F.J. Haydn - La vera costanza (High Fidelity)
Dramma giocoso in three acts
Music by Joseph Haydn, 1778
Libretto by Francesco Puttini and Pietro Travaglia
English translation by Murray Hipkin and Gilly French
The Deanery garden, Bampton, 16 and 17 July 2004
Cast
| Rosina, a fishergirl |
Serena Kay |
| Baroness Irene, aunt of Count Errico |
Amanda Pitt |
| Lisetta, the Baroness's maid |
Ilona Domnich |
| Count Errico, a fickle and capricious young man, secretly married to Rosina | Huw Rhys-Evans |
| Ernesto, a marquis and friend of
the Count |
Nicholas Sharratt |
| Masino, head fisherman and Rosina's
brother |
Brian Parsons |
| Villotto Villano, a rich fop, engaged to Rosina | Nicholas Merryweather |
| Conductor | Murray Hipkin |
| Director | Alexander Clifton |
| Orchestra Sally
Fenton (leader), Camilla Scarlett, Alison Cutting, Philip Augar,
Kate Bailey, Stewart Attwood, Claire Parkin, Felicity Cormack violin;
Morgan Goff, Gill Barbour viola; Judith Dallosso, Steve Buck 'cello;
Anne Allen, Megan Skinner flute; Carolyn King, Sheila Nicholls oboe; Simon Payne bassoon; Justin Rhodes timpani |
|
Cast - Synopsis - Fidelity and Fishing
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Synopsis
Act I
In a terrible storm, a small boat makes an emergency landing at a fishing
village, and the Baroness Irene, the Marquis Ernesto, the fop Villotto
and the baroness's maid Lisetta are rescued by the local fisherpeople,
Masino and his sister. The meeting is fortuitous for the Baroness
who has been fearful of rumours that her unpredictable nephew Count
Errico was to marry a poor fishergirl, Rosina. She now finds that
Masino's sister is this same Rosina, whom she has been hoping to
find and to distract by marrying her off to Villotto; meanwhile the
Baroness has promised her own hand to Ernesto if she succeeds in
the plot. However, the artful baroness and her shipwrecked party
are quite unaware that not only did Errico marry Rosina five years
previously, but a child was born subsequent to Errico's mysterious
and long-term departure.
Irene attempts to persuade Rosina to accept Villotto; Rosina suffers the torment of loyalty to an absent and possibly indifferent husband. Unexpectedly Errico arrives, and threatens to shoot Villotto; Ernesto attempts to support the Baroness’s ploy by threatening Masino unless he persuades his sister to accept her new suitor.
Errico cruelly tests his wife’s constancy by speaking heartlessly,
and when Villotto stammers that he has decided to give up on marriage
and go to war, the Count adopts the military metaphor as an image of
how to lay siege to a woman’s heart. Rosina confides in Lisetta,
and unhappily appeals to the Baroness for death. Masino and Villotto
are almost fighting when Lisetta warns them to hide from Errico and
Ernesto; terrified, they run away. Rosina begs Errico to kill her,
but instead he embraces her. The Baroness is angry to find them, and
shows Errico a picture of an intended bride – when he incautiously
expresses admiration, Rosina is convinced that she has lost him for
ever.
Act II
In the Baroness’s castle Ernesto appeals to Rosina; his happiness
depends on her acceptance of Villotto. His declaration that only she
can bring him happiness is however overheard and misconstrued by the
Baroness and Errico: they both turn on Rosina, as do Villotto and Lisetta,
and she decides to flee. Errico, enraged at her ‘infidelity’ commands
Villotto to find and kill her. Lisetta realises the deception and persuades
Errico that Rosina is faithful. Errico is dismayed at what he has done,
and goes to look for her.
Rosina flees with her son to the fishing village and hides in an abandoned tower. Masino arrives looking for her, and falls asleep exhausted; Villotto is about to kill him when he is stopped by Lisetta. The Baroness and Ernesto arrive and everyone goes in search of Rosina. Errico finds a small boy alone, who leads him to Rosina: he begs forgiveness and embraces his son, defying the anger of the Baroness and Ernesto.
Act III
The Baroness makes a final attempt to divide
the couple and sends Errico and Rosina forged letters, each apparently
signed by the other. Both see through the trick, and they are drawn
to declare their renewed love. The Baroness finds the happily reunited
family and is forced to accept Rosina as her nephew’s wife. She
keeps her promise to marry Ernesto.
Cast - Synopsis - Fidelity
and Fishing
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Fidelity and fishing: La vera costanza
There can be few other composers of the first order whose operas have been so drastically neglected as Haydn. Between 1753 and 1791 he wrote some 17 major dramatic works (of which a few are completely or partly lost) and five others to accompany marionette shows; yet beyond the enthusiasms of a tiny number of specialist festivals not a single opera could be claimed to be a current repertory favourite, in marked distinction, of course, to those of Mozart. In this country, were it not for the enlightened planning of Garsington Opera between 1991 and 1997, and the Bartoli-starring performance of his final stage work, L’anima del filosofo at Covent Garden in 2001, there would be little British acquaintance with his operas. Indeed, as concert-planners have learned to their peril, the music of Haydn generally is not always a box-office draw, the Creation aside, and yet it does not need especial depth of musical knowledge to recognise his symphonies, piano sonatas, string quartets and trios as works of the greatest skill and intensity. Is it that Haydn was simply too prolific, that the popular image of ‘papa’ Haydn is just too domestic to convince audiences of his sublime greatness?
This modern neglect of his operas may be linked to the original circumstances of the works’ commissions and circulation. Haydn’s employment as a theatrical composer was almost exclusively private and aristocratic, primarily as Vice- and then Kapellmeister for the great prince Nicolaus Esterháza at his eponymous country estate, who built two opera houses which were both opened with operas by Haydn. Here the greatest figures in Austrian society were lavishly entertained, above all the formidable Empress Maria Theresa who enjoyed L’infedeltà delusa so much in 1773 that she remarked (according to reputation) “when I want to see good opera, I go to the country”. At Esterháza, Haydn was in charge of a punishing schedule of productions by the leading composers of the day – Anfossi, Cimarosa, Gluck, Paisiello, Piccinni and Sarti: in 1786 he mounted 125 performances of 17 different productions. Ten of his own works were composed for this extraordinary theatrical venue. But – unlike several of Mozart’s masterpieces – Haydn’s operas did not usually travel to the great urban theatres; indeed, the composer himself inhibited their dissemination, refusing to send an opera to Prague in 1787 with the comment that “all my operas are too closely tied to our personnel (at Esterháza in Hungary) and moreover would never produce the effect that I calculated according to local conditions” (whilst ruefully noting that “scarcely any man can brook comparison with the great Mozart”).
Many scholars have pointed out that Haydn was not blessed with the same theatrical sense as Mozart who in his maturity was increasingly particular about the quality of his libretti and was fortunate enough to work with one of the greatest geniuses of eighteenth-century theatre, Lorenzo da Ponte. True, three of Haydn’s works are settings of Goldoni and one (L’isola disabitata) of Metastasio, but the other texts of Coltellini, Friberth, Puttini, Lorenzi and Porta have weaknesses of structure and poetry which Haydn did not apparently seek to remedy. Esterháza employed no court poet with whom Haydn might have thrashed out theatrical issues, and several of his libretti were already 20 years old when he set them. Despite being himself primarily a singer (as a treble, he may have narrowly escaped becoming a castrato) his attitude to operatic composition was so gloriously instrumental that the grander structures of dramaturgical architecture and pacing possibly eluded him. The perfunctory third act of La vera costanza, coming after a long and powerful second act finale, is a case in point. His operas may often appear to be a sequence of individual numbers rather than organised and coherently-paced scenes (although the same might be argued for one of the most stage-conscious of composers, Handel).
But what glorious music Haydn’s individual operatic numbers contain! Whilst some arias may benefit, on stage at least, from a little pruning of repetitive passages, nearly every one brings unique delights of melody, harmonic richness, rhythmic vitality and orchestral colour which place them on a level far above equivalents by most of Haydn’s contemporaries. There is rarely anything commonplace about his ideas and effects: his boundless wit and a preparedness to take risks provide his music with a remarkable edge and a sense of the unexpected. Characterisation is confident, and his word-painting consummate.
In La vera costanza, Haydn's romantic comedy set picturesquely amongst the cottages of a fishing village, these characteristics are amply demonstrated in Count Errico's bombastic Act 1aria with its preceding accompanied recitative (Mira il campo… : "Imagine you're in the camp"). As there were no trumpets in the orchestra at Esterháza, Haydn scores the number for fanfares of horns, accompanied by copious drumrolls and the military sound of woodwind. Expressing Errico's erratic character the music veers alarmingly between tempi (from presto to adagio) and idioms, as he likens the wooing of a woman to the processes of a battle campaign; the final C minor presto is a marvellous depiction of his internal pain – "I must be quite demented" – set to insistent syncopations and a richly chromatic intensity.
Villotto, the hapless subject of Errico’s picturesque advice-giving, quotes from this aria early in the magnificent Act I finale which extends through 15 minutes of music. Haydn here develops a typical feature of the opera buffa convention with a bravura and confidence which few others can equal. As throughout his works, the insistent rhythmic patterns with their colourful variety create a range of moods which are immediately comprehensible. The opening section, with alternating solos for Rosina, Masino and Villotto, may repeat the same melodic motifs but each is coloured differently to indicate the psychological separation of the characters, until they join in a brief shared trio of confusion and dismay. The Baroness and Ernesto share a lilting andante duet in 6/8, the melody of which is subsequently transformed by Rosina into the expressive minor key. Lisetta’s running entrance introduces a staccato presto, whose melodic motifs reappear in the concerted septet which eventually ends the act in a typically buffa cliff-hanger of emotional and exhausting panic. But between these two frantic sections is an intense lyrical duet for Rosina and Errico, set against a delicate and affecting ostinato with expressive woodwind counterpoint: momentary reconciliation is roughly interrupted when the Baroness distracts her wayward nephew with a portrait of an ‘alternative’ bride. Haydn handles these musical and emotional shifts with dexterous skill, building and relaxing tension, and introducing contrasted groupings of characters to create a dramatic intensity certainly equal to the subsequent masterpieces of Mozart.
La vera costanza has had a chequered history. Composed during the latter part of 1778, it was first performed at Esterháza on 25 April 1779; Haydn used a shortened libretto by Francesco Puttini which had already been set by Pasquale Anfossi in Rome in 1776. Andrea Totti, who sang the role of Count Errico in the Anfossi version in Venice later that year, also created the equivalent in the Haydn rewrite at Esterháza. Little is known however of the 1779 version: the score and parts were destroyed in the fire which burnt down the Esterháza opera house later the same year. A decision to revive the work in April 1785 (with two of the original singers) led to the problematic task of reconstruction based on memory and whatever other materials and sketches survived. The later version (but presumably not the original) actually used an aria from the Anfossi opera, for Errico in Act 2 (Ah non m’iganno: "Ah, if I'm not mistaken"). Nevertheless, it was more widely performed than other operas by Haydn, and was translated and adapted, sometimes quite drastically, appearing as Der flatterhafte Liebhaber in Bratislava, Budapest and Vienna, and as Laurette in Paris.
It is undoubtedly a strange story which begs many questions, but is symptomatic of a new genre of ‘realist’ (as opposed to classical or mythological works) comedies which bring together low and aristocratic characters usually at the (revolutionary) expense of the latter – Beaumarchais’s scandalous work set by Mozart as Le nozze di Figaro being the most notable. But more significantly, the plot centres around a passionate and patient heroine demonstrating that this belongs to the type sentimental romanticism exemplified by Piccinni’s La Cecchina and Paisiello’s Nina (performed at Bampton in 1999). Like the Countess in Figaro (another Rosina, and an orphan), the fishergirl Rosina perseveres in her marital devotion and fidelity, despite the abuses and jealousies of an inconsiderate husband. As with Richardson’s Pamela, Rosina is in effect an enlightenment saint, and her constant character and morality provide this fast-moving comedy with a pathos and seriousness which underpins it as a work of drama. Indeed, it is not inappropriate that La vera costanza shares its appellation, dramma giocoso, with that greatest of ‘serious’ comedies, Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
