Questa Formal

Benedetto Marcello (1686–1739), remembered best today for some attractive instrumental music, including some virtuosic works for oboe, and his satire of the opera house, Il teatro alla moda, also wrote a small group of oratorios, including a pair of allegorical pieces for the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin at Macerata. One of these was Il pianto e il riso delle quattro stagioni from 1733. It has been described as a "highly poetic, generally mellow, faintly comic" work, in which Marcello employed "the whole arsenal of techniques he had mastered over a quarter-century"; in fact, not only is there amazing attention to detail in the string articulation, but it also provides an important record of a composer's expectations of his string orchestra. Few oratorios from this locale and period are available in modern editions, and this example has all the formal characteristics associated with the genre of oratorio in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Riccardo Muti had made a sensational Salzburg debut in 1971, and this Cosi fan tutte was his first Mozart opera at the festival. It was acclaimed by both the general public and international critics, who were virtually unanimous in their praise of the aesthetic quality of the production. Muti was praised for his authoritative approach to Mozart's music, while the remarkably homogeneous team of international soloists was equally applauded. The singers form an admirably cohesive ensemble and all of them are outstanding Mozart singers.

Paisiello (1740-1816) was the master of Italian opera buffo and a significant influence on Mozart. His orchestral writing and musical characterizations are deft and dramatic, and he was the first to introduce ensemble finales into comic operas. Don Chisciotte is an early work, premiered in Naples (where he spent most of his life) in 1769, and it already shows all the skills that made his work popular throughout Europe. The libretto by Lorenzi is based on a 1719 play that deals with the Don's visit to a noble court and the tricks that are played on him there, drawing in material from elsewhere in Cervantes' novel, including his tilt with the windmills. The characters are reduced from aristocrats to middle-class Neapolitans familiar to the opera's audiences, and they are treated with parodistic irony.