La serva scaltra

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Opera dates
Title: The crafty maid
Original title: La serva scaltra
Title page of the libretto, Saint Petersburg 1735

Title page of the libretto, Saint Petersburg 1735

Shape: Opera intermezzo in three parts
Original language: Italian
Music: Johann Adolph Hasse
Premiere: November 4, 1729
Place of premiere: Teatro San Bartolomeo, Naples
Playing time: Around 1 hour
people

La serva scaltra (also La moglie a forza or Dorilla e Balanzone , German: Die cunning maid or Die mischievous young maid ) is an operatic interlude in three parts by Johann Adolph Hasse (music). The librettist is not known. The premiere took place on November 4, 1729 in the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples between the acts of Hasse's opera Il Tigrane .

action

First part

Street

The maid Dorilla watches the somewhat simple-minded Balanzone as he struts back and forth on the street and raves about his lover, Dorilla's mistress. Dorilla has been pretending for some time that his love will be returned, even though her mistress knows nothing about her admirer. Dorilla decides to have some fun with him as usual. She claims to have been insulted by him and demands a tobacco can in return for information about her mistress. Then she reports a few meaningless words to him (Aria Dorilla: "Poc'anzi la Signora"). Balanzone is not satisfied with that. He complains that he has never been able to speak to his beloved (Aria Balanzone: “M'avea amor già sbalordito”). Dorilla promises to get him together with her mistress today. Before that, however, he had to practice the meeting with her because the lady came from a good family. She describes in detail how Balanzone should greet her mistress (duet: "In vederla si farà").

Second part

Anteroom

Dorilla and Balanzone meet again. The long wait almost made Balanzone physically ill. He begs Dorilla to tell his beloved something witty about him. Then Dorilla notices a nice ring on his hand and resolves to get hold of it. Meanwhile, Balanzone imagines how his first meeting with his beloved will go (Accompagnato and Arie Balanzone: “Ecco già s'apre la portiera” - “Signora, per resistere”). When Dorilla wakes him from his dreams, he initially confuses her with his lover. Dorilla claims that her mistress does not want to see him because she has lost one of her brother's rings and is therefore miserable. In order to free her from this worry, Balanzone takes off his own ring and gives it to Dorilla, who is to present it to her mistress. Dorilla hesitates. She wonders what amorous words her mistress will find for Balanzone (Aria Dorilla: “Per te mio dolce ardore”). Balanzone is thrilled. But his lover has still not come and Dorilla continues to ask him for patience. At his urging, she pretends to be looking for her mistress in the next room. Then she claims that they demand a proof of love from Balanzone. Balanzone is ready for anything. He even draws his sword to kill himself if that is her wish. Dorilla stops him, but then explains that her mistress has meanwhile left the house. However, her brother will come shortly so that he can ask for her hand. Balanzone is desperate and Dorilla declares him crazy (duet: “Parto e nemmeno addio”).

third part

The following anteroom

Dorilla wants to end the game now. For her last trick, she disguised herself as a farmer. When Balanzone arrives, she pretends not to notice him and sings a rural Kanzone (Dorilla: “I ho una covata di anitroccoli”). Then she introduces herself to him as her own brother and claims to lead a very happy life in the country (Aria Dorilla: "Che bel diletto"). She explains to Balanzone that her name is Bechino and that she came on behalf of Dorilla to arrange their wedding with him, Balanzone. He finally promised Dorilla the marriage and gave her an engagement ring. Balanzone tries to talk its way out of it. But then Dorilla / Bechino calls in some peasant friends who threaten him. He loses hope (Accompagnato and Aria Balanzone: “O mio tradito amore” - “Antri ciechi, opachi spechi”). She lets the farmers tie him up. Only when he swears to marry Dorilla does she reveal herself to him and let him untie. Both now profess their mutual love (duet: “Dolce ardore del mio core”).

layout

The intermezzo contains many satirical elements and slapstick jokes, which are not only used for comedy, but allude to the social code at the beginning of the 18th century. The text of the second part (“Son qual pianta fra due venti”) of Balanzone's first aria (“M'avea amor già sbalordito”) is a parody of texts by Pietro Metastasio . The final duet of the first part, in which Dorilla and Balanzone practice meeting their mistress, is a danced minuet .

The music requires great vocal skill from the performers. Balanzone's aria “Antri ciechi, opachi spechi” in the third part, for example, has large leaps in intervals that extend to the tredezime . Dorilla's aria “Per te mio dolce ardore” in the second part, in the style of the opera seria , is also extremely demanding. In each section there are recitatives , arias for both characters and a final duet. Hasse extends the typical musical structure of the intermezzi of that time. The third part contains an additional canzone for Dorilla ("I ho una covata di anitroccoli") to represent the rural origins of her alleged brother. Hasse also treats the usual da capo form more freely. The second duet (“Parto e nemmeno addio”) is interrupted twice by recitatives. La serva scaltra has two major and two minor Accompagnato recitatives. Only one was common in the intermezzi at that time.

The instrumentation largely corresponds to a trio sonata . The violin parts mostly play in unison or in parallel movement, while the viola reinforces the bass or the second violin. In Balanzone's “Antri ciechi, opachi spechi” there are two bassoons that play temporarily without any other instruments in order to illustrate the gloomy atmosphere of the blindness and gloomy caves described in the text. Dorilla's aria “Che bel diletto” in the third part imitates the described frogs and crickets with onomatopoeic pizzicato effects.

The unknown lyricist refers to Ariostos Orlando furioso with the motifs of the ring, remorse and the caves (“opachi spechi”) .

Music numbers

The opera has the following musical structure:

First part

  • Recitative: "Eccolo che sen vien"
  • Aria (Dorilla): "Poc'anzi la Signora"
  • Recitative: "Or tornami Dorilla"
  • Aria (Balanzone): "M'avea amor già sbalordito"
  • Recitative: "Orsù, per acquetarvi"
  • Duet (Balanzone, Dorilla): "In vederla si farà"

Second part

  • Recitative: "Animo, su, coraggio"
  • Accompagnato (Balanzone): "Ecco già s'apre la portiera"
  • Aria (Balanzone): "Signora, per resistere"
  • Recitative: "Ps, ps, ser Balanzone"
  • Aria (Dorilla): "Per te mio dolce ardore"
  • Recitative: "In succhio io me ne vado"
  • Duet (Balanzone, Dorilla): "Parto e nemmeno addio"

third part

  • Recitative: "Per sciogliere ogni intrigo"
  • Kanzone (Dorilla): "I ho una covata di anitroccoli"
  • Recitative: "Che va facendo questo contadino"
  • Aria (Dorilla): "Che bel diletto"
  • Recitative: "E 'un gusto veramente peregrino"
  • Accompagnato (Balanzone): "O mio tradito amore"
  • Aria (Balanzone): "Antri ciechi, opachi spechi"
  • Recitative: "Orsù, già il poveraccio"
  • Duet (Dorilla, Balanzone): "Dolce ardore del mio core"

Work history

Title page of the libretto, Venice 1732

The three parts of the intermezzo were first played on November 4, 1729 at the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples with minimal props in front of the closed curtain during the stage changes between the acts and before the final scene of Hasse's opera Il Tigrane . The singing duo Gioacchino Corrado and Celeste Resse , who specialize in comic roles, sang , for whom Hasse composed a total of eight intermezzi.

The next performance was in 1732 at the Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venice together with Tomaso Albinoni's L'Ardelinda . The intermezzist Domenico Cricchi employed there had asked Hasse, who had lived in Venice since 1727, for a work that would attract the public. Since only two parts were needed here, Hasse revised La serva scaltra accordingly and replaced the first part with an appearance aria by Dorilla. Cricchi played here with Rosa Ruvinetti .

In 1734 Ruvinetti married the stage painter, librettist and composer Girolamo Bon , with whom she and Cricchi performed intermezzi and other works for the Tsar's court from the following year in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In Saint Petersburg there was also a performance of La serva scaltra in 1735 under the title The mischievous young maid.

After they left Saint Petersburg in 1746, Ruvinetti-Bon and Cricchi went to Dresden, where Hasse was now the Polish-Saxon court conductor. Here they also played his Italian interludes again - now as individual pieces supplemented by ballets. At the end of 1747, the two of them were engaged by the Prussian King Friedrich II for his new theater in the Potsdam City Palace. As in Dresden, interludes were combined with ballets, but now on a real stage with an apparently more elaborate set. The last work performed by Cricchi here was Hasse's La serva scaltra in 1752 . The original three-part version was used again. In addition, two arias by Dorilla were added and the final duet was extended. Since the receipts had meanwhile left, Nunziata Manzi sang the role of Dorilla. This was apparently overwhelmed with the aria "Per te mio dolce ardore" and instead sang another aria.

There were further performances of the intermezzo in Aranjuez in 1740 and Carnival in 1750 in the Real Teatro del Buen Retiro in Madrid.

The text was also performed in 1763 in a setting by Giuseppe Scarlatti in Vienna.

Carlo Goldoni told the content of the anonymous libretto in his memoirs, published in 1787, as if the story had happened to him at a young age around 1729. In the 1740s he had revised the libretto Tigrane used by Hasse and probably also got to know the Intermezzi. Steffen Seiferling suspected in the program booklet for the Berlin performance that Goldoni included the episode in his memoirs "to stylize his youthful inexperience."

The first performance in more recent times was in 1978 in the palace theater Neues Palais in Potsdam. As of September 3, 1999, the work was played again as a co-production between the Unter den Linden State Opera and the Potsdam Sanssouci Music Festival in the Schlossheater Neues Palais Potsdam and in the Apollo Hall of the State Opera in Berlin. It sang Gemma Bertagnolli (Dorilla) and Wolfgang Newerla (Balanzone). The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin played under the direction of concert master Bernhard Forck and harpsichordist Raphael Alpermann . The production was done by Katharina Lang , the stage and costumes by Steffen Kaiser , the lighting design by Henning Streck and the dramaturgy by Steffen Seiferling.

In 2004 the intermezzo was performed under the title Die enforced marriage in a production by Andreas Geier from the Weißenhorn chamber opera . Heinrich Graf was the musical director. Irena Bespalovaite sang the Dorilla and Karl-Friedrich Dürr the Balanzone.

Recordings

  • September 1979 - Otmar Suitner (conductor), members of the Staatskapelle Berlin .
    Brigitte Eisenfeld (Dorilla), Reiner Süß (Balanzone).
    Studio recording; German version by the German State Opera Berlin .
    Eterna 827 508 (1 LP), Berlin Classics 0091142 BC (1 CD).
  • December 1989 - Gabriele Catalucci (conductor), members of the Sassari Symphony Orchestra.
    Bernadette Lucarini (Dorilla), Giorgio Gatti (Balanzone).
    Live from Sassari; revised version by Luciano Bettarini.
    Bongiovanni GB 21012 (1 CD).
  • November 25, 2005 - Massimiliano Toni (conductor), Deda Cristina Colonna (director), Ensemble Strumentale Terza Prattica.
    Cristina Baggio (Dorilla), Federico Sacchi (Balanzone).
    Video, live recording.
    Kicco 9015 (1 DVD).

Web links

Commons : La serva scaltra  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Gordana Lazarevich: Johann Adolf Hasse and the Neapolitan Intermezzo Genre. In: Supplement to CD Bongiovanni GB 21012, pp. 7–9.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Steffen Seiferling: Stations of the hike. In: Program of the State Opera Unter den Linden and the Music Festival Potsdam Sanssouci 1999, pp. 8-14.
  3. ^ Reinhard Strohm : Essays on Handel and Italian Opera. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985, ISBN 0-521-26428-6 , p 255 f.
  4. ↑ Supplement to CD Bongiovanni GB 21012. Track list and notes on p. 9, compared with the libretto from 1729.
  5. ↑ a b Dorilla e Balanzone (Johann Adolf Hasse) in Corago information system of the University of Bologna , accessed on May 1, 2018th
  6. ^ Eleanor Selfridge-Field: A New Chronology of Venetian Opera and Related Genres, 1660-1760. Stanford University Press, Stanford 2007, ISBN 978-0-8047-4437-9 , p. 583.
  7. ↑ Steffen Seiferling: “La serva scaltra” - a libretto by Carlo Goldoni? In: Program of the State Opera Unter den Linden and the Music Festival Potsdam Sanssouci 1999, p. 21.
  8. ↑ Program of the State Opera Unter den Linden and the Music Festival Potsdam Sanssouci 1999.
  9. ↑ The forced marriage on the website of the director Andreas Geier, accessed on May 3, 2018.
  10. ↑ a b Johann Adolf Hasse. In: Andreas Ommer: Directory of all complete opera recordings (= Zeno.org . Volume 20). Directmedia, Berlin 2005.
  11. ↑ Karsten Steiger: Opera discography. Directory of all audio and video recordings. 2nd, fully updated and expanded task. KG Sauer, Munich 2008/2011, ISBN 978-3-598-11784-8 , p. 640.