Gianni di Parigi
| Work data | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Gianni di Parigi |
Title page of the libretto, Milan 1839 |
|
| Shape: | Opera buffa in two acts |
| Original language: | Italian |
| Music: | Gaetano Donizetti |
| Libretto : | Felice Romani |
| Literary source: | Text book by Claude Godard d'Aucourt de Saint-Just for François-Adrien Boieldieu's opera John of Paris |
| Premiere: | September 10, 1839 |
| Place of premiere: | Teatro alla Scala , Milan |
| Playing time: | about 2 hours |
| Place and time of the action: | a village in the Kingdom of Navarre , 17th century |
| people | |
Gianni di Parigi (John of Paris) is an opera buffa in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti . The libretto written Felice Romani after an old text book for the opera by Francesco Morlacchi from the year 1818. The premiere took place on 10 September 1839 Teatro alla Scala in Milan instead.
action
The French heir to the throne is to marry a princess from Navarre . Before the wedding he wants to get to know her incognito. He disguised himself as a wealthy citizen and rented a room in the “Zur Post” inn with his entourage. He occupies all the rooms and appropriates all supplies with a tinkling coin. When the princess arrives with her entourage, he offers her to share the inn with him. The uncomplicated princess, not as arrogant as her steward, agrees. When she faces her host, she recognizes the heir to the French throne in the alleged citizen - and of course the likeable couple is found.
Emergence
Without being commissioned to write the composition and not expecting payment, Donizetti set an old Romani textbook to music in 1831 and sent the opera as a personal gift to the celebrated tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini , who was celebrating triumphs at the Paris Opera at the time. Since Donizetti had not yet made his breakthrough in Paris, he hoped from Rubini that he would perform the work tailored to him in Paris.
Rubini probably accepted the work, there was no letter of thanks to Donizetti, and it was not performed either. The opera, which with its coarse buffo character did not meet the taste of Rubini and the Parisian public, disappeared and only reappeared in an unknown way on September 10, 1839 at La Scala in Milan . The musical direction was Eugenio Cavallini (1st violin) and Giacomo Panizza (maestro al harpsichord). The stage design was by Baldassare Cavallotti and Domenico Menozzi, the choreography by Giovanni Galzerani. The singers were Antonietta Raineri Marini (Princess of Navarra), Ignazio Marini (Steward), Lorenzo Salvi (Gianni), Felicita de Baillou-Hillaret (Oliviero), Agostino Rovere (Pedrigo) and Marietta Sacchi (Lorezza). Donizetti, who had only recently found out about it, made his claims in Milan with the managing duke Carlo Visconti di Modrone, but was unsuccessful.
On behalf of the Donizetti Theater, the Swedish musicologist Anders Wiklund revised the work and created a score for the opening of the festival “Donizetti e il suo tempo” on September 20, 1988. During his research he found that Donizetti had already written a version of Gianni di Parigi for one of the theaters in Naples between 1828 and 1830 ; the Neapolitan elements in the symphonia and a popular tarantella speak for this . It is not known why this version was not performed; it was only performed in March 1846 at the Teatro San Carlo. Donizetti removed the sinfonia and the tarantella from this “original version” . After making a few more changes and corrections, he offered this new version to Rubini.
libretto
The story of Jean de Paris inspired numerous writers and composers. For the first time in 1807 a prose melodrama in three acts by Marsollier under the title Jean de Paris and incidental music by Henry Darondeau was performed in Paris. In 1812, Claude Godard d'Aucourt de Saint-Just wrote the libretto for François-Adrien Boieldieu's comic opera Jean de Paris , which was successfully performed in Paris. Felice Romani's libretto for Gianni di Parigi is based on Saint-Just's text, set to music by Francesco Morlacchi and performed on 27 evenings in 1818 at La Scala in Milan. A good ten years later, Donizetti revised Romani's libretto and set it to music.
Discography
- 1988, CD: Carlo Cillario, Luciana Serra , Angelo Romero, Giuseppe Morino, Enrico Fissore
- 2010, DVD: Giacomo Sagripanti, Ekaterina Lekhina, Roberto de Candia, Edgardo Rocha, Andrea Porta
literature
- Robert Steiner-Isenmann: Gaetano Donizetti. His life and his operas. Hallwag, Bern 1982. ISBN 3-444-10272-0 ; P. 134
- Riccardo Allorto in the booklet for the CD, 1988
Web links
- Gianni di Parigi : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
- Libretto (Italian), Milan 1839. Digitized in the Internet Archive
- Gianni di Parigi (Gaetano Donizetti) in the Corago information system of the University of Bologna
Individual evidence
- ^ September 10, 1839: "Gianni di Parigi". In: L'Almanacco di Gherardo Casaglia ., Accessed on August 7, 2019.