Program Notes

The eighteenth century is rightly considered the era of the triumphant opera seria. With the exception of France, all of musical Europe pulsated with the virtuosic displays of the sacred masters whose art dictated much of the operatic transformation of the time. The legendary Farinelli was not the only one, and other stars enchanted the theaters: Carestini, Caffarelli, Nicolini, and Senesino deployed phenomenal technique that we can enjoy from the music written for them.

It would be unfair to forget the role played by the librettists in the prodigious development of the opera seria, first and foremost Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782), to whom most of the texts sung in this concert are due. Metastasio, whose real name was Pietro Trapassi, established a poetic model that had a decisive influence for decades. Thus, when Mozart composed his final opera, La clemenza di Tito (1791), he turned to Metastasio’s text, which had already been used by, at least, Caldara and Hasse (1735), Gluck (1752), and Galuppi (1760). Another famous example, Siroe, re di Persia, were illustrated in sound by Vinci (1726), Sarro and Porpora (1727), Handel (1728), and Hasse (1733). All the great composers of the Baroque period and many of those of the Classical era thus frequented Metastasio’s literature.

Singers or composers, the Italians travelled all over Europe to establish the domination of their school. In Italy itself, several aesthetics were asserting themselves, with Naples as the main focus, where both Farinelli and his teacher, Nicola Porpora, were born. The Neapolitan school, whose influence lasted well into the eighteenth century, favored a sometimesextravagant virtuosity and harmonies that were undoubtedly more languid and voluptuous than those of Venice or Rome.

Niccolò Piccinni was one of its last and greatest representatives. His rivalry with Gluck is bestknown, and is somewhat artificial: after a glorious career in Rome, Piccinni moved to Paris in 1776 at the same time that Gluck was reforming opera by turning his back on vocal artifice in order to rediscover the truth of feeling through a less abundant, more direct art. Between 1775 and 1779, the Quarrel of the Gluckistes and the Piccinnistes raged without any real winner between two composers who, in truth, admired each other.

Piccinni traveled throughout Europe: it was in Mannheim that his Catone in Utica was premiered in 1770, commissioned by Prince-Elector Karl Theodor, with the great tenor Anton Raaf (future creator of Mozart’s Idomeneo) in the title role. It is probable that Piccinni never heard his work in Mannheim, having composed it in Naples in a version where Catone was almost certainly a bass: Raaf went to Naples especially to work with Piccinni, who wrote him entirely new arias.

Further north, Venice was also a thriving musical center, with La Serenissima opening the first public theaters in the time of Claudio Monteverdi. In the eighteenth century, Antonio Vivaldi attracted music lovers from all over the continent thanks to the concerts he organized with his students at the Ospedale della Pietà, a hospice for orphan girls whom Vivaldi literally transformed into virtuosos. But the “Prete Rosso” (‘Red Priest’) was also a businessman who gave his operas from 1713 onward at the Teatro Sant’Angelo—he remained attached to this establishment throughout his life. Vivaldi’s

ANTONIO VIVALDI Engraving by François Morellon la Cave (1725)

fame went far beyond the Venetian region: his works were premiered in Rome, Florence, and Milan, not to mention Prague and Vienna. He was on his way to Vienna when he died in July 1741. Vivaldi’s vocal music reflected his instrumental production: limpid harmonies but capable of lightning chromaticisms, staggering expressive efficiency, and incredibly difficult while remaining very vocal (he also wrote for exceptional divi and dive). In “Gelido in ogni vena,” from the opera Il Farnace (1727), the voice literally trembles with fear, while the strings draw icy tremors that seem to spring directly from “L’Hiver” of the Four Seasons. Conversely, a winged lightness unfolds in “Se in ogni guardo,” an aria from Orlando finto pazzo (1714), a work that differs considerably from the famous Orlando furioso in 1727.

The text of “Gelido in ogni vena” was also set to music as an independent aria by Giovanni Battista Ferrandini, but this time as taken from the Metastasio opera Siroe, re di Persia (1726). Vivaldi’s subsequent incorporation of the aria text, slightly modified, in Il Farnace, an opera with a libretto by Antonio Maria Lucchini, is a sign that the librettos of the time were not impervious to additions and modifications according to the needs of the moment, or even the whims of the singers. Although Ferrandini moved to Munich at a very young age, employed as an oboist by the Bavarian court at the age of twelve, he was another product of the Venetian school. His fame was indirect: the sacred cantata Il Pianto di Maria (1739) was long attributed to Handel, but research in the 1990s showed that Ferrandini was actually the author. All of Ferrandini’s operas were produced in Munich, where he was held in high esteem; he was commissioned to write the music for the coronation of Emperor Charles VII in 1742, and his Catone in Utica (a libretto by Metastasio, which he set to music after Vinci, Torri, and Vivaldi) opened the Residenztheater in 1753. A few years later he returned to his native country and retired to Padua. In 1771 he was visited by the Mozarts, father and son, who greatly admired his work.

With their multitude of princely courts and autonomous cities with theaters, the Germanic countries represented an essential professional reservoir for Italian musicians. The Hamburg Opera, in particular, enjoyed incomparable prestige thanks to the influence of its musical director, Reinhard Keiser, himself a brilliant composer whose superb production is now being discovered. Not surprisingly, German geniuses often made the trip to Italy, drawing abundantly on innovations from the south; two of them established themselves as giants of Italian opera.

Born near Hamburg, Johann Adolf Hasse was a tenor hired by Keiser for the Opera company; he quickly took off and was taught by Porpora in Naples where he settled in 1722. He adopted his master’s style entirely, with a formidable vocal virtuosity and voluptuous chromaticism. Hasse also met Farinelli (who became a friend and appreciated his music above all else), composing for all the great voices of the time, in particular Faustina Bordoni, one of the legends of the Baroque era, whom he married in 1730. Hasse also established a privileged collaboration with Metastasio and his career spread throughout Europe, his dozens of operas earning him phenomenal fame. He was one of the founders of pre-classicism, uniting Neapolitan vocality with an orchestral density no doubt inherited from his German origins.

In 1748, he composed Il Demofoonte for the Dresden Opera. The libretto was one of Metastasio’s most famous and had already been set to music many times, notably by Caldara, Vivaldi, and Gluck. Faustina Bordoni sang the role of Dircea and the great Carestini the role of Timante who, in the arias “Misero pargoletto” and especially “Sperai vicino il lido” with its contrasting sequences, was able to display his technical perfection, agility, and length of breath combined, without forgetting the art of the musical phrase which made his glory.

The other German giant of the opera seria was Georg Friedrich Händel, or George Frideric Handel in his anglicized version, for the composer spent most of his life in London and adopted English nationality. Like Hasse, Handel passed through the Hamburg Opera where, at the age of nineteen, he wrote his first opera score, Almira (1705). Divided between