Tonight at 8 PM -- Two operatic rarities

This evening Teatro Grattacielo will present two one-act operatic rarities: I Compagnacci from 1923, by Primo Riccitelli, whose work is seldom heard in America, and Il Re, a better-known, but still seldom-performed opera from 1929 by Umberto Giordano, who is best known for his Andrea Chénier.
Blogs are blogging about it, articles being written about the event, so all should be set for a full house tonight at Rose Theater, Home of Jazz - (although don't look for either a "the" before the "Rose" or much publicity on the venue's site...).
Tonight's performance will feature Jessica Klein, Joanna Mongiardo, Peter Castaldi, and John Maynard in the casts, and should prove to be a lively event. Libretti are online, and printed copies will be available at the door (but they go fast, so get there early!)

Agnese Riccitelli in New York

Teatro Grattacielo, foremost opera company in New York to breathe new life into the deserving repertory of late 19th, early 20th century Italy, is graced with the presence of Agnese Riccitelli, the great grand-niece of composer Primo Riccitelli, whose opera "I Compagnacci" will be performed next month. Ms Riccitelli, an enthusiastic dancer and dance historian, has championed the work of her ancestor, and will be in the audience for the performance on May 24.
She joined artistic director Duane Printz at Restaurant Quattro Gatti last week, and met the production company.

"Riccitelli was a fine musical craftsman," said David Wroe, Teatro Grattacielo's conductor, "it's obvious that he studied with the best." As it happens, he studied with Pietro Mascagni at the Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro.

Born in 1875, Pancrazio Riccitelli (Primo was a stage-name), was born in Cognoli di Campli 1875. At the Rossini Conservatory he studied with opera composer Riccardo Zandonai as a fellow student. It was there that he wrote his first operas, "Francesca da Rimini", and "Suora Maddalena" -- both of which are now unfortunately lost.

Riccitelli had the poor luck to be caught in the publishing struggle that happened in the Sonzongno family, which ended up blocking performances of his work, thanks to a rights dispute. Even though Renzo Sonzogno commissioned him to write "Madonna Oretta," which was performed to great acclaim, Riccitelli did not receive his entire fee for writing it, and the work was never published.

It was "I Compagnacci" that caught the public's fancy, and made Ricitelli's name an operatic byword in Italy. The opera won first prize in a national competition that was judged by Puccini, Mascagni and Cilèa in 1922 and then it was presented at the Teatro Costanzi, followed by performances at La Scala in 1923 and at the Metropolitan in 1924. Later, in November, 1924 "I Compagnacci" was performed on a double bill with Richard Strauss's "Salome" -- after the tragedy, not before it, as one might expect. It was lauded as being able to lift the spirits of the audience after Strauss's gloomy drama.

Riccitelli's one act opera was heard in a number of other theaters as well as on the air from 1925-1930. In 1931, it had the distinction of being the first opera ever broadcast in Italy over the EIAR network (which later became the RAI).

After many years sitting in a drawer, the opera "Madonna Oretta" was finally produced to great acclaim, with 26 curtain calls for the composer. For the next ten years Riccitelli took his two operas on the road, performing them throughout Italy.

Then in March, 1941, after an arduous life of struggling to get his music heard, and working on another opera, "Captain Fracassa," Primo Riccitelli died after a short illness. The war took its toll on his popularity, and the two operas that do survive him have not been heard since 1948.

Now Teatro Grattacielo is proud to present "I Compagnacci" again, for the New York area to hear and enjoy again.

Libretto for I Compagnacci on site

The libretti for I Compagnacci and "Il Re" are now on the Teatro Grattacielo site.

While I Compagnacci and its composer, Primo Riccitelli, is not a staple in the operatic currency, the music is lively and very accessible, and the story, which is by Giovacchino Forzano, is one that is surprisingly multi-dimensional and compelling as a play, and makes for thrilling opera as well. In one act, it is a highly compressed action-packed love story, as well as a black comedy. To appreciate the latter aspect, one needs to be somewhat acquainted with the story of Savaranola, the 15th century Italian Dominican friar who was known for his radical ideas, seeing Florence as being corrupt under Pope Alexander VI. He advocated book burning (known as the "Bonfire of the Vanities", destroying art he considered to be "immoral" and spread his opinions as to how the Renaissance ought to glorify Italy not destroy it.

On May 13, 1497, Savonarola was excommunicated by Pope Alexander VI, and in 1498, Alexander demanded his arrest and execution. Savonarola and two followers were tortured on the rack, the torturers sparing only Savonarola’s right arm in order that he might be able to sign his confession. On the day of his execution, Savonarola was taken out to the Piazza della Signoria along with Fra Silvestro and Fra Domenico da Pescia. The three were ritually stripped of their clerical vestments, degraded as "heretics and schismatics", and given over to the secular authorities to be burned. The three were hanged in chains from a single cross and an enormous fire was lit beneath them. They were thereby executed in the same place where the "Bonfire of the Vanities" had been lit. It was a particularly grisly end to a church reformer who tried to scale back the excesses of one of the Borgia popes. How on earth does one use such gruesome details to make a comedy, albeit a very black one?

Forzano (who also wrote the libretto to Il Re), was a very clever librettist, author, playwright, and director. He wrote libretti for Puccini (Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi), Mascagni (Il Piccolo Marat, Lodoletta), as well as Franchetti, Leoncavallo, and Giordano.

Forzano was a force of nature. Born in 1884, he lived a long life, dying in 1970. A Florentine, it is of note that he enjoyed setting works in historical Florence such as Gianni Schicchi and I Compagnacci. He was a feisty guy, with a mind of his own. Mascagni, no slouch in the individualist department, couldn't get along with him, and while Forzano was with Puccini working on rehearsals of Schicchi, asked his old librettist from Cavalleria Rusticana to complete the libretto for Il Piccolo Marat, and to this day the verses not composed by Forzano appear in italics to set them apart.

Unfortunately, Forzano fell in with the Fascisti (it is always good to be an artist on the side of those with the money); and he actually wrote and produced three plays with Il Duce that were meant to be rousing studies in political life; one was about Napoleon, another about Caesar. Forzano's reputation suffered because of this, after the war, and were it not for his libretti he probably would be forgotten altogether except in Italy.

His film "Black Shirts" will be shown in April as part of a film festival.

Teatro Grattacielo's Opera in Concert for 2011

While all the details aren't in yet, Teatro Grattacielo has announced that next year's opera-in-concert will be a double bill of one-acts: "Il Re" by Umberto Giordano and "I Compagnacci", a very seldom heard work of Italian composer Primo Riccitelli.


Both operas are available on CD, and as was done last year, the libretto will be posted online at www.grattacielo.org. Sign up for the newsletter, follow us on Twitter and keep watching our blog for more information as cast, time and place become definite.


More on Riccitelli and I Compagnacci in Italian here.
More information on Il Re and Giordano here.

Zandonai and his Ilk

It has struck me more than once that opera composer Riccardo Zandonai's last librettist was named after one of my literary namesakes, Emilio Mucci; I have actually found a recording (on Columbia) of a song for which he was the lyricist that I will have to do more research on. But Zandonai is one of those maverick composers who stubbornly refuses to be appreciated by the public, especially in America. His work was, during his lifetime, well-received and promulgated throughout Europe. He wrote 12 operas, the last one sadly left unfinished. Today if anyone knows of him, it is for Francesca da Rimini, a hugely romantic work with libretto by no less than Gabriele D'Annunzio. And while I think this is a lovely piece that should be performed more often, Zandonai was not the one-opera kind of guy. His work is enormously varied, always entertaining, often quite moving. Moreso, his sense of theater is unique in the veristic composers: quite often they were terrific technicians, but once seen on the stage, required the audience to linger in attention in order to savor the emotional kernels that lurk within.
A recent discovery for me was receiving a photocopy of the score to his opera Giuliano, (his eighth opera, from 1928). This is a mature work, written after the operas Zandonistas crave (I Cavalieri di Ekebú, Francesca), yet no one has performed it much at all since the première. In essence, it was one of the few bombs he wrote. I had always assumed that it was a story about the Emperor Julian (known as the Apostate: after all, the subject of Ibsen's play Emperor & Galilean; the terrific novel Julian by Gore Vidal; the opera Der Apostat (1924) by the composer and conductor Felix Weingartner; even The Death of the Gods (Julian the Apostate) (1895) by the Russian Symbolist poet, Dmitri Merezhkovsky—were all examples). However, reading through the music, nothing in it seemed to say anything about ancient Rome or apostasy or Gore Vidal. Astonishingly enough, it turns out that this opera by Zandonai is based on the tale of Saint Julien, known not as the Apostate, but "L'Hospitalier", subject of a story by Flaubert, which in turn was based on works by Jacobus de Voragine, a 13th century Italian chronicler and archbishop of Genoa. This story was also subject of an opera written in 1888 by Camille Erlanger, with the same title as the Flaubert story, "La légende de Saint Julien, l'Hospitalier."
Giuliano was actually dear to the composer's heart, and he was terribly disappointed that the Ricordi, his publisher, did not promote it well, nor the opera houses perform it frequently, nor the public clamor for it. However, it was anomalous for Zandonai in that the original cast recorded three selections from it. Very little of Zandonai's arias were recorded at all, even Francesca, nonetheless from more obscure works. And I suppose I tip my cards here, because the composer really was more of an Italian Wagnerista in many ways; he didn't write arias, and his extended scenes were difficult to chop up and record in any case. Even Pietro Mascagni had that problem, with very few recordings made the more his works became music-dramas rather than number-operas.
The other odd thing about the Giuliano recordings is that Zandonai apparently detested them. This I do not understand. While they do exhibit that flat sound of 1920s recordings, this was made after 1923, so that they used microphones, and the audio response was quite good; the performances sound exciting and extremely dramatic to me. Exactly what Zandonai was complaining about I cannot say, but apparently he went to some lengths to see that Columbia didn't distribute them: whether he asked to have them destroyed is something I've heard, but cannot say for sure that he'd do; or if Columbia would comply (after all, revenue is revenue). The links below may not work for a while - I have figure them out, but when they do, you'll see how interesting they are...
The three numbers recorded were:

1. "La Voce Horrenda" from The Prologue
2. "Non ho che un Nome (Love Duet)" from Act 1 (double side)
3. "La Dolce Nienta" from Act 2

Notice that there is a Prologue, Two Acts, and an Epilogue, even though it is quite a short opera to have such grand appendages. The first number is sung by Francesco Merli, the second is the love duet wuth Merli and Rosetta Pampanini (see below>, and the soprano has the last piece solo.

Looking for Operatic Subtlety, Go Elsewhere!

With those words, Anthony Tommasini, venerated music critic for the New York Times put his finger on one aspect of the tremendous reception given to I Gioielli della Madonna on Monday night, 5-24. What a wonderful audience! What a tremendous event. Thanks to the very hard work of over 200 performers, led by the irrepressible David Wroe, I Gioielli really took the audience by storm. Right from the opening bars, with the hundreds of chorus members ranged on 3 floors of boxes above the orchestra, a chorus of children, a mandolin/guitar ensemble, soloists joyously pealing vocally over the top of it all - percussion, brass, strings, woodwinds - it was as though all of creation were singing.

Theatre Business, Management of Men

Those words come from a famous quote by Yeats, who was busy keeping the Abbey Theater together in Dublin. These days it would be looked upon as mysogynistic and sweeping. But ask Duane Printz what it's like to almost single-handedly raise the money and deal with all the daily trials it takes to put on an opera. Who was it said that 'it's a super-human thing to write a symphony'? (That one was referring to Beethoven.) But it is just as super-human, that is, beyond most people's capacity, to wear so many hats, be so many personae, to make so many decisions, sometimes with the implication of the outcome not at all clear, hoping that it will all come together at the last minute. Teatro Grattacielo's last production was fraught with cancellations, last-minute substitutions, illness, family problems, as was fervidly covered by Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times. But the production of Il Piccolo Marat was tremendous. The very wigs of some of the audience were blown straight back by the sheer force of nature that the opera brought to the hall, with unfamiliar music that was stirring, enormous, vital. Maestro David Wroe was in command of the forces that evening, as he will be on the 24th of this month when I Gioielli della Madonna bows at the Rose Theater in Columbus Circle at 8 pm. That opera will have similar if not larger forces, and should prove to be a marvellous evening. We all know that the powerhouse that is Duane Printz, founder, artistic director of Teatro Grattacielo, will not fail the operagoing public. The question that remains, is simply how do we make sure that everyone knows about it who'd be interested in coming to see it?

You are urged to pass along all the information you can about it - subscribe to us on Twitter, this blog, the eNewsletter, and pass the along to your friends who love opera. Because this one is one for the real, the true, the ever-faithful admirers of opera. It is an ongoing task to reach that opening (and closing!) night, a labor of love. To conflate Yeats and Frances Alda, Opera Business is the business of Men, Women, and Tenors.