Pascal Barbot, Christophe Rohat y Chihiro Masui

The comedy in two acts, to a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, is based on one of Carlo Goldoni's best-known and most amusing French comedies, Le bourru bienfaisant. The opera premiered with triumphant success on January 4, 1786 at the Vienna Burgtheater. Mozart liked the work so much that he composed two “substitute arias” for it, both of which found their way into this Teatro Real de Madrid production. The director Irina Brook, daughter of the well-known English director Peter Brook, made her debut at the Teatro Real with this production. She brings the plot to our time, mixing several styles and eras, which, together with Soler's light, cheerful music, makes the work really amusing evening entertainment.

Mozart's affectionate quotation from Martín y Soler's Una cosa rara in the Don Giovanni dinner music suggests he admired his Spanish contemporary, whose music was praised by others as 'sweet' and 'graceful'. Such descriptions remain apt for a charming and brilliantly executed performance that's essential for anybody curious about late 18th-century opera beyond Mozart.

Rescue operas are not what one is used to associating with Handel, yet that, in a sense, is what this is. Costanza, a princess of Navarre, has been shipwrecked on Cyprus, where she now awaits the arrival of her betrothed, Richard the Lionheart (yes, the same). The island's tyrannical ruler, Isacio, fancies her for himself, however, and spends the entire opera trying to prevent the intended union from going ahead, first by sending Riccardo his daughter Pulcheria instead, and, when that has failed thanks to Pulcheria's brave entreaties, by imprisoning Costanza and declaring war. Only with his final defeat by Riccardo's army, aided by Pulcheria's own fiancé Oronte, do things finally turn out happily.

When one approaches the music of the eighteenth century that was performed at the Spanish court of the Palacio de la Zarzuela (which in shortened from then gave the whole “zarzuela” genre its name), whether by composers born in Spain or by foreigners who had settled there, the first impression is one of surprise. For here we find ourselves confronted with magnificent music that follows Italianate models, like all works of the period, yet contributes original elements specific to the country that gave it birth: above all the theatrical style, the inclusion of characteristic rhythms, and the richness of the texts, taken from great writers of the time.

The opera opened in 1786, the same year as Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro , and both were revived in Vienna three years later. In the revival of Il bubero di buon cuore , since Martín y Soler was then in the court of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg, Mozart wrote two new arias for Madama Lucilla. “Chi sa qual sia l’affano” and “Vado, ma dove, o Dei?,” which are beautifully sung on this recording by Véronique Gens, the first aria on CD 1, track 18, and the second on CD 2, track 4.