Georg Philipp Tellemann, Pimpinone (1725)

Tellemann was a prolific and long-lived composer, but this is the only one of his operas to be regularly performed these days.  It's a comic intermezzo, originally performed between acts in Handel's Tamerlano.  This isn't actually the first time this libretto was used, just the best-known.  I also watched a version from 1708 by Tomaso Albioni, but there's not a great deal of difference between them.

So, yeah.  As a short intermezzo, it has a short and rather predictable plot: Pimpinone is a rich yet dumb guy (wait, that's most rich guys, isn't it?), and Vespetta is a woman who schemes to become his servant and then his wife, and then reveals herself to be super-domineering.  That's it.

What it is, basically, is a much, much meaner version of La serva padrona (which, of course, it predates).  The thing about La serva is that, notwithstanding Serpina's tricks, it's obvious that there's real affection between her and Uberto, and that he's basically just looking for a pretext to marry her.  I mean, the trick is revealed before they get married, so he could back out of it if he wanted.  Very different, here though.  There is no ambiguity whatsoever: Vespetta has nothing but contempt for the title character.  She has constant asides about how stupid and ugly he is.  At one point after their marriage, Pimpinone declares that he is an abused husband, and although this concept, I suppose, was highly amusing to eighteenth-century audiences, he's not wrong and it's not pleasant to watch.  Seriously, not kidding: this is one of the most viscerally unpleasant operas I've ever seen.

The music is pretty typical baroque stuff of the era.  I didn't find it super-arresting, but, unlike the story, it's not unpleasant.  There's one scene where Pimpinone, talking to himself, takes on different roles and different vocal types to match, which I suppose is kind of fun.  But GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY, man, that is not enough to make up for the story.  This really was very popular in its time (and still is to an extent, inexplicably), so it's undoubtedly a must-see for historians, but beyond that, I dunno.