with a non-Mozart conposer! Apart from Mozart and Martín (am I allowed to call him just "Martín?") he worked with Salieri--and others, but these three are the only ones with any name recognition these days.
Well, all that is neither here nor there. It takes place in Diana's...arbor. What an amazing fact that is. Diana wants it to be a fortress of chastity, but Amore has other ideas. When three hapless dudes stumble into the area, hijinx ensue with her and her nymph attendants. Ultimately, Amore wins out and Diana ends up with a lover of her own.
So how IS the libretto, then? Well...it's fine. A little bit baggy; sort of reminiscent, I thought, of a lot of seventeenth-century opera. I was sort of worried at first that it was going to have misogynistic undertones, but that's not a problem: it's not really a war of the sexes thing as you might think; Amore really just likes messing around with gods and humans, irrespective of gender. No problems there.
And that's all you need, really. It's plenty to support the music, which really kicks all kinds of ass. As you might expect, it sounds extremely Mozartian. I know all the foremost authorities identify Mozart (who apparently borrowed a melody of Martín's for Don Giovanni) as the stand-out composer of the time, but I would really like one of these experts to explain to me in what way this is inferior to the man at the height of his powers. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Diana in particular has some real stand-out arias that you would think would make the part highly desirable for sopranos. Also: Michael Maniaci as Amore! Woot! Would I actually be able to tell the different between him and a countertenor in a blind, um, taste test? Dunno, but I'm a big fan. Interestingly, it wasn't originally a castrato role; it was written for, well, a soprano. And because Amore is in drag for long stretches here, you would've had the tricky act of a woman playing a man playing a woman. Nice!
I really want to hear what Maniaci's speaking voice sounds like, but irritatingly, and weirdly, there seem to be zero clips online of him talking. There's one link that leads to a dead youtube account, and that is IT. Dammit! Supposedly, his voice is high but not outside the normal range; recognizably masculine.
Got off-topic there, but I suppose the topic's about over. How many OTHER great composers are there who have been overlooked for totally arbitrary reasons? Nineteen. The answer is nineteen. Now we just need to find them!
No comments:
Post a Comment