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Ermanno WOLF-FERRARI (1876-1948) Orchestral Music Il segreto di Susanna (1909)
Overture [2:44];
Intermezzo [2:55] * I quattrorusteghi (1906)
Prelude [1:40]; Intermezzo [3:10] La dama boba (1939)
Overture [8:11] Il campiello (1936)
Intermezzo [3:09];
Ritornello [2:27] L’amore medico (1913)
Overture [8:22];
Intermezzo [5:22] # I gioielli della Madonna (1911)
Festa popolare [4:42];
Intermezzo [3:42];
Serenata [3:17] %; Danza napoletana [3:48]
Andrew Marriner (clarinet)*; Stephen
Orton (cello)#; Christine Messiter (flute)%
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields/Sir Neville Marriner;
rec. December 1991, No. 1 Studio, Abbey Road, London EMI CLASSICS
54585 [54:09]
The
composer who traded under the name Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was
actually born Ermanno Wolf, in Venice. From about 1895 onwards
he called himself Wolf-Ferrari, combining the surnames of
his Bavarian father and his Venetian mother. Though born
in Venice, he spent much of his life in Bavaria and while
it might be going too far to say that he had serious psychological
problems about his nationality and about his musical identity
as it were, he certainly seems to have felt a degree of uncertainty
in this regard, an uncertainty which was by turns liberating
and inhibiting. Though he set Italian libretti, his operatic
success came largely in Germany, rather than in the land
of his birth.
Orchestral
music from six of Wolf-Ferrari’s operas is contained on this
disc, reissued by Arkiv. The four earlier works all had their
premieres in Germany: I Quattro rusteghi (‘The Four
Boors’) and Il Segreto di Susanna were first performed
at the Hoftheater in Munich; I gioielli della Madonna (‘The
Jewels of the Madonna’) had its premiere at the Kurfürstenoper
in Berlin and L’amore medico at the Hoftheater in
Dresden. Only the later works, Il campiello (‘The
Little Square’) and La dama boba (‘The backward girl’)
were premiered in Italy (both in Milan). There is another
kind of split evident in Wolf-Ferrari’s output. The operas
from which music is included on the present disc, represent
two distinct visions of opera. I Quattro rusteghi is
based on a play (I rusteghi) by Goldoni; Il campiello is
also based on a play (of the same name) by Goldoni; L’amore
medico is based on a comedy by Molière and La dama
boba on one by Lope de Vega. Along with Il segreto
di Susanna, which has a libretto by Enrico Golisciani,
all of these are comic operas, all of them largely, and elegantly,
modelled on the example of eighteenth-century Italianate
comic opera. But in I gioielli della Madonna he attempted
a work in a kind of pseudo-Mascagnian verismo idiom. Perhaps
he felt that if he adopted the prevalent Italian operatic
manner of the day he would gain more acceptance there. Ironically,
while the work was very popular in Germany and, indeed, in
England and America, it attracted little attention in Italy.
Through
and beyond these dichotomies which mark out his musical identity,
Wolf-Ferrari continued (intermittently) to produce work of
considerable charm. I am not entirely sure that he is best
served by a collection such as the present, attractively
played as it is, simply because so much of his best writing
is for the voice and here we have purely orchestral passages
from the operas. It isn’t, I think, a CD best listened to
straight-through, since it is somewhat lacking in variety.
The
vivacious overture to Il segreto di Susanna shows
Wolf-Ferrari at something like his opera-buffa best
and the intermezzo is contrastingly still and quiet (it is
marked ‘tranquillo con grazia’). The brief Prelude to I
Quattro rusteghi doesn’t amount to much, but the intermezzo
(actually the prelude to Act II) is a delightful piece for
pizzicato strings. The overture to La dama boba is
longer than most such works by the composer and has a characteristically
attractive lilt, alternating animation with languor without
ever being other than wholly decorous, and ending in a kind
of polite grandeur. From Il campiello we hear the
intermezzo before Act II, with perhaps more emotional weight
than much of Wolf-Ferrari’s writing, certainly richly evocative
of the unexpected dignity of the working-class community
in the opera’s Venetian square, and the ritornello which
functions as a prelude to Act III; it is in that act that,
in the representation of a fierce quarrel that Wolf-Ferrari
strays into dissonant areas usually alien to him, but there
is no anticipation of that in this placid piece. The overture
to L’amore cupido is another of Wolf-Ferrari’s longer
examples of the genre, and the handling of the contrasts
of mood is nicely done; the intermezzo, which precedes act
II, is rather slight. The orchestral music from I gioielli
della Madonna occupies rather different territory. The ‘Festa
popolare’ makes entertaining use of a range of orchestral
colours, but its demonstrativeness feels slightly forced,
as if it didn’t come very naturally or comfortably to the
composer. In the ‘Danza napoletana’ too, it is hard not to
feel that Wolf-Ferrari is doing, decently enough, what some
other composers did better. In the quieter, more graceful
music of the intermezzo and the serenata Wolf-Ferrari seems
more comfortable, more himself.
Most
admirers of Wolf-Ferrari, of whom I am one, would surely
concede that he is a minor composer, not a major figure to
whose music everyone should listen or can be expected to
enjoy. And since these are good, rather than great performances – there
isn’t enough feel of the opera house about them - this CD
will surely appeal to specialists rather than to the general
listener.
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