Paventa Insano Pacin i and Me rcadant e•Arias and Ense mbles ORR236 Box cover : ‘Hersilia throwing herself between Romulus and Tatius (The peace between the Romans and Sabines)’, 1645. By Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591-1666). Paris, Musee du Louvre. akg-images/Erich Lessing Booklet cover : Isabella Galletti Gianoli Opposite and CD face : Giovanni Pacini and Saviero Mercadante –1– Producer and Artistic Director: Patric Schmid Managing Director: Stephen Revell Assistant producer: Jacqui Compton Assistant conductor: Robin Newton Répétiteur: Stuart Wild Vocal coach: Gerald Martin Moore Italian coach: Maria Cleva Assistant to the producer: Nigel Lax Article and translations: Jeremy Commons Recording Engineer: Chris Braclik Assistant Engineer: Chris Bowman Editing: Patric Schmid, Jacqui Compton and Chris Braclik Recorded at Henry Wood Hall, London February 2005 –2– CONTENTS Paventa Insano: The outpouring of passion in Pacini and Mercadante............ ..Page 9 Paventa Insano: L’effusion passionnelle chez Pacini et Mercadante ...................Page 15 Paventa Insano: Ergüsse der leidenschaft: Pacini und Mercadante. ...................Page 21 Paventa Insano: L’espressione dei sentimenti nelle opere di Pacini e Mercadante....................................................................................... .Page 27 Notes and song texts.......................................................................................Page 32 –3– PAVENTA INSANO Duration Page [1] Giovanni Pacini Il corsaro ( Terzetto) 8’34 32 ‘Che intesi! è lui che adoro’ Annick Massis, Laura Polverelli, Bruce Ford [2] Saverio Mercadante Elena da Feltre (Aria) 8’36 52 ‘Parmi che alfin dimentica’ Majella Cullagh [3] Giovanni Pacini Stella di Napoli (Terzetto) 6’05 59 ‘Addio!... la tua memoria’ Majella Cullagh, Laura Polverelli, Bruce Ford [4] Saverio Mercadante I Normanni a Parigi (Terzetto) 4’20 71 ‘Che tento? che spero?’ Annick Massis, Laura Polverelli, Kenneth Tarver [5] Giovanni Pacini Il contestabile di Chester (Terzetto) 11’51 83 ‘Ah! partir il voto o ciel... Deh rammentate almeno’ Annick Massis, Majella Cullagh, Alan Opie [6] Saverio Mercadante Andronico (Duetto) 2’57 101 ‘Nel seggio placido’ Majella Cullagh, Laura Polverelli -4- Duration Page [7] Giovanni Pacini Cesare in Egitto (Terzetto) 4’32 108 ‘O bel lampo lusinghiero’ Annick Massis, Bruce Ford, Kenneth Tarver [8] Saverio Mercadante Leonora (Quartetto) 4’46 120 ‘Tu tremi, indegno’ Bruce Ford, Roland Wood, Alan Opie, Henry Waddington [9] Giovanni Pacini Allan Cameron (Aria finale) 16’49 129 ‘O d’un re martire, alma beata’ Annick Massis, Alan Opie [10] Saverio Mercadante Virginia (Terzetto) 10’35 144 ‘Paventa insano gli sdegni miei’ Majella Cullagh, Bruce Ford, Alan Opie Geoffrey Mitchell Choir London Philharmonic Orchestra David Parry, conductor The music for this recording was prepared for Opera Rara by Ian Schofield and Chris Moss –5– Giovanni Pacini Saverio Mercadante Francesca Festa Maffei The first Irene Andronico PAVENTA INSANO: THE OUTPOURING OF PASSION IN PACINI AND MERCADANTE VENTURE BEYOND the four greatest names in the operatic firmament of early 19th century Italy – delve beyond Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi – and the next two composers to come to attention will always be Mercadante and Pacini. And more often than not they will be mentioned together in the same breath, as if they were colleagues and collaborators – which, let us hasten to add, they emphatically were not. Why, then, do we so often link them together? Is there good reason for doing so? Or is this an arbitrary juxtaposition which, become a platitude, should preferably be abandoned? Our own feeling – and indeed the raison d’être behind the present recording – is that there is very good reason to link their names. They were, in the first place, very close contemporaries. Saverio Mercadante was born on 17 September 1795, and Giovanni Pacini on 17 February 1796 – a difference of only five months. Mercadante was born in Altamura, near Bari in Puglia, and Pacini in Catania, Sicily. Both, therefore, first saw the light of day in the deep south of Italy, though in Pacini’s case this was a fortuitous accident rather than any indication of true origin. His father, Luigi Pacini, was a famous basso buffo who simply happened to be in Catania – on tour – at the time his wife gave birth. Giovanni was, in fact, born in an inn or hostelry frequented by itinerant theatrical folk. The real home of the Pacini family lay in Tuscany, though precisely where has never been established. But –9– conveniently he was able to enjoy, as it were, ‘dual nationality’ – he could live and work in Viareggio, Lucca and Pescia as a Tuscan, but could also, when it was to his advantage, point to his place of birth and claim to be Sicilian. Both enjoyed long careers in the theatre and were, in an age when composers were expected to churn out operas one after another, conspicuously tenacious and prolific. Pacini composed well over 70 operas (though not ‘over 100’ as he himself claimed); Mercadante was hardly less productive, with something like 60 titles to his credit. Both, too, grew up in the shadow of Rossini – an awkward time for any young composer, since the Rossinian mould of operatic composition had become the established norm all over Italy, sweeping the operas of older composers from the boards and imposing a pattern upon young composers, to which, if they wished to gain any hearing at all, they had to conform. As Pacini memorably put it in a celebrated passage in his autobiography, Le mie memorie artistiche (Florence, 1865): ‘But let me be allowed to observe that as many as were in those days my contemporaries, all followed the same school, the same modes of composing, and were in consequence imitators, like me, of the Greater Star . But, good God! What was one to do if there was no other way of supporting oneself?’ Yet both composers, though they may have begun as imitators of Rossini, in mid-career managed to break free and develop recognisable musical personalities of their own – recognisable styles in which they were able to –10– pursue the depiction of the passions in ways that were increasingly their own. Both, consequently, are constantly mentioned in the history books as composers who, enriching the harmonic language and the orchestration of their day, anticipated the innovations and procedures of Verdi. Even in these days of their maturity, they continued to have much in common. Both were concerned with concentrated drama: with ways of heightening the musical expression of stressful emotions and anguished states of mind. Both are constantly seeking new harmonic effects, while keeping within a traditional diatonic system. Both are clearly and constantly aware that a traditional harmonic system allows every slightest departure and variant to stand out and make a maximum effect, whereas – as 20th century composers were to discover to their cost – a wholesale abandonment of ‘rules’ means cutting oneself off from the traditional colours that come from the use of major and minor modes, from the use of individual keys and their traditional associations, from modulation one to another, and from all manner of long-honoured harmonic devices (the tierce de Picardie , the Neapolitan 6th and many more). Licence may result in freedom, but it also leads to a loss of traditional reference points. But let us not be led away from Mercadante and Pacini. Both, in addition to their search for rich and satisfying harmonic effects, break new ground in orchestration. Again they look for the unusual – the use of new or unusual instruments, often in unexpected combinations – and combine this quest with a liking for bravura writing for solo instruments, particularly in –11– atmospheric preludes and interludes. Both, too, are steeped in what can only be described as richly lyrical Italianate melody – melody that ultimately springs from folksong, but which has been developed, broadened and intensified through the use of strong sonorous voices – and they both, Mercadante especially, make use, in the operas of their maturity, of the so- called motivo spiegato , the broadly flowing, rolling and on-going melody which forms the basis of so many of their ensembles and concertati . Yet, though there is thus a great deal of common ground or overlap between them, there are also recognisable different characteristics. John Black, when mentioning, in his book on the librettist Salvatore (or Salvadore) Cammarano 1, that the text of Orazi e Curiazi was offered initially to Pacini but was more appropriately set by Mercadante, perceptively put his finger on these differences. As he wrote there: ‘ Orazi e Curiazi was undoubtedly a fine subject for an opera […] but it suited the slow-moving, statuesque treatment that Mercadante was to bring to it […] rather than the more quicksilver treatment Pacini could offer.’ Mercadante is, indeed, the more weighty and substantial of the two, whereas Pacini has a never-to-be-satiated propensity to veer towards cabaletta motifs that are striking because they are rhythmically jerky and unexpected, and towards choruses that are similarly chirpy and chattery, rhythmically syncopated and brittle. ____________________________________ 1 John Black, The Italian Romantic Libretto: A Study of Salvadore Cammarano (Edinburgh, 1984), p. 101. –12– Everything that has been suggested here will, we believe, be amply illustrated by the wide range of music performed on the present disc. Both composers conduct us through a gamut of emotions: love, joy, anxiety,