Scarlatti: La principessa fedele
Libretto
by Agostino Piovene
Francesco Zingariello (tenor) - Aladino,
Sultan of Egypt
Giacinta Nicotra (soprano) - Rosana, his favorite
Gemma
Bertagnolli (soprano) - Ridolfo, a German prince enslaved in Egypt
Sonia
Prina (contralto) - Cunegonda, Princess of Bohemia, betrothed to
Ridolfo
Cristina
Sogmaister (mezzo-soprano) - Arsace,
an Egyptian general and
brother to Rosana
Giovanna Manci (soprano) - Ernesto, Cunegonda's
officer
Paola Pelliciari (mezzo-soprano) - Gerina, lady-in-waiting to
Rosana
Roberto Abbondanza (baritone) - Mustafà, keeper of the Sultan's
slaves
Europa Galante
Fabio Biondi
(concertmaster/conductor)
Orlando Forioso (director)
Friday 22
November 2002
Teatro Massimo, Palermo
Presented under the auspices of the Teatro Massimo's
Festival Scarlatti
After much too long a hiatus, the Teatro Massimo di Palermo can claim
once again to be Sicily's artistic pride and joy. After a restoration that was
lengthy (23 years), expensive and contentious even by Italian standards,
Europe's second-largest opera house reopened in 1997 with gorgeous décor and
marvelous acoustics; it now offers a season on a level comparable to that of
Italy's other top-tier theaters. What's more, since 1999 the Massimo has mounted
an annual festival dedicated to the music of Palermo-born Alessandro Scarlatti
(1660–1725).
Each year, the Festival Scarlatti presents a series of concerts featuring the composer's keyboard, chamber and sacred music (usually including a number of modern-day premieres) alongside works of Scarlatti's contemporaries (including his better-known son, Domenico). The festival's centerpiece is a fully staged production of one of Scarlatti's approximately five dozen operas — usually with Baroque violin virtuoso (and native Palermitan) Fabio Biondi leading his period-instrument band, Europa Galante, in the pit. The 2002 festival offered La principessa fedele, a comedy-drama composed for the 1710 Carnival season in Naples and reported by John Mainwaring (Handel's first biographer) to be "a masterpiece of its kind."
The opera's plot bears more than a passing resemblance to that of Beethoven's Fidelio, in that the herione ventures into the heart of the enemy camp disguised as a young man in order to find and rescue her beloved, who is being held prisoner. (Complications ensue in both works when the soprano ingenue becomes infatuated with the disguised visitor.) The emotional and philosophical atmosphere of La principessa fedele is totally different from that of Fidelio, of course: Beethoven wanted to spread his post-Enlightenment ideals of truth and justice for all, while Scarlatti's aim was to provide a diverting — and not overly demanding — evening in the theater.
The scenario is, like that of Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio from several decades later, an example of 18th-century Europe's craze for turquerie — orientalism, Ottoman-style. The hero, Prince Ridolfo, has been captured and enslaved by the Sultan of Egypt, where the titular faithful princess, Cunegonda, arrives in search of him; in her male disguise, she is welcomed as a guest at court. The Sultan's favorite concubine, Rosana, becomes enamored of the young visitor; when Cunegonda-in-disguise rejects her advances, she accuses her/him before the Sultan of an attempt on her honor. All manner of (soap)-operatic complications ensue; Ridolfo and then Cunegonda are threatened with death; eventually the truth comes out and the magnanimous ruler allows everyone to go free.
One aspect of La principessa fedele that's unusual for most
present-day operagoers is the combination of opera seria and opera
buffa, the mix of high drama and low comedy that we're used to seeing in,
say, a single Shakespeare play but not in a single opera. (The mix was common in
the mid-17th century — there are plenty of cheap laughs in Monteverdi's
Return of Ulysses and Coronation of Poppea, for instance — but 
was rapidly disappearing 100 years later.) Scarlatti wrote the
servant roles, Gerina and Mustafà, for Italy's two most famous comic actors of
the day (we'd call them musical theater stars), and their music is more
conversational and less ornate than one might expect in Baroque opera. Humor
doesn't always age well over the course of centuries, though, and those two
characters' antics don't seem terribly witty today. Luckily, the performers cast
in those roles here were thorough professionals who made the servants' hijinks
diverting to watch even when they weren't laugh-out-loud funny. Paola Pelliciari
took over the stage like an old vaudeville hand: the voice was a bit dry (though
that may have been a deliberate choice), but her Gerina was quite a character: a
bossy, fun-loving woman who falls for Mustafà largely because it's just so much
fun to play tricks on him. Roberto Abbondanza's big lug of a slavemaster was
equally engaging, as well sung as it was amusing.
Musically, of course, the real interest lies in the noble characters' arias — which aren't, as it turns out, as engaging as one might hope. When we hear an opera seria today, it's almost always by Handel or Mozart; perhaps it's unfair to hold Alessandro Scarlatti to those high standards, but the comparison is hard to avoid — and none too flattering to Palermo's native son. Too many of the arias drone on in a way that's predictable without being memorable, and the first act in particular seemed tedious (even though Biondi cut about a quarter of the original score). The second and third acts were more noteworthy, with highlights including an affecting "we're-doomed-so-farewell-forever" duet for Cunegonda and Ridolfo and two coloratura showpieces for Rosana.
Giacinta Nicotra was ready for those arias when they arrived. Toward the beginning of the evening, she sounded tight and a bit wobbly, but when it was her turn to shine, she was thrilling, with plenty of flexibility and a tone as bright and as solid as gleaming metal. As her Sultan, Francesco Zingariello displayed a bright, forward tenor more than a little reminiscent of Luciano Pavarotti; Zingariello's vibrato was less prominent than that of his superstar colleague, but his coloratura was somewhat stiff and he sounded like he'd be happier singing Puccini.
As the long-suffering Ridolfo, poor Gemma Bertagnolli was not in good
voice for much of the evening, the pitch sounding tremulous and the tone
a bit strangulated; fortunately, she opened up for her Act II lament and was
in mostly fine form for her final aria, one of Scarlatti's
signature soprano-and-trumpet showstoppers. As his faithful princess Cunegonda, coloratura contralto Sonia
Prina was the standout of the cast: the voice was clear yet appealingly dark and
always on pitch, the singing perfectly scaled to the musical style, the
embellishments inventive.
La principessa is really a sort of overgrown fable, and
the Festival Scarlatti gave it a suitably storybook-style
production. Impressionist-style paintings of Middle Eastern locales were projected on the
backdrop; Renzo Milan's sets and Marja Hoffmann's costumes were sumptuous confections
straight out of The Arabian Nights. Director Orlando Forioso (note to
Baroque opera buffs: that is his real name, not a pseudonym) delivered the
all-too-complicated action directly, letting the solo arias be the monologues
they are and generally avoiding unmotivated stage business and unwarranted
psychologizing. That may not seem remarkable, but in The Age of the
Director, it's something to be thankful for.
