Già Si Desta La Tempesta from Didone Abbandonata Quel Vapor Che
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NICOLA PORPORA’S ARIAS and PASTICCI . Già si desta la tempesta from Didone abbandonata . Quel vapor che in valle impura from Semiramide riconosciuta Johann Gottlieb Janitsch, Quartet B-major for oboe, violin, viola and bc . Torbido intorno al core from Meride e Salinunte . Comincio a consolarmi from Artaserse Johann Gottlieb Janitsch Quartet g-minor for oboe, violin, viola and b.c. Alto Giove from Polifemo . Sento il fato from Polifemo Nicola Porpora (1686-1768), one of the most popular and highly regarded Italian composers of the first half of the eighteenth century, was born and educated in Naples. He won recognition in the fields of the opera, sacred, and occasional music. His drammi per musica were performed in the main theatres of Naples, Rome, Venice, Milan, as well as outside Italy in Vienna, London, Dresden, and Wrocław (then Breslau in the Habsburg empire). Porpora also gained fame as one of the best vocal tutors. His achievements in this field were confirmed by his eminent pupils: the castrati Carlo Broschi (better known as Farinelli), Gaetano Majorano (Caffarelli), Antonio Uberi (Porporino), as well as prima donnas Caterina Gabrieli and Regina Minghotti. The popularity of his music and his talent’s success are reflected in the fact that many of his arias were incorporated into operatic pasticcios performed nearly throughout Europe. Some of those arias have been included in our concert programme. Porpora made his opera debut as early as 1708 with Agrippina (libr. N. Giuvo), staged at the Palazzo Reale in Naples. It was, however, in the early 1720s that his career as a composer of drammi per musica took off with full intensity. It was in this period that Porpora discovered two great talents, those of Carlo Broschi and Pietro Trapassi (Metastasio). The latter artist, whom he taught composition, was soon to become the greatest librettist in the entire operatic history. In 1720 all the three worked together on an occasional serenata entitled Angelica e Medoro. They would meet and collaborate in various configurations in later years. In 1721 Porpora received a commission to compose an opera for the Roman Teatro d’Alibert. In the years that followed, he wrote several works honouring James III Stuart and Maria Clementina Sobieska- Stuart, granddaughter of King John III and his wife Marie Casimire Sobieska. The first of these was the pasticcio titled Artaserse (1721), dedicated to the Stuart pretender. It was based on a libretto (Il tradimento traditor di se stesso) by Francesco Silvani, first set to music by Antonio Lotti at the Venetian Teatro San Giovanni Grisotomo (1711). Artaserse incorporated musical numbers by Porpora, Sarro, Leo, and Lotti. Porpora’s second work that scored a spectacular success in Rome in the same year was Eumene to a libretto by Apostolo Zeno. This production gained more popularity than even Alessandro Scarlatti’s Griselda, greatly admired by the Romans. The enthusiastic reception of Artaserse and Eumene earned the composer new commissions in Rome and paved the way for performances of his works in other Italian theatres. The aria Comincio a consolarmi from the pasticcio Artaserse is put in the mouth of Statira. Roman tradition barred women from performing on the stage. For this reason, the entire cast consisted of men. This particular aria was sung by Giovanni Ossi, a soloist highly regarded in Rome. Having experienced the tragedy of losing her beloved husband, Statira, insulted and treated with disdain by king Artaserse, whose captive she has become, nevertheless realises that she is not alone in her pain. She can see the bad things happening at the king’s court and the suffering of the monarch torn between love for two sons, one of whom is most certainly a traitor. Statira thus begins to derive strength and peace of mind from Artaserse’s misfortunes. In 1725 Porpora composed, this time for a theatre in Reggio Emilia, his Didone abbandonata to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio. The production featured outstanding virtuosi. Marianna Benti Bulgarelli, Metastasio’s first Didone, sang the title part; she was accompanied on the stage by such eminent castrati as Nicola Grimaldi (known as Nicolini) in the role of Aeneas and Domenico Gizzi as Araspe. It is from this tragedy that we have selected the aria Già si desta la tempesta, which later migrated to an eponymous pasticcio compiled by Porpora himself and staged at Rome’s Teatro Capranica in 1732. Notably, the same pasticcio included arias by Egidio Romualdo Duni (his earliest attempts in the field of the opera now known to us). The composer would later win recognition with his French opéras comiques. As we can see, the operatic pasticcio offered a chance for experimentation and for the promotion of young, still unknown but talented artists. In Reggio nell’Emilia the same aria, Già si desta la tempesta, was sung by Gizzi as Araspe, and in Rome – by Pellegrino Tomi. This virtuosic aria di tempesta (‘tempest aria’) expresses the protagonist’s agitation at seeing Didone approach her end. The aria Torbido intorno al core comes from the opera Meride e Selinunte (libr. A. Zeno), staged in 1727 at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice. This extremely beautiful piece in which Porpora shows us the lyrical face of his talent was sung by the Venetian prima donna Anna d’Ambreville Perroni, who performed the part of Ericlea. The same aria, along with two others by Porpora, was used a year later in the pasticcio entitled Griselda (similarly to a libretto by A. Zeno), staged in Wrocław. In the latter version, the aria was sung by Barbara Bianchi, impersonating the title heroine. The piece must have proved very much to the Wrocław audience’s liking since it was later also used in sacred music, as evident from the surviving contrafactum Jesu dulcis et decore. Another aria, Quel vapor che in valle impura, from the opera Semiramide riconosciuta (libr. P. Metastasio), staged in 1729 at the same Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, marks Farinelli’s long awaited and surprisingly late debut in the city on the lagoon. Porpora knew very well how to demonstrate his eminent pupil’s artistry; it is reflected in the excellent numbers he wrote for this singer. One of them, the aria Quel vapor che in valle impura, belongs to the part of Egyptian prince Mirteo and marks the latter’s ‘awakening’, when he realises to what extent love has taken away his rational powers. The same aria was performed again at the end of the 1729 carnival season in Venice as part of a pasticcio entitled Armida abbandonata. In this version it was sung by the protagonist Rinaldo, who, like Mirteo, notices that his love for Armida has made him oblivious of his true vocation and that he must return on the path of knightly fame. Though the printed libretto lists Farinelli among the performers of the pasticcio, we cannot be certain whether he actually appeared in it; he had very likely already left Venice. Be it as it may, this aria was considered as one of the most pleasant numbers in Semiramide, and one worthy of being presented again to the Venetian audience. Acis’ arias Alto Giove and Sento il fato have been selected from Porpora’s opera Polifemo (libr. P.A. Rolli), staged in London in 1735. It was written for the Opera of the Nobility, which competed with the theatre of George F. Handel. Both arias were sung by Farinelli, invited to London in that year to try to win over the city’s audience. The spectacle proved successful, as evident from the number of performances (fourteen in that year), and another production of Polifemo with new arias in the following season (the only such a revival among Porpora’s five operas written for the London stage). The arias were traditionally also published (by Walsh). Today both of them (and especially the prayerful Alto Giove, in which Acis thanks Jupiter) are popular showpieces among singers specialising in early music. Alto Giove can also serve as an excellent example of a creative process typical of eighteenth-century composers, who constantly revised their works. The aria exists in two versions, shorter and longer. Even more incredibly, at one point the composer removed it from the opera altogether, as we can see from the second printed edition of the libretto. Nicola Porpora’s greatly varied (virtuosic, lyrical, and exalted) arias alternate in our concert programme with quartets for oboe, violin, viola, and b.c. written by the Silesian composer Johann Gottlieb Janitsch (1708 – c. 1763). Born in Schweidnitz (today’s Świdnica), educated in Wrocław, he worked for the greater part of his life at the court of king Frederick the Great in Berlin. Though he mostly composed instrumental music in the then fashionable Empfindsamerstil, it is likely that as a young man (that is, before he took up law studies at the Alma Mater Viadrina in Frankfurt on the Oder in 1729) he may indeed have attended operatic spectacles staged in the capital of Silesia. In 1728 he possibly became acquainted there with the pasticcio Griselda, which featured, among others, arias by Antonio Bioni, Leonardo Vinci, Domenico Sarro, Giuseppe M. Orlandini, Antonio Vivaldi, Geminiano Giacomelli, as well as the protagonist of our concert, Nicola Porpora. In this way the Italian operatic pasticcios staged in various parts of Europe offered both to local musicians and the audience a sense of participation in one common tradition and culture. Aneta Markuszewska .