The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (32 page)

CD: Thomas Allen (Figaro); Agnes Baltsa (Rosina); Neville Marriner (cond.).
Philips 446 448 2

DVD: Cecilia Bartoli (Rosina); Gabriele Ferro (cond.).
Arthaus 090

La Cenerentola
(
Cinderella)

Two acts. First performed Rome, 1817.

Libretto by Jacopo Ferretti

Loosely based on the Cinderella fairy-tale, but with all supernatural elements removed from the plot.
An opera which has become increasingly popular since it was revived for the Spanish mezzo-soprano Conchita Supervia in the 1930s.
Like
La
Gazza
Ladra
(
The
Thieving
Magpie
), composed later the same year, it has a subtle and bitter-sweet flavour which distinguishes it from earlier farces such as
Il
Barbiere
di
Siviglia.

Plot

In Don Magnifico’s shabby mansion, his downtrodden daughter Cenerentola is busy with housework while her stepsisters Clorinda and Tisbe quarrel.
Disguised as a beggar, Prince Ramiro’s tutor Alidoro enters, sent by Ramiro to assess the girls’ eligibility for his hand in marriage.
Clorinda and Tisbe scorn the beggar; Cenerentola takes pity.
Following Alidoro’s reports of this virtuous and beautiful creature, Ramiro himself now appears, disguised as his valet Dandini, to look at Cenerentola.
He and Cenerentola fall instantly in love.

Magnifico and his daughters are invited to Ramiro’s ball, but the snobbish Magnifico refuses to allow Cenerentola to attend.
Fortunately, Alidoro steps in and Cenerentola eventually arrives at the ball splendidly attired and veiled.
Magnifico, Clorinda and Tisbe do not recognize her.

The real Dandini, disguised as Ramiro, is in love with Cenerentola too, but she rejects him in favour of the false Dandini, Ramiro, who offers to marry her.
She gives him one of a matching pair of bracelets, telling him to find her again and learn her true identity.
The real Dandini reveals that he is only a valet – and Magnifico is furious to realize that he has been fooled by a servant.

Back at Magnifico’s mansion, Cenerentola resumes her housework and dreams of ‘Dandini’.
Meanwhile, Ramiro’s coach is overturned in a storm outside the mansion, and he and the real Dandini come in for shelter.
Ramiro recognizes the bracelet on Cenerentola’s arm and announces that she is his bride.
Magnifico, Clorinda and Tisbe are appalled, but the tutor Alidoro is delighted at the wisdom of Ramiro’s choice.
Cenerentola rejoices in the change of her fortunes and generously forgives all those who have done her wrong.

What to listen for

The opera’s most celebrated number – a rewriting of a tenor aria from
Il
Barbiere
di
Siviglia,
usually cut today – comes at the very end.
Cenerentola’s exhilarating rondo ‘Non più mesta’ is a chance for the mezzo-soprano to show off her coloratura technique – especially if she is capable of rising into soprano regions for the climax.
Note also Cenerentola’s hauntingly melancholy ‘once upon a time’ folk-song that opens Act I and recurs later in the opera, and the sextet in the second scene of Act II, a number which illustrates Rossini’s virtuosity at conveying a state of comic confusion.
(Incidentally, Rossini did not intend all the words in the fast patter ensembles to be heard,
à
la
Gilbert and Sullivan; he treats the voices as though they were orchestral instruments, and the text is mere nonsense.) Elsewhere, the score illustrates Rossini’s habit of repeating material: this can be either tedious or exhilarating, depending on the conductor’s skill at keeping the tempi buoyant without simply rushing through the faster passages headlong.

In performance

La
Cenerentola
is more a sly moral tale than a little girl’s fantasy of rags-to-riches.
Directors tend to muddle the two, however, and even attempt to reinsert the glamorous magic-wand element that Rossini deliberately eschewed.
The better productions heed the view of Rossini scholar Richard Osborne that the opera inhabits ‘a harder, brittler world than that of, say, Mozart’s
Le
Nozze
di
Figaro,
and in some ways a more painful one’.

The title role has recently benefited from the talents of Cecilia Bartoli, a mezzo-soprano whose style and technique is probably very close to that of the singers of Rossini’s day.
The opera’s first production at the Met was specially mounted for her in 1997.
Singers such as Bartoli, more alert to issues of historical authenticity than their predecessors, follow traditional performing practice and provide extensive improvised ornamentation when the melodies are repeated within arias.

Recording

CD and video: Cecilia Bartoli (Cenerentola); Riccardo Chailly (cond.).
Decca 436 902 2(CD); 071 444 3 (video)

Semiramide

Two acts. First performed Venice, 1823.

Text by Gaetano Rossi

Rossini’s first great success, composed in 1813, was
Tancredi,
a heroic opera based on a tragedy by Voltaire.
Ten years later, he returned to Voltaire for
Semiramide,
another work which demonstrates his aspirations to forge a grand classical style.
The story had previously been the subject of some forty operatic settings.

Plot

Queen Semiramide ascended the throne of Babylon with the help of Prince Assur, who murdered her husband King Nino with her complicity.
Now Semiramide is in love with the army commander Arsace, unaware that he is her son, whom she also attempted to kill.
The ghost of Nino publicly announces that Arsace will succeed to the throne and privately reveals to him the true circumstances of his assassination.

Arsace is appalled to discover that a woman as wicked as Semiramide is his mother, but when he confronts her, he is so moved by her remorse that they are reconciled.
Assur attempts to kill Arsace, but Semiramide interposes herself between them and dies on her son’s sword.
Arsace is declared king.

What to listen for

The title role, originally written for Rossini’s first wife, Isabella Colbran, is a showpiece for a dramatic coloratura technique, with a fine aria in Act I, ‘Bel raggio’, in which Semiramide celebrates her infatuation with Arsace; and two
imposing duets with Arsace, ‘Serbami ognor’ and ‘Giorno d’orrore’ (the latter a scene of confrontation and reconciliation often compared to that between Gertrude and Hamlet).
Rossini excelled in duets for female voices – other fine examples can be heard in
Tancredi
and
La
Gazza
Ladra
– and they provide tests of breath control and synchronicity.
It is vital to use two voices that ‘blend’ smoothly.

Semiramide is not a high soprano role, and it is sometimes sung by a high-lying mezzo-soprano.
The ‘trouser’ role of Arsace, however, lies low for a mezzo-soprano.
Its most successful exponents, like the American Marilyn Home, exploit powerful chest notes to make the character sound convincingly masculine.

Note the grandeur of the finale to Act I, in which the ghost of Nino appears, and Assur’s mad scene, in which his hallucinations, mental disturbance and return to sanity provide a great opportunity for a bass with vocal flexibility as well as a sense of the melodramatic.

In performance