Pergolesi Serva

Schon bei seiner Gründung 1962 hatten es sich Collegium Aureum als Ziel gesetzt, alte Musik auf historischen Instrumenten aufzuführen. Während der langen Zeit seines Bestehens veröffentlichte das Ensemble zahlreiche erfolgreiche LPs und CDs und konzertierte in den großen Konzertsälen ganz Europas.

La morte di San Giuseppe (The Death of St. Joseph) is a fascinating curiosity from the pen of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, the Italian composer of La serva padrona – the little intermezzo through which the irreverent breezes of Mozartian opera first blew. This recording is a world premiere of La morte di San Giuseppe, which was known to scholars through fragmentary manuscripts in European libraries but for which a full autograph manuscript only recently surfaced. Designated as an oratorio, the work depicts the death of Joseph, husband of Mary. It features three characters in addition to Joseph, a tenor; St. Michael and Divine Love, both sopranos; and Mary, a contralto.

Costituita nel 1984, l'Orchestra da Camera "Benedetto Marcello'' ha tenuto numerosi concerti in Italia a all'Estero con riconoscimenti lusinghieri da parte della critica. Interessata al recupero delta musica strumentale italiana del XVIII secolo, soprattutto inedita, ha revisionato ed inciso per I'etichetta Bongiovanni i Concerti per flauto, archi e cembalo di G.B. Sammartini, L. Leo, N. Porpora, G. Sammartini, G.B. Martini, I'Intermezzo "Traccollo" di G.B. Pergolesi e i concerti per pianoforte a orchestra di Dussek; per I'etichetta Mondo Musica.

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi owes much of his fame to La Serva Padrona, a comic intermezzo designed to be performed between the acts of an opera seria. In it, a maid and a servant conspire to convince their master to marry the maid. When Aldo Tarabella was asked to direct a performance of Pergolesi’s intermezzo, he wanted to do more than simply pair it with one of the operas it traditionally sits alongside – so he composed Il Servo Padrone, a companion piece, and a kind of sequel, to Pergolesi’s original.

The Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini, which has been devoting itself to the research and performance of Pergolesi‘s music for years now, had his operas recorded live at the annual Music Festival in Jesi. Released on this BD are two productions from Jesi of one almost forgotten opera, Il prigionier superbo, and one of Pergolesi’s most popular works, La serva padrona, combined like they were at the original premiere.

The characters move in a musical setting which is perhaps less revolutionary than Pergolesi's had been, the scenic action moves at a slower pace, with longer arias. Pergolesi's means are certainly more limited than Paisiello's, his vocal styles more essential and specific — his Uberto is more desperate and his Serpina craftier, while in Paisiello's opera the characters take on a more worldly and fugy-rounded form. In Paisiello's work Uberto and Serpina sing with greater awareness of the fact that they are actors in an institutionalised theatre, and their arias could at times belong to a different text, as for example the splendid 'Donne Vaghe' with which Serpina opens the second act or the delightful duet 'Donne infeste', whose music sounds more like an act of love than the celebration of deep disagreement. These two episodes, whose pertinence to the development of the plot is quite questionable, do not appear in Pergolesi's text.

While Pergolesi’s vivacious intermezzo of 1733 – a crucial staging post in the development of opera buffa – has a toehold in the repertoire, Paisiello’s 1781 setting of the same silly libretto for Catherine the Great is virtually unknown. The more sophisticated Paisiello can’t match Pergolesi for verve and unassuming lightness of touch. His fast arias tend to be more emphatic, less melodically catchy. But there is plenty to admire in the polished craftsmanship, the colourful writing for woodwind (including prominent clarinets) and, in two of Serpina’s arias, a vein of soulful lyricism characteristic of the Age of Sentiment.