Tutta Forza Music for Brass Quintet
Gavin Plumley
The history of La Scala, arguably the most significant theater in Italy, began in 1776. The Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa had granted permission for a new theater to be built in the city of Milan and it was constructed on the site of the Church of Santa Maria della Scala, hence the opera house’s name. The power of the Vienna-based Habsburgs was immediately apparent when its Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri’s L’Europa riconosciuta was chosen as the work to open the theater, although he was, at least, Italian in origin. And although Austrian power was soon to concede to that of the French, under Napoleon’s aegis the Italian life of this bastion of opera endured. Firstly, it was due to composers such as Cimarosa and Paisiello, but a truly golden era was then inaugurated with the advent of Rossini and his juniors, Bellini and Donizetti. Ever since, the Teatro alla Scala and its musicians have been de facto agents for the development of opera on Italian soil, with Verdi and, later, Puccini dominating the bills—though the latter had a somewhat chequered history at the address. La Scala was also home to the Italian premieres of many foreign works, so it is fitting that this evening’s brass cavalcade, featuring musicians from the orchestra of La Scala, begins with a score from Russia, indeed, with a procession. Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Mlada, first seen at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in 1892, followed an earlier, collaborative work of the same name. For that original project, with a libretto by César Cui’s regular partner Viktor Krilov, Rimsky-Korsakov had planned to write the music of Acts II and III in tandem with Mussorgsky; Cui contributed the first act to the opera-ballet spectacular, while Borodin composed Act IV. Sadly, the idea never got off the ground, so the colleagues stripped the original of its parts, with Borodin folding some of the material into Prince Igor and RimskyKorsakov using a portion for his String Quartet Op. 12. But unlike his other partners, Rimsky-Korsakov also 12
