San Francisco Opera Orchestra Milan, Conducted by Franco Faccio
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CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS PROGRAM NOTES Friday, May 17, 2013, 8pm Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) the first Italian performance of Aida and the Zellerbach Hall Capriccio Sinfonico world premiere of Otello), had agreed to conduct the concert, and the rehearsals went well, despite Composed in 1883. Premiered on July 14, 1883, in the difficulty of the unfamiliar music for the San Francisco Opera Orchestra Milan, conducted by Franco Faccio. student players. The performance was a success, and the Capriccio Sinfonico created a sensation. Nicola Luisotti, conductor Giacomo Puccini’s father, Michele, the organist Ponchielli was disabused of his earlier estimate with at Lucca Cathedral, died when the lad was five, of the piece, and he wrote to Albina Puccini that Giuseppe Albanese, piano and Mama Albina struggled for years thereafter very evening to report on the enthusiastic recep- to raise her brood of eight. When Giacomo’s ex- tion of the work and to predict a brilliant career ceptional talent and ambition for composition for her son: “Those who deserve honors sooner soared beyond the means of the family’s budget or later receive them. In time, your son will PROGRAM to provide training, Albina successfully impor- achieve his just reward. Remember, with faith tuned an old acquaintance, a Lady-in-Waiting and courage, the Way of the Cross becomes the to Queen Margherita, to intercede with her mis- Way of the Resurrection.” The morning after the Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) Capriccio Sinfonico (1883) tress for a government grant to allow Giacomo premiere, the influential critic Filippo Filippi to enter the Milan Conservatory. Albina then praised the young composer in the newspaper cajoled the remainder of the needed funds from La Perseveranza: “Puccini has won the favor of Nino Rota (1911–1979) Piano Concerto in C major (1959–1962) her uncle, a physician named Niccolo Cerù, and the general public. He unquestionably possesses Allegro cantabile Puccini entered the school in 1880, receiving the rare essentials of a symphonic composer. I Arietta con variazione the highest possible scores on his entrance ex- am certain he would be equally successful in the Allegro ams. When the Queen’s stipend expired after a vocal field and in dramatic expression, but his year, sufficient additional money was pried from orchestral composition contains so much unity Giuseppe Albanese, piano Uncle Niccolo to enable Puccini to complete the of style, personality, character, and brilliant course of study by the summer of 1883, a year technique as is rarely found among the most earlier than the rigorous curriculum usually mature composers.” (Filippi was right about INTERMISSION allowed. For the required graduation exercise, Puccini’s theatrical potential, wrong about his Puccini determined to produce not the usual ac- symphonic inclination. Capriccio Sinfonico is ademic fugues and arias, but a grand orchestral one of just a handful of non-operatic works by Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90 (1882–1883) work, a Symphonic Caprice, which would both Puccini, which otherwise include an early Mass, Allegro con brio justify the family’s faith in him and establish a small setting of the Requiem text, a motet for Andante his name in the world of music. “I felt inspired,” soprano, a cantata, three brief orchestral scores, Poco allegretto he later told his biographer Arnaldo Fraccaroli. seven songs, and a few pieces for string quartet Allegro “I composed at home, in the street, in class, at and for piano.) On July 16th, Puccini received the Osteria Aida or at the Excelsior of good old the Conservatory’s little bronze medal recog- Signor Gigi, where one ate without the silly pre- nizing his graduation. Though Faccio’s plan to Nicola Luisotti’s appearance is made possible by Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem, tence of being able to pay for it; I wrote on odd give the Capriccio Sinfonico its first professional Chairs, Amici di Nicola of Camerata. sheets, bits of paper, and the margins of news- performance at La Scala never materialized, he papers.” Puccini showed this jumble of jottings did conduct it twice to considerable acclaim at to his teacher, the respected Amilcare Ponchielli, an exhibition in Turin in 1884. A piano-duet san francisco opera who lamented, “I can’t make anything of it. It’s version of the score was published in Milan just a mess.” Plans to perform the work at the by Giovannina Lucca that same year, but then David Gockley, General Director student concert of July 14th proceeded, however, the work dropped from sight, and was appar- Nicola Luisotti, Music Director and Puccini managed to produce a legible score ently not performed again during Puccini’s and set of parts by the submission deadline. lifetime, though he did mine two of its themes The celebrated Franco Faccio, a graduate of for inclusion in Edgar and La Bohème. (He later the Milan Conservatory and music director of La “borrowed” the score from the Conservatory Cal Performances’ 2012–2013 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. Scala since 1871 (Verdi chose him to lead both library and refused to return it for years in an 24 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 25 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES apparent attempt to conceal this musical shuf- Giovanni Rinaldi. Nino was composing by age which became a leading studio following World perfectly suited to a Keystone Kops car chase. fling.) Puccini persevered through the next de- eight, and by twelve he had completed an orato- War II by nurturing such gifted filmmakers as (Rota had scored more than a hundred movies cade, composing two operas (Le Villi and Edgar) rio titled L’infanzia [Childhood] di San Giovanni Carlo Ponti, Dino De Laurentiis, Michelangelo before he wrote this Concerto.) A third theme, which earned only modest success and even less Battista, whose performance established him Antonioni, and a young screenwriter with am- built from short, wide-ranging phrases in snap- money, but he was taken on by the powerful as a child prodigy; he was admitted to the bitions to direct: Federico Fellini. Lux gave ping, dotted rhythms reminiscent of the flute’s publisher Giulio Ricordi, and finally achieved Milan Conservatory later that year to study Fellini his chance in 1952, when he wrote and earlier descending transition motive, is initi- the acclaim that Ponchielli had prophesied for privately with the school’s director, Ildebrando directed Lo Sciecco Bianco (“The White Sheik”) ated by the piano. The development takes as its him with the premiere of Manon Lescaut in 1893. Pizzetti. In 1926 Rota entered the Accademia di and recruited Rota to supply the score. Fellini material the repeated-note main theme, in both The passion and richness of sonority that Santa Cecilia in Rome as a student of Alfredo and Rota went on to create one of cinema’s most a fanfare-like transformation and its original mark the Capriccio Sinfonico (and the rest of Casella, and when he graduated in 1930 Arturo enduring and productive collaborations with La form, and the snapping-rhythm motive. Main Puccini’s work, for that matter) are evident in Toscanini, recently appointed music direc- Strada, La Dolce Vita, Boccaccio, 8½, Juliet of the and second themes return intact in the recapitu- the opening measures, a dramatic proclama- tor of the New York Philharmonic, helped ar- Spirits, Satyricon, The Orchestra Rehearsal, and lation before the movement is rounded out by an tion for full wind choir. The quieter moments range a scholarship for him to study composi- nine other movies, which the director’s biog- extended solo cadenza and a brilliant coda based that ensue contain several fine melodic ideas tion with Rosario Scalero and conducting with rapher Tullio Kezich said was characterized by on a quick-tempo version of the main theme. indicating that Puccini’s lyrical gifts were al- Fritz Reiner at the Curtis Institute of Music in “empathy, irrationality, and magic.” Rota scored The second movement is set of variations on ready highly developed during his student Philadelphia. Rota profited greatly during his nearly 150 other films, working with such prom- a wistful Ariette whose melodic eccentricities years. (One of these themes was borrowed for two years in America, not just from the formal inent directors as Renato Castellani, Luchino are actually ingenious aural markers that help the choral Requiem in Act III of Edgar of 1889.) curriculum at Curtis but also from his newly Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli, Mario Monicelli, to orient the listener as the theme evolves. The The Capriccio’s fast-tempo central section is forged friendships with Aaron Copland, Samuel King Vidor, and René Clément, but he enjoyed mood and material of the finale are established launched by the vigorous motive that Puccini Barber, and other leading American musicians, his greatest success with Francis Ford Coppola by a mercurial theme of opera buffa jocular- reused extensively in La Bohème a dozen years his immersion in this country’s popular music in the first two Godfather movies—the score for ity announced at the outset by the piano. The later; the episode is filled out with lilting waltz and, perhaps most influentially, his first experi- Part I was nominated for an Academy Award, only significant interruptions of the movement’s music sprung from the principal theme. The ence with talking pictures. He began to estab- but had to be withdrawn when it was learned headlong progress are a meditative version of the mood and music of the introduction return to lish a reputation as a composer with a number of that Rota had borrowed from his music for the theme given by the piano and a virtuosic caden- round out this attractive and highly skilled cre- chamber and orchestral works soon after return- 1958 Fortunella (reference, even quotation, was za near the end.