Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, Il segreto di Susanna (1909)

Wolf-Ferrari is name-checked in Pynchon's Against the Day--twice, in fact: "The orchestra was back to Victor Herbert and WolfFerrari" (627); "A heavy interior susurrance, inflected by ancient stone, issuing out onto the rio along with a small string orchestra playing arrangements of Strauss Jr., Luigi Denza, and hometown luminary Ermanno WolfFerrari" (913).  Pynchon is Wolf-Ferrari crazy!  Is this just because he has a funny name?  Almost certainly.  In which case, it's too bad he wasn't able to work Galuppi in there somewhere. But regardless, respect.

Wolf-Ferrari has been characterized to me as being a kind of throwback composer, and that's certainly the case here: this is a comic one-act intermezzo with a man, a woman, and a silent servant.  This may be goofier than any of the intentionally goofy intermezzi of the baroque and early classical eras I have seen, however.  So Susanna, the countess, is married to Gil, the count.  Gil comes home one evening and smells tobacco, which he dislikes and which makes him think his wife may be having an affair.  Blah blah, eventually Susanna's Secret comes out: she's a smoker!  OMG!  Once he finds out, she agrees to stop for the sake of his love, but instead, they smoke together.  Um.

Yeah...I mean, it's not that smoking is a moral flaw or anything, but it still feels very weird to have it presented like this; it somehow feels more dated than works that were written long before.  On the whole, I find it alienating and unappealing: even beyond the smoking thing, Gil is a control freak who forbids his wife to go outside alone, and their relationship seems unappealing and probably doomed to fail.  And the music's just okay, sort of hinting at classical themes but largely falling flat, with no particularly memorable moments.  This production seems like it may have been surreptitiously filmed by a bootlegger (are there opera bootleggers?); at first the stage is at a notable slant, and though that eventually clears up, there are no zooms or anything dynamic like that.

I dunno; if this is worth it at all, it's for the weird novelty.  But it certainly doesn't make me desperate to see more Wolf-Ferrari.  Although that is a solid name: a wolf in a Ferrari?!?  What a nutty notion!