ezio_ibook 2:carestini_ibook_1 25/7/11 09:07 Page 2 CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD GLUCK 1714-1787 Ezio 2 Dramma per musica Libretto by Pietro Metastasio First performed at the Kotzentheater (Teatro Nuovo), Prague, 1750 Ezio Sonia Prina contralto Fulvia Ann Hallenberg mezzo-soprano Valentiniano Max Emanuel Cencic countertenor Massimo Topi Lehtipuu tenor Onoria Mayuko Karasawa soprano Varo Julian Prégardien tenor IL COMPLESSO BAROCCO Alan Curtis direction ezio_ibook 2:carestini_ibook_1 25/7/11 09:07 Page 3 Sinfonia 1 Allegro (2:45) 2 Andante (2:35) 3 3 Allegro di molto (1:14) 4 Marcia (0:39) ATTO PRIMO 5 Signor, vincemmo (0:57) 6 Aria: Valentiniano Se tu la reggi al volo (7:51) 7 Ezio, lascia ch’io stringa (3:09) 8 Aria: Ezio Pensa a serbarmi, o cara (6:35) 9 E soffrirai che sposa abbia la figlia (1:01) 10 Aria: Fulvia Caro padre (5:41) 11 Recitativo accompagnato: Massimo Pria che sorga l’aurora (1:18) 12 Ezio sappia ch’io bramo seco parlar (1:36) 13 Aria: Massimo Se povero il ruscello (7:09) 14 Del Ciel felice dono (3:15) 15 Aria: Valentiniano So chi t’accese (1:06) 16 Vedrem se ardisce ancora (1:48) 17 Aria: Ezio Se fedele mi brama il regnante (6:57) 18 A Cesare nascondi (1:18) 19 Aria: Onoria Ancor non premi il soglio (2:10) 20 Via, per mio danno aduna (0:39) 21 Aria: Fulvia Finché un zefiro soave (9:39) ezio_ibook 2:carestini_ibook_1 25/7/11 09:07 Page 4 ATTO SECONDO 22 Qual silenzio è mai questo! (2:29) 4 23 Aria: Valentiniano Dubbioso amante (7:16) 24 E puoi d’un tuo delitto (0:41) 25 Aria: Massimo Va’ dal furor portata (3:51) 26 Che fo? Dove mi volgo? (1:38) 27 Aria: Ezio Recagli quell’acciaro (1:28) 28 Folle è colui che al tuo favor si fida (0:41) 29 Aria: Varo Nasce al bosco in rozza cuna (5:17) 30 Olà, qui si conduca il prigionier (3:22) 31 Aria: Ezio Ecco alle mie catene (5:55) 32 Ingratissima donna! (0:47) 33 Terzetto: Fulvia, Massimo, Valentiniano Passami il cor, tiranno! (7:14) ATTO TERZO 34 E ben, da quel superbo (2:03) 35 Aria: Onoria Peni tu per un’ingrata (3:06) 36 Olà, Varo si chiami (3:26) 37 Aria: Ezio Per la memoria (3:17) 38 Generoso monarca (4:20) 39 Aria: Valentiniano Per tutto il timore (1:05) 40 Partì una volta (1:07) 41 Aria: Massimo Tergi l’ingiuste lagrime (7:04) 42 Recitativo accompagnato: Fulvia Misera dove son! (2:20) 43 Aria: Fulvia Ah, non son io che parlo (4:41) 44 Inorridisci, o Roma (2:29) 45 Coro: Della vita nel dubbio cammino (1:44) ezio_ibook 2:carestini_ibook_1 25/7/11 09:07 Page 5 5 Alan Curtis ezio_ibook 2:carestini_ibook_1 25/7/11 09:07 Page 6 IL COMPLESSO BAROCCO Alan Curtis direction 6 Violins I Olivia Centurioni, Claudia Combs, Paolo Cantamessa, Monica Toth Violins II Ana Liz Ojeda, Yayoi Masuda, Elisa Imbalzano, Judytha Wrona Violas Giulio D’Alessio, Geraldine Roux Cellos Jamie Hey, Emily Robinson Double bass Davide Nava Oboes Emiliano Rodolfi, Magdalena Karolak Bassoon Katrin Lazar Horns Helen MacDougall, Olivier Picon Harpsichord Andrea Perugi ezio_ibook 2:carestini_ibook_1 25/7/11 09:07 Page 7 GLUCK: EZIO 1750 Bruce Alan Brown 7 Christoph Gluck’s fame as an operatic reformer has overshadowed the fact that prior to the 1760s he was a highly successful composer of opera seria, a spectacle centred on virtuosic solo singing for which the da capo aria was con sidered the ideal vehicle. In the prevailing Italian operatic system the libretto typically contained dozens of aria texts (with the occasional duet), and these illuminated the characters’ successive emotional states in response to the drama, which was carried forward in simple recitatives alter nating with the arias. When Gluck and his collaborator Ranieri de’ Calzabigi abandoned this operatic model in favour of a more natural istic presentation of the action, beginning with Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), spectators had to fundamentally alter their mode of listening. The current revival of Gluck’s pre-reform operas requires an equivalent adjustment, in reverse. Gluck’s early preference for texts by the Roman Pietro Metastasio indicates not so much conser - vatism as the simple fact that Metastasio was the opera seria librettist most adept at constructing a plot (typically based on ancient Greek or Roman history) and most admired for his elegant and musically effective aria texts: his poetic images frequently involved similes or metaphors conducive to musical illustration, which endeared him to singers and composers alike. His concentration on arias, to the near exclusion of ensembles and choruses, was a con sequence of entrepreneurial opera companies’ lack of choral singers, the star power of soloists, and audience preferences. In addition, the highly paid prime donne and primi uomini frequently dictated terms to composers, requiring that they tailor arias to their voices and talents. It was typical of opera seria that the same libretto was often set to music several times over, even by the same composer. Gluck set Ezio for Prague’s Teatro Nuovo in 1750 and revised it substantially for Vienna’s Burgtheater in 1763; Niccolò Jommelli set the libretto four times across three decades. Listening to opera thus involved a good deal of comparison, not only between settings of the same libretto but also between one performance and the next of the same opera, since singers embellished or other wise varied their arias afresh each night, in part for the sake of spectators attending multiple ezio_ibook 2:carestini_ibook_1 25/7/11 09:07 Page 8 performances. Even for a work as unfamiliar as Gluck’s Ezio, modern listeners have ready points of comparison in Handel’s 1732 setting for London and in the nine-year-old Mozart’s setting of Massimo’s aria ‘Va’ dal furor portata’ (likewise written in London). 8 Metastasio’s Ezio Ezio is from the early part of Metastasio’s career, before his 1729 appointment as imperial court poet in Vienna. The basic elements of the plot are factual, drawn from ancient sources that the poet duly cites (the Metastasio scholar Don Neville has also pointed to Thomas Corneille’s play Maximian of 1662 as a probable, though unacknowledged, source). Ezio is set in Rome, following the defeat of Attila the Hun; the adulation with which the victorious general Ezio (Aetius) is greeted upon his return arouses the envy of the emperor Valentiniano (Valentinian) III, fomented also by the patrician Massimo (Maximus), who bears the emperor an ancient grudge. Onto this premise Metastasio grafted an amorous intrigue involving, additionally, Massimo’s daughter Fulvia, the emperor’s sister Onoria, and Ezio’s friend Varo. Unlike the real-life Aetius, whom the emperor put to death, the fictional general is exonerated, in keeping with opera seria’s obligatory lieto fine. All the characters in Ezio are flawed to some degree: Valentiniano is fundamentally virtuous, but cowardly and credulous; Ezio is courageous, but proud and incautious; Fulvia is loyal to her father even in support of his criminal conspiracy. Massimo is the most obviously evil, but his complaint against the emperor, which spurs his misdeeds, is just. Metastasio himself recognised that he had depicted Valentiniano unflatteringly: writing in 1770 of a plan to dedicate a performance of Ezio to the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II, he asked ‘why on earth... did they not prefer my Tito to Ezio, in which the emperor is the third- or fourth-ranked role and of a rather uncommendable character?’. The libretto was commissioned by the Venetian Teatro Grimani di San Giovanni Griso stomo for its autumn 1728 season; Metastasio alluded to the venue by putting into Ezio’s mouth flattering remarks about the nascent city of Venice. The music of the first setting was by the Neapolitan Nicola Porpora (later a teacher of the young Haydn), and the cast included the famed Neapolitan castratos Domenico Gizzi (Valentiniano) and Nicola Grimaldi (Ezio). The next production, with music by Pietro Auletta, was for the 1728/9 carnival season in Rome, where by papal decree women ezio_ibook 2:carestini_ibook_1 25/7/11 09:08 Page 9 were not per mitted on the stage; the female roles were there fore taken by castratos. Conversely, in several early productions, including Handel’s 1732 setting for London, the role of Valentiniano was taken by the female contralto Anna Bagno lesi. As with many Metastasian librettos, in 9 productions of Ezio subsequent to the first one the recitatives were abridged – in the 1732 London production, nearly to the point of incomprehensibility. In 1754 Metastasio himself shortened his text for the Portuguese court and was duly rewarded with a lavish silver service. Much later, Metastasio thanked the poet Saverio Mattei for the judicious cuts he had made for a 1771 Naples production, also approving his substitution of a quartet for several arias at the end of Act Two, ‘something that would have been sacrilege when I wrote [the drama]’. Gluck’s setting for Prague At the time Gluck wrote Ezio he was still an itinerant composer, not yet settled in Vienna. His career had begun in Habsburg-controlled Milan, where he had trained under Giovanni Battista Sammartini, and had included a stint in London. By 1747 he had joined the traveling opera troupe of Pietro Mingotti, composing an opera for a Saxon royal wedding at Pillnitz outside Dresden. Recommendations from there and from the Lombard court resulted in a prestigious com mission in 1748 to set Metastasio’s Semiramide riconosciuta for Vienna’s Burgtheater.