Amica (opera)

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Work data
Original title: Amica
Art nouveau style poster for Amica

Art nouveau style poster for Amica

Original language: French
Music: Pietro Mascagni
Libretto : Paul de Choudens
Premiere: March 16, 1905
Place of premiere: Théâtre du Casino in Monaco
Playing time: A little more than an hour
Place and time of the action: Early 1900 in the Savoy
people
  • Renaldo (Rinaldo), a shepherd ( baritone )
  • Giorgio, his brother ( tenor )
  • Père Camoine (Padron Camoine), the squire ( bass )
  • Amica, his niece ( soprano )
  • Magdelone (Maddalena), servant on the estate ( mezzo-soprano )
  • Country people, servants, shepherds ( choir )

Amica is a tragic opera in two acts by Pietro Mascagni , which premiered in 1905 at the Opéra de Monaco . Paul de Choudens wrote the libretto under the pseudonym Paul Bérel . The work is Mascagni's only opera in French. The translation into Italian was done by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti. The theme of the opera is the love triangle between two brothers and a woman who reciprocates the feelings of one brother but is promised to the other brother. The theme of brotherly love in conflict with love for a woman is a well-known literary motif; B. in Schiller's Bride of Messina or - long after Amica - in Borges ' La Intrusa . Nevertheless, the opera has no direct literary model.

Despite the subject of the “common people” and the drastic outcome, Amica is not an opera of verismo , because at the center of the tragic plot are family relationships and doomed romantic hopes, not violence and “crimes of passion”. Musically, the opera, with its leitmotif technique and the unity of dramaturgy and musical development, is close to Wagner , to whom Mascagni consciously referred. The motif of freedom and the mountains from Amica is directly borrowed from Wagner's Valkyrie theme.

Amica was never a great success and is almost never played today, a fate that Amica shares with all of Mascagni's other theatrical works with the great exception of Cavalleria rusticana . The Mascagni biographer Roger Flury sees in Amica the invigorating spirit of Massenet and Catalani ; the opera contains some of Mascagni's most inspired compositions and of his forgotten operas is "most likely worthy of a reassessment".

action

first act

A manor in the mountainous Haute-Savoie

Camoine, the wealthy landlord, raised his niece Amica like his own daughter. He also took two orphaned brothers into his home: Rinaldo and Giorgio. After Camoine has thrown the rebellious and violent Rinaldo from the farm, he goes to the mountains and lives there as a shepherd. Obedient Giorgio stays on the estate.

In order to no longer be responsible for Amica and to meet the wishes of his lover Maddalena, Camoine now wants to marry Amica to Giorgio. Giorgio has been secretly in love with Amica for years. Amica, who loves Rinaldo, protests in vain. Desperate, she calls Rinaldo and tells him that she should be forced to marry another man. She doesn't tell Rinaldio who this other man is. Together they flee to the mountains.

Second act

A mountain pass by a waterfall

Giorgio followed the couple into the mountains and confronts Rinaldo. When he tells his brother that it is he who should have married Amica, Rinaldo begs Amica to return to Giorgio. His love for his brother is greater than his love for Amica. She doesn't want to part with him, but Rinaldo fends off her and goes on alone. Desperate Amica runs after him and falls into the waterfall under the eyes of the brothers.

Origin and reception

Since the first performance of Le maschere (1901), Mascagni had not been able to bring a new opera to the stage. The Italian opera houses were firmly in the hands of two music publishers: Sonzogno and Ricordi , who not only controlled the production and rights to the sheet music, but also determined which operas went on stage and where. Successful composers were also firmly tied to one house. Sonzogno had no interest in a new Manzagni opera while Ricordi wanted him, the unfinished libretto Maria Antonietta of Luigi Illica set to music. After three years of working on the libretto, Mascagni doubted whether he would ever be able to complete the opera. The material - purely political-historical and without a central conflict of love - did not match Mascagni's style. In order to break out of this blockade, Mascagni accepted an extremely generous offer from the French publisher and librettist Paul de Choudens in 1904 : For the setting of his Amica libretto, Mascagni was supposed to pay an astonishing 75% for music rental and performance rights instead of the usual 30% to 40% of the publisher's income Get performances in Italy and 50% for performances elsewhere. There was also a bonus of 20,000 lire on signature and 40,000 lire on delivery. Mascagni agreed, even if this “betrayal” cost him his relationship with Ricordi.

Autograph card of Geraldine Farrar in her title role in Amica (1905)

Mascagni received the libretto in May 1904 and began composing at the beginning of June, which was largely completed in October. His trusted colleague Guido Menasci rewrote two critical parts of the libretto. In November 1904, Mascagni completed the composition with the intermezzo and orchestrated the opera until the end of January 1905. Mascagni himself led the baton at the premiere on March 16, 1905 in Monte Carlo, the main roles were starred: Geraldine Farrar as Amica, Charles Rousselière as Giorgio and Maurice Renaud as Renaldo. The evening was a great triumph, but the Italian premiere in Rome on May 13, 1905 was less successful.

The opera never became an integral part of the repertoire and is rarely performed today.

literature

Web links

Commons : Amica  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Alan Mallach: The autumn of Italian opera . Boston 2007, p. 429 (footnote 37)
  2. ^ Alan Mallach: The autumn of Italian opera . Boston 2007, pp. 125-126.
  3. ^ Roger Flury: Pietro Mascagni: a bio-bibliography Westport CN 2001, p. 12.
  4. ^ A b Alan Mallach: Pietro Mascagni and his operas . Boston 2002, pp. 162-168.