Pietro Mascagni
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Mascagni: Zanetto
MASCAGNI, P.: Cavalleria Rusticana / LEONCAVALLO, R.: Paglia
CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA: VARNAY-H
Mascagni: In filanda
Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana
Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana
Mascagni: Cavalleria rusticana (Recorded Live 1938)
Mascagni: Iris / Agiman, Pucciniana Philharmonic Orchestra
Mascagni: Cavalleria rusticana (Sung in German) [Recorded 19
MASCAGNI, P.: Cavalleria rusticana (Milanov, Rethberg) (1937
Mascagni: Cavalleria rusticana (Live)
Opera Explained: MASCAGNI - Cavalleria rusticana (Smillie)
Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana - Complete Original Version / Balthasar-Neumann Orchestra
In November 2022, there was a memorable performance at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden: Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni, undoubtedly one of the most important key works of musical verismo. For the first time the audience could experience the work as it was performed at its premiere in Rome in 1890.
Conductor Thomas Hengelbrock had reversed cuts and restored the original vocal range of some of the singers' parts. Meticulous study of the autograph score enabled him to implement the composer's original instructions and intentions in an exemplary manner. He was supported in this by his Balthasar Neumann Choir and Orchestra, trained in "historically informed performance practice", as well as by a topclass ensemble of young soloists.
The result sounds exciting and stirring, and also excitingly new.
Mascagni: L'amico Fritz / Jicia, Castronovo, Iervolino, Frizza, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
Building on the success of Cavalleria rusticana, Pietro Mascagni’s commedia lirica L’amico Fritz was given seven encores and thirty-five curtain calls at its premiere in Rome in 1891. Considered by critics to be one of Mascagni’s best operas, the story is that of a love triangle involving the wealthy Fritz Kobus and Suzel, daughter of one of his tenants, who together sing the famous ‘Cherry Duet’ in Act II. Returning to the Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence for the first time since 1941, this production was acclaimed for its superb cast and astonishingly effective modern setting.
Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana [in English] / Parry
BBC Music (6/98, p.64) - Performance: 3 (out of 5), Sound: 4 (out of 5) - "...Dennis O'Neill is a first-rate Turiddu, Phillip Joll an adequate Alfio and the veteran Elizabeth Bainbridge characterises Mamma Lucia vigorously. The conductor, David Parry, chooses convincing tempos and gives firm support to the singers."
Mascagni: Isabeau / Bakels, Strow Piccolo, Smit, Van Limpt
Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana / Rahbari, Evstatieva, Et Al
Mascagni: Amica / Benzi, Malavasi, Stogiu, Dilengite, Rosiello, Et Al
If beginnings were everything this opera would be at least as good as “Das Rheingold”. If, a bit more logically, we compare Mascagni’s dawn with Puccini’s prelude to Act III of Tosca, we must surely recognize the difference between the inspired natural poet and the cunning purveyor of effects.
The trouble with the cunning purveyor of effects is, they work so damn well. I’m prepared to give Mascagni the benefit of the doubt over his daybreak prelude, however. As the music gathers power and momentum the chorus here proves ragged and few in numbers, while the orchestra is short on strings. The booklet note-writer, Alberto Cantù, admits that the “Inno del Sole” from “Iris” is “something else again”, but I daresay this one would come off too, given a better chance.
This deeply poetic opening sets the stage for what is ostensibly a rustic village wedding in the foothills of the Piedmont Alps. In a series of dances and general invitations to merriment we may note the inventiveness of Mascagni’s orchestral colouring and his continual veering away from the stereotyped music which could so easily have been called upon for such a situation. Then comes the bridegroom-to-be and we get a tenor aria.
This, of course, is where the cunning purveyor of effects scores. Puccini at this point would have come out with something like “Recondita armonia”. Mascagni follows the words with vocal writing that is melodious and expressive without actually blossoming into a melody as such. But wait a moment, are we perhaps listening for the wrong thing? When a Richard Strauss opera breaks into a soliloquy for a leading character, with vocal writing which is similarly melodious and expressive without blossoming into a melody as such, we accept this happily because it’s what we expect. We therefore have to get away from the idea that Mascagni is trying to write a Puccini-tune and not quite managing it and listen more attentively to what he is actually doing. We may then appreciate the mastery of his orchestral backdrop, which in its motivic interest, thematic entwining and variegated colour places Mascagni firmly among the Middle-European post-romantics. Post-romantic, too, is the somewhat acidic tinge to the vocal lines. If we are reminded of Puccini, it is more likely to be the later Puccini of “La Fanciulla del West”, where he, too, began to head in this same direction.
Another problem – not Mascagni’s fault – is that we are used to hearing Puccini and Strauss better sung than this. David Sotgiu has a quite pleasing voice when singing quietly, and at first I wondered if he would be able to present the case for not singing this sort of music full blast. Alas, he fails to expand and drive the music home to us. And this is only the beginning … Giorgio is actually described as “fragile and suffering”, but opera is about suspended disbelief and a fragile Giorgio can’t deliver the goods any more than a fragile Butterfly or a genuinely tubercular Violetta.
Thus far, however, we might go along with the portrayal, since Giorgio, the presumed bridegroom, actually introduces in this aria the first blight on the idyllic scene, the first faltering suggestion that things are not what they seem. For this is an arranged marriage – arranged for fairly cynical reasons I won’t go into here – and the lady’s not going to play. Amica, we soon discover, is passionately in love with Giorgio’s “solid and vigorous” brother Rinaldo, who has been driven out of the home. However, while Amica rejects Giorgio’s overtures, she does not reveal who it is she really loves. Here, and in the subsequent confrontation with her foster-father Camoine, we find that Anna Malavasi has a voice that is not always soundly produced, but with something of the scale to get the music across. There is a frisson to the singing which has been lacking so far.
Rinaldo, in response to a letter from Amica, arrives on the scene. The two love each other as much as ever and Amica reveals the marriage that is being forced on her but, also in this case, does not say who the intended bridegroom actually is. Rinaldo curses the man “who seeks to have your love” and they flee to the mountains. Giorgio catches sight of them in the distance, without recognizing Rinaldo, and gives chase, intending to avenge himself on the “thief of love”. Just to add to the drama, a thunderstorm is brewing.
The music has by this time developed from its innocent, colouristic beginnings to a tense, darkly-hued symphonic web driving the action forward. Mascagni now gives full vent to his orchestral mastery with the longest of his many intermezzi – 10:18 in this performance. It should be said that, while the orchestra is rough and ready and the strings undernourished, Manlio Benzi has all the right ideas about how the music should go and this piece comes off pretty powerfully.
Act II takes place in a wild ravine. Giorgio confronts the couple, then draws back on recognizing Rinaldo. Rinaldo is equally astonished. At this point his fraternal love proves stronger than his love for Amica. He accuses the latter of having lied to him and, pitying his weak brother, who has now collapsed in a faint, renounces to her: “His ghost would always rise up between us; and if he lived, each kiss that you gave me would seem to be stolen from my brother”. “If you loved me”, he continues, “let your heart not be deaf to my begging voice … you alone hold Giorgio’s fate in your hands, make him a gift of your pity, of your love”. He leaves, clambering up the sheer rock face. Amica, still declaring her love for Rinaldo, attempts to follow him up the cliff, but falls into the torrent below. Giorgio has by now come to and as the opera ends Rinaldo attempts to rejoin his brother.
All this action is underpinned by powerful orchestral writing, basically a continuation of the intermezzo. Pierluigi Dilengite’s rather hoarse, barking baritone is unable to express much against this backdrop and even Anna Malavasi is reduced to ungainly shouting. This means that the effectiveness of the opera is not really proved either way. Could a Gobbi or a Taddei have given Rinaldo at this point the humanity which Mascagni evidently wants? Could a Callas have involved us emotively in Amica’s desperate final gesture (maybe Geraldine Farrar was able to do this)?
My worry is that, while I think this opera may be musically a masterpiece – it certainly exhibits rare mastery – it may fail to engage us at the human level we expect of an operatic masterpiece. Rinaldo’s sacrifice is, logically, completely useless and even silly. It’s obvious that the lady’s not for turning – he seems to expect her to switch her love from one to the other rather as a bath-tap switches from hot to cold water by moving the lever from left to right – so his own loss is of no benefit to his brother. Surely he could not have imagined otherwise? On the other hand, I’ve tried juggling the situation in my mind to produce a number of alternative endings, but most of them seem worse still. The cunning purveyor of effects might have thought of something, though, and exacted suitable changes from his librettist.
So what can we say? The musical riches of this opera demand a hearing. From this version you’ll get some idea of the orchestral mastery and the sureness with which it progresses from an idyllic beginning to a darkly dramatic conclusion in a short space of time. Anna Malavasi’s singing in the first act, at least, gives a fair hint of the sort of frisson the music could presumably have all through with a high-octane international cast. And, in spite of the positive judgement on Manlio Benzi, a Gavazzeni in the pit might have helped the singers by creating more transparent textures. Unfortunately I am unable to say whether the Ricciarelli/Pace version is any better. Michael Oliver’s Gramophone review (2/97) reports a fairly effective performance, very poorly recorded. The present recording has all the bangs and thumps we expect from a live theatre production but is technically more than acceptable. The likelihood of another version seems remote. It has become a truism among Mascagni lovers that his operas – post-Cavalleria – are a treasure-house of wonderful music which is in abeyance because the singers with the heft to cope with them are a lost breed. This is not the only recording which seems to prove them right on both counts.
-- Christopher Howell, MusicWeb International
Il Mito Dell'opera - Mascagni: L'amico Fritz / Vittorio Gui
Mascagni: Sì / Vivian, Felle, Gentile, Nicoletti, Comas, Liguori, Sanna, Orchestra Sinfonica del Cantieri d'Arte de Montepulciano
Mascagni: L'Apoteosi della cicogna, A Giacomo Leopardi, Pinotta & Zanetto / Various
Inactive since Il Piccolo Marat (1921), on March 23, 1932 Mascagni reproposed Pinotta, reelaborated from his cantata In Filanda. The Author’s interventions in 1932 were undoubtedly important: the little chorus of Zeffiri that after the short prelude announces the idyll shows a harmonic restlessness hardly thinkable in a twenty-year-old Mascagni; and the same goes for the unusual effect in the finale, with the two voices whispering a fading “T’amo” on the silence of the orchestra. Also, the rich instrumental ensemble is much wider than the one thought for the cantata. For the symphonic poem with voice A Giacomo Leopardi Mascagni followed the great examples of Liszt, Smetana and Strauss: the poem gets its inspiration not only from the few verses sung by the soprano; wider fragments - quoted in limine on the score - supply the expressive suggestions to the orchestra interludes acting as “bridges” among the different episodes. So we might say that this A Giacomo Leopardi is not a cantata, but a downright symphonic poem where a few singable episodes occasionally emerge. Zanetto can be considered as a “little” opera not because of its short duration, of the orchestra ensemble including no brass or its only two characters (soprano and mezzosoprano en travesti), but because of its decidedly lyrical style and basic lack of action: the act is just a long encounter-conversation in a Renaissance Florence between a young minstrel and Silvia, a rich, bored lady who reciprocates his love but, being a courtesan, cannot allow herself such a feeling and must reject the young boy.
Cavalleria Rusticana / Bartoletti, Orchestra della Toscana, Coro Cooperativa Artisti Associati
| The performance of Cavalleria Rusticana republished in this album took place in the hometown of Mascagni, Livorno, on the occasion of the centenary of the premiere, which took place in 1890 in Rome, at the Teatro Costanzi. Already scheduled for some time, this publication due out in autumn 2021 commemorates one of the most important voices of post-World War II, the tenor Giuseppe Giacomini, recently passed away at the age of 80, and caught here in a role to him particularly congenial and at the zenith of his career. Known and loved by European, American and Asian opera audiences, a unique voice for its richness of harmonics and extension. The English critic Alan Blyth wrote of him: “... he is the true inheritor of the spinto mantle last worn by Corelli, and to some extent by Vickers. Yet his tone, with his strongly baritonal timbre, bears an even closer resemblance to that of Francesco Merli...” Conductor is Bruno Bartoletti, who had a long and honored theatrical and recording career; to be noticed the "extraordinary participation" of Fedora Barbieri in the part of Lucia. |
Mascagni: Cavalleria rusticana / Janowski, Dresden Philharmonic
Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana / Cellini, Milanov, Bjorling, Merrill
The recording features Renato Cellini conducting the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra with the Robert Shaw Chorale, and features singers Zinka Milanov, Jussi Björling, Robert Merrill.
Who today, or in any day, fills Mascagni’s grateful phrases with quite such full, lustrous tone and with such a wealth of feeling for the text as Milanov? This is verismo singing on the grandest, most authentic scale … Like his soprano, Björling’s singing is an exemplar of the spinto style at its best. As Alfio, Merrill turns in one of his most considerable performances on disc.
- Gramophone Magazine
Mascagni: Messa di Gloria / Ivanov, Candia, Callegari, The State Philharmonic Orchestra
The Messa di Gloria belongs to the period before Cavalleria Rusticana: the lack of a choral or a fugue as well as the simple, almost ingenuous tonalities reveal the dominance of the operatic style over the religious one. Only a careful listening can disclose in the operatic melodies of the Messa di Gloria some kind of references to church music. Echoes of Guglielmo Ratcliff can be heard in the Gratias, and the Incarnatus clearly recalls Turiddu’s “resta abbandonata” from Cavalleria. Before a modern audience the Messa, made of “pray, all love and passion”, as the composer described it, still retains its character. The lyrical element, vehement in the Gloria or tender in the Elevazione, is soaked with Mediterranean feelings, like in a deep and touching popular songs.
