So next up on the list was Cornacchioli’s Diana Schernita, which was freaking me out because the CD was a) unavailable on Amazon.com, b) not at the NYPL (my normal standby for out-of-print), c) not on iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, or Demonoid, and d) not on Netflix. Fortunately, there’s RadioCrazy.ch, a Swiss radio station which MUST be crazy since it broadcast Diana earlier this week. I set it up to record on my computer, saved it for yesterday, and voila! Opera. Love it. Madly.
This all made me wish I had more to say about Diana. It’s Baroque. It’s the first (surviving) comic opera. It sounds Baroque. You can hear (30 seconds of ) it for yourself. Some parts seemed to foreshadow the likes of Handel and Mozart, particularly in the recits. Ultimately, not every opera is going to be a diamond in music history’s crown. I’m sure a company like Les Arts Florissants could do a bang-up revival of this piece, it could make an amazing production and I’d see it and start to really get into the nitty gritty of the piece.
On the other hand, according to Margaret Murata, referencing Herbert Seifert, there has never been a known production of the piece, so perhaps it is, in fact, wanting. But for so many of these early works, there aren’t productions to go by, just the music–not even a libretto or, in some cases, a synopsis and archaic Italian. With these operas, I stop trying to listen academically and try to listen as a courtier would have during their premieres. I grab a beer, walk around the apartment, fire off a few e-mails. It’s not that I don’t like the music, but I like it a lot more when there are other stimuli present.
So that was yesterday. Today, bright and early, I popped in Virgin Classic’s DVD of Landi’s Il Sant’Alessio (which props, by the way, to Netflix for having in stock–keep expanding your opera collection, Red Envelopers!). I touched on Landi when I listened to his Morte d’Orfeo last week, and I think this guy has a douritude fetish. First, let’s get this production bit out of the way: this, the only DVD (and amazing that there is one) of the opera is an all-male cast (take that, Francesca Caccini!), an homage to the fact that Landi was prevented from casting women in Rome. He was also prevented from playing an augmented fifth, which is almost as glaringly obvious in the score. Les Arts Florissants did do a CD with a proper, equal-opportunity cast, but to be honest, I’m not scouting out a CD for this any time soon.
Like Kapsberger’s Apotheosis, this is a religious piece bordering on propaganda that would make Leni Riefenstahl jealous. By the early-mid 1600s, the Catholic church was ferociously fighting the groundswell that Martin Luther was causing, and Landi–perhaps their own golden child–divinely conceived this work. Whether or not he was happy about the conditions under which he produced this work is unknown, but I think I’d take La Morte d’Orfeo over Sant’Alessio any day. Maybe that’s the She-brew in me. Fortunately, there was some progress made post-Kapberger. The opera has a full dramatic arc, surrounding pre-saint Alexis who, returning from a religious whatever embracing Christianity Godspell-style, disguised himself to his Pagan family and lived underneath his father’s staircase.
Yes. Like Harry Potter.
Landi’s music, much like his previous (and only other known) opera, is very muted, austere. The most baroque flourishes on par with Monteverdi (who, let’s face it, is the marker against which we’e holding most composers up to this point) are most seen in what are supposed to be the least likable characters: idle Martio and Curtio. Ditto for the temptation scenes. Alessio’s lines, in contrast, are mostly recits–beautiful in their own right but as simple as the lifestyle he assumes in this piece. So as much as I didn’t love this piece, I still loved seeing how those vascally Vaticani got their hands on an art form that embraced Greek Classical myth. Which begs the question: in the operas whose subjects don’t explicitly praise G-d, were musicians at the time still writing for G-d? Or, was opera sort of their moonlighting career? Their art pour l’art while paying the bills with church positions (like Monteverdi)?
All of this brings me to the Jews in opera, but that’ll probably have to wait for another day. The fumes from our organic roach spray (smells like root beer, I kid you not) are starting to get to me.
