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CHAN 3025 COVER.qxd 22/8/07 1:30 pm Page 1 CHAN 3025(2) CHANDOS O PERA IN ENGLISH Gabriele Bellini PETE MOOES FOUNDATION Rossini The Barber of Seville CHAN 3025(2) BOOK.qxd 22/8/07 1:36 pm Page 2 Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) The Barber of Seville AKG An opera in two acts Critical edition by Alberto Zedda Libretto by Cesare Sterbini after the play Le Barbier de Séville by Beaumarchais English translation by Amanda and Anthony Holden Count Almaviva ..................................................................................Bruce Ford tenor Bartolo, a doctor in Seville ..........................................................Andrew Shore baritone Rosina, ward of Doctor Bartolo..............................................Della Jones mezzo-soprano Figaro, a barber ................................................................................Alan Opie baritone Don Basilio, music teacher and hypocrite................................................Peter Rose bass Fiorello, Count Almaviva’s servant ..................................................Peter Snipp baritone Berta, Bartolo’s housekeeper ..............................................Jennifer Rhys-Davies soprano An Officer ....................................................................................Christopher Ross bass English National Opera Orchestra and Chorus Stephen Harris chorus master Gioachino Rossini, c. 1820 James Holmes assistant conductor Gabriele Bellini 3 CHAN 3025(2) BOOK.qxd 22/8/07 1:36 pm Page 4 COMPACT DISC ONE Time Page COMPACT DISC ONE Time Page 13 ‘You need only mention money’ 7:59 068 1 Overture 7:04 060 Figaro, the Count 14 ‘In my heart a gentle voice’ 2:37 070 Act I (Beginning) Rosina 2 ‘Piano, pianissimo’ 3:22 060 15 ‘I can be so demure’ 3:57 070 Fiorello, Chorus, the Count Rosina 3 ‘See how the smile of heaven’ 4:18 060 16 ‘Oh yes, I’ll win the day’ 0:39 071 The Count Rosina 4 ‘Hey, Fiorello!’ 1:16 061 17 ‘Good morning, Signorina’ 0:45 071 The Count, Fiorello, Chorus Figaro, Rosina 5 ‘Thank you, thank you’ 1:47 061 18 ‘Where would I be without him?’ 1:07 072 Chorus, Fiorello, the Count Rosina, Bartolo 6 ‘What common people!’ 0:28 062 19 ‘Who’d know?’ 1:38 072 The Count, Fiorello Bartolo, Basilio 7 ‘La la la lera’ 4:39 062 20 ‘Innuendo, the slightest whisper’ 3:47 073 Figaro Basilio 8 ‘Ah ha! What could be better?’ 2:05 063 21 ‘Well, what d’you think?’ 0:27 074 Figaro, the Count Basilio, Bartolo 9 ‘I cannot see him anywhere’ 1:37 064 22 ‘So that’s it!’ 2:45 074 Rosina, the Count, Bartolo, Figaro Figaro, Rosina 10 ‘Poor little innocent creature!’ 2:40 065 23 ‘Then it’s me…’ 5:25 076 The Count, Figaro, Bartolo Rosina, Figaro 11 ‘My poor heart is so full of emotion’ 3:09 067 24 ‘Now I feel so much better’ 1:51 077 The Count, Rosina, Figaro Rosina, Bartolo 12 ‘What’s happened?’ 1:05 067 25 ‘Dare you offer such excuses’ 6:44 078 The Count, Figaro Bartolo TT 73:12 000 4 5 CHAN 3025(2) BOOK.qxd 22/8/07 1:36 pm Page 6 COMPACT DISC TWO Time Page COMPACT DISC ONE Time Page 10 Act I (Conclusion) ‘I don’t think we have met, Sir’ 2:50 088 Bartolo, the Count 1 ‘Where’s the master?’ 3:09 079 11 The Count, Bartolo ‘Come along, my dear, and listen’ 1:05 090 Bartolo, Rosina, the Count 2 ‘Ah! How long ’til I behold her?’ 6:07 080 12 The Count, Bartolo, Rosina, Berta, Basilio ‘When a heart for love is yearning’ 7:26 090 Rosina, the Count 3 ‘Stop this noise!’ 1:14 084 13 Figaro, Bartolo, the Count, Rosina, Berta, Basilio ‘What a talent. Bravissima!’ 0:40 091 The Count, Rosina, Bartolo 4 ‘Someone is at the door’ 1:13 085 14 Rosina, Berta, Figaro, the Count, Bartolo, Basilio, Chorus ‘Sweet little seventeena’ 0:59 092 Bartolo 5 ‘Pay attention! What’s the trouble?’ 1:24 085 15 Chorus, Bartolo, Figaro, Basilio, Berta, the Count, Rosina, Officer ‘Bravo, Signor Figaro’ 3:07 092 Bartolo, Figaro, Rosina, the Count 6 ‘Frozen and motionless’ 3:26 086 16 Rosina, the Count, Bartolo, Basilio, Figaro ‘Don Basilio…’ 6:38 094 Rosina, the Count, Figaro, Bartolo, Basilio 7 ‘If I may…’ 4:54 086 17 Bartolo, Berta, Basilio, Chorus, Rosina, the Count, Figaro ‘Now then, Signor Don Bartolo’ 3:58 096 Figaro, Bartolo, the Count, Rosina 18 ‘Things can’t get much worse’ 0:41 098 Act II Bartolo 8 ‘I’ve got to find the answer!’ 0:54 087 19 ‘He wouldn’t trust his mother!’ 0:29 098 Bartolo Berta 9 ‘Peace and joy be yours for ever’ 2:25 087 20 ‘First the Doctor wants to marry’ 3:23 098 The Count, Bartolo Berta 6 7 CHAN 3025(2) BOOK.qxd 22/8/07 1:36 pm Page 8 Gioachino Rossini: The Barber of Seville COMPACT DISC ONE Time Page Rossini wrote forty operas – all of them before the hard-pressed Rossini and his librettist 21 ‘So this pupil Alonso’ 1:05 099 his thirty-eighth birthday, when he had Cesare Sterbini chose it in the freezing Rome Bartolo, Basilio another thirty-eight years to live – yet a time winter of 1816. Beaumarchais’s comedy of 22 ‘By force or persuasion’ 2:52 100 came when he was remembered as the 1775 still held the stage, as it does in France Bartolo, Rosina composer of just one: Il barbiere di Siviglia. today, helped by the triumph of its sequel Le 23 Thunderstorm 3:09 101 This was particularly true while Wagner Mariage de Figaro (the third play in the trilogy, 24 ‘We’ve made it’ 1:13 101 reigned supreme, between about 1880 and La Mère coupable (The Guilty Mother), is a Figaro, the Count, Rosina 1920. Rossini’s many serious operas had dreary, sententious melodrama: Beaumarchais 25 ‘Almaviva, not Lindoro!’ 7:08 102 vanished, but for an occasional Guillaume Tell had been overtaken by the French Revolution Rosina, Figaro, the Count or Mosè in Egitto, put on as a salute to an with its demand for earnestness). A neat 26 ‘Ah! That’s all we needed!’ 0:25 103 ancient monument. Even comic operas like comedy of intrigue, the original Barbiere was Figaro, the Count, Rosina L’italiana in Algeri and La Cenerentola, highly based on the conventions of comic opera – 27 ‘Don Bartolo’ 1:00 104 successful in their own day and again in ours, going back to the old Italian comedy of masks, Basilio, Figaro, the Count, Rosina were in eclipse. Il barbiere, though, marched with the hoariest of plots, the old guardian 28 ‘Don’t move a muscle!’ 0:19 105 on. Some of the best singers appeared in it, whose plan to marry his pretty ward is foiled Bartolo, Figaro, Officer, the Count year in year out, and some of the worst; in the by young love and clever servants; indeed 29 ‘I love a happy ending’ 2:27 105 1940s it was even transformed into a Beaumarchais had originally written it with Figaro, Berta, Bartolo, Basilio, Chorus, Rosina, the Count Broadway musical under the title Once Over ‘numbers’ to be set to music. TT 75:48 000 Lightly, with a Russian Figaro; that turned out What made the play special was the to be once too often. character of Figaro, the sort of uncommon What is it about the work that keeps it common man who was to play a large part in evergreen? Success now and then feeds on the revolution: jack-of-all-trades, living on his itself: of two plays or operas that are equally wits, irreverent to his social superiors (up to a effective in the theatre, one may appear more point while their superiority lasted), but always often than the other because it is better ready to score off them or exploit them. In the known. Il barbiere was already famous when opera, where words have to be far fewer than in 8 9 CHAN 3025(2) BOOK.qxd 22/8/07 1:36 pm Page 10 the spoken play, his character is somewhat composers to write operas on the same subject the season opened over a fortnight late. audience, with the whole theatre’. So Bernard coarsened; his plebeian vigour comes through and even to the same libretto. Rossini and Rossini had not quite four weeks to work in Shaw wrote about Oscar Wilde. It could have in his famous entrance aria, and so does his Sterbini used a fresh title for their version (it between getting the first part of the libretto been written of Rossini. (‘Playing with straightforward interest in money. was originally called Almaviva – suitably, for (25 January) and playing continuo, as was the philosophy’ may seem beyond his grasp – until With the play well established, the reigning the star was the tenor Manuel García) and custom, on the first night (20 February). For a we recall that Hegel and Schopenhauer, solemn Italian composer of the late eighteenth played down the famous sneezing and yawning composer this was nothing out of the philosophers both, thought highly of his century, Giovanni Paisiello, turned it into a scene; these too were normal precautionary ordinary; but the cast was probably tired out works.) From start to finish he plays with the comic opera. This Barbiere made its successful measures. They also printed a note stating that by the initial rush to get the season off the conventions of opera – as he had already done way round Europe after its first performance they meant no discourtesy to the old composer ground (with L’italiana in Algeri), and then by in Il turco in Italia, where one of the characters in St Petersburg in 1782. Rare festival (who was to die just over three months later). having to learn and rehearse Il barbiere while is writing the work as it goes along.