F.J. Haydn - L'infedeltà delusa (Deceit outwitted)

Libretto by Marco Coltellini
English translation by Andrew Porter

The Orangery terrace, Westonbirt School, 27 August 2005 and
St John's Smith Square, London, 20 September 2005

Cast 2005

Cast 2005 - Synopsis - Court spectacle and rustic simplicity - Cast 2007
Cast 2004 (Bridgnorth) and reviews of the Bridgnorth performance
Production photos 2005
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Synopsis

Act I
A beautiful evening falls at the cottage of Filippo, an old peasant. He has been in negotiations with Nencio, a relatively prosperous farmer. Also present are two younger peasants: Vespina, who is in love with Nencio, and her brother Nanni. Both are worried: she because Nencio leaves without saying goodbye, and he because he cannot see his girlfriend Sandrina, the over-protected daughter of Filippo.

When Sandrina enters, she senses that something regarding her is amiss and questions her father. Filippo is pleased to announce that he has found a prosperous husband for her, namely Nencio. After much protestation, Sandrina realises she can only obey her father, but hopes to continue loving Nanni nevertheless. When Nanni returns she repeatedly has to answer "no" to him, according to her promise to her father. When Nanni eventually understands the situation he swears vengeance.

In Nanni's house, Vespina recounts the state-of-play of her love affair with Nencio, but Nanni's agitated return leads both brother and sister to seek revenge.

Nencio serenades Sandrina below her window. Vespina and Nanni hide and listen to his conversation with Filippo and then with Sandrina. When Nencio attempts to woo Sandrina by saying he will take her by force, Vespina comes out of hiding and slaps him, and the whole company quarrel furiously.

Act II
Vespina sets about a plan to sort things out. Disguised as an old woman, she tells Filippo that she is in search of the wicked husband – one Nencio – who has abandoned her daughter. The revelation upsets both Filippo and Sandrina, and when Nencio arrives, Filippo insults him and declares that he can no longer count on his daughter's hand.

Quite bewildered, Nencio meets a German servant – Vespina in her second disguise – who announces that 'his' master, the Marquis of Ripafratta, is about to marry Sandrina. Now it is Nencio's turn to be furious and he is about to seek satisfaction from Filippo when the Marquis (Vespina again) arrives and reveals that he actually intends to marry Sandrina off to one of his kitchen scullions. Nencio is thrilled that Filippo will be tricked in this way and offers to be a witness to the wedding.

At home, Filippo attempts to prepare Sandrina for a life of luxury, but she would still prefer to live in a cottage as Nanni's wife. Vespina, now disguised as a notary, and accompanied by Nanni as the Marquis' servant, prepares the marriage contract which, in anticipation of the arrival of the Marquis, Nanni signs. Brother and sister reveal their true identities, and Sandrina discovers that she has become married to Nanni. Nencio finds that his signature on the contract has married him to Vespina. Although Filippo has been outwitted, rage turns to reconciliation and general rejoicing.

Cast 2005 - Synopsis - Court spectacle and rustic simplicity - Cast 2007
Cast 2004 (Bridgnorth) and reviews of the Bridgnorth performance
Production photos 2005
back to top

Court spectacle and rustic simplicity

Haydn's operatic oeuvre was almost entirely written for and nurtured through his employment by the Prince Nikolaus I at his rural retreat at Esterháza, now in western Hungary– gradually to be transformed from a simple hunting lodge into a palace of Versailles-like opulence. Here Nikolaus Esterházy created a new opera house which opened in 1768 with Haydn's Lo speziale. The building was only to survive 11 years until destroyed by fire – a common occurrence for candle-lit theatres in the eighteenth century – but it was replaced within a year. In scale (about 400 seats) and scenic facilities it must have been comparable to the still surviving royal theatre of Drotnningholm near Stockholm (where the original theatre of 1752 was also quickly replaced after fire), but surviving illustrations suggest a far greater opulence than the endearing pasteboard and papier-mache confection of its Swedish cousin.

The focus of Haydn's early work at Esterháza – he was employed there from 1761 - were the occasional spectacular pageants mounted to flatter and impress visitors of the highest rank From 1776 until the Prince's death in 1790, he was also in charge of a regular troupe of mostly Italian singers whose repertory included not only his own compositions but the most up-to-date works of internationally successful masters, notably Anfossi, Cimarosa, Paisiello and Sarti: over these years Haydn was responsible for about 1200 performances of around one hundred operas, giving him an unrivalled access and experience of contemporary literature. Numerous surviving scores indicate Haydn's own corrections and revisions, cuts and rewritings, and his detailed involvement in that always delicate activity of bringing the written words and notes to their realisation on the operatic stage. As with Paisiello at the court of Catherine the Great at St Petersburg, Haydn was a dedicated and professional man of the theatre, and the still-lingering neglect of his remarkable stage repertory still surprises many who are lucky enough to see his works performed.

L'infedeltà delusa was first performed on 26 July 1773 at the Esterháza theatre for the spectacular birthday celebrations of Princess Maria Anna, widow of the prince's brother Paul Anton, who had been Haydn’s first patron at Esterháza. Amongst the guests was the Archduchess Maria Christina, daughter of the formidable Empress Maria Theresa. Haydn received 25 ducats from the Prince, and the work was repeated on 1 September to mark the visit of Maria Theresa herself (“When I want to hear good opera, I shall come to Esterházy” was her famous reported comment). The many pleasures of La canterina, Lo speziale and Le pescatrici notwithstanding, L'infedeltà delusa may be considered the first of Haydn’s major operatic works. However only one further performance was given in the composer’s lifetime, in 1774.

Marco Coltellini, whose libretti were also set by Gluck and Mozart, succeeded Metastasio as 'poeta Caesareo' at the imperial court in Vienna in 1769. His libretto of L'infedeltà delusa rejects entirely the more usual nobility and deities of contemporary opera in favour of a cast of simple – and ultimately happy - rustics who enact an unadorned story of amorous manoeuvres. What it lacks in dramatic complexity and subtlety, it more than makes up for in charm and a score of the highest quality, maintaining colourful variety and sensitivity throughout its modest length. Whilst the characters are treated equally, it is ultimately the wily Vespina who dominates, adopting an enterprising and outrageous series of disguises (anticipating Despina in Mozart's Così fan Tutte) and eventually outwitting the deceit of the inconstant Nencio, whom she is nevertheless happy to marry. Indeed the only nobleman, the Marquis of Ripafratta, turns out to be one of the several personae of the inventive Vespina. The context is Tuscan with, in the original Italian, hints of the local dialect, and Ripafratta is a small town between Pisa and Lucca.

As always in Haydn’s best music, what delights is a transparency of texture which never becomes simplistic, and a rhythmic energy and harmonic richness which keep the music constantly alive and engaging. Alternating rumbustuous humour and an humane warmth, the work seems to be the musical equivalent of the rustic landscapes (such as Cottage Door with Children Playing, 1778) and the so-called ‘Fancy Pictures’ (Girl with Pitcher, 1785, Girl with Pigs) of the English painter Thomas Gainsborough, testimony to the growing romanticism of contemporary attitudes to the pastoral landscape and the rural poor. Indeed the generous eulogy paid to him by John Constable could easily be transferred to the emotional charm of Haydn's L'infedeltà delusa:

'The landscape of Gainsborough is soothing, tender and affecting… With particulars he has nothing to do; his object was to deliver a fine sentiment, and he has fully accomplished it… The stillness of noon, the depths of twilight, and the dews and pearls of the morning, are all to be found on the canvases of this most benevolent and kind-hearted man. On looking at them, we find tears in our eyes, and know not what brings them.'

The mood of the opera is set from the very first bars of the remarkable Overture (in C Major, as is the second act finale, and Filippo’s second act aria): the allegro moves with drive and panache, but is kept in balance by a lyrical charm which is never cloying. A second section – a poco adagio in G – provides a foil of courtly elegance, almost like a minuet, before moving into the F major opening ensemble of the opera. This long and quite remarkable piece introduce four, and then all five of the characters, united in praise of the bella sera, the lovely evening with breezes blowing. In a different context, one might be listening to a glorious kyrie eleison or agnus dei: the mood is reflective and spiritual, and the ensemble establishes the common background which unites the characters. The spaciousness of this music is typical of Haydn and has been considered as a fault, preventing him from tackling the issues of pace and character which mattered so much to Mozart. But the painterly poetry of this music is of the very highest order, akin to the breadth and emotional focus of Handel’s operatic style.

Not surprisingly, therefore, it is the solo aria which forms the main musical medium of the work. Often lengthy, and sometimes repetitious, they nevertheless create colours and
moods of considerable variety and beauty, and many are superb in quality and imagination. Vespina’s are the widest-ranging: her first, Poets say that Cupid is blindfold, has a jaunty elegance with fragmented phrases which effectively establishes the wily inventiveness of this manipulative and endearing character. Her Act 2 disguises are musically hilarious: notable are the raucous German manservant’s Trinke, trinke Wein in plenty and the extraordinarily syncopated Oh good sir, I am so weary, I can hardly bend this knee, in which she plays a hypochondriac crone who collapses in a fit of disgusting coughs and splutters. But Vespina has a serious and passionate heart, as demonstrated in a powerful ‘rage’ duet with her brother Nanni, in which an insistent contrapuntal interplay and dramatic leaps across the full range of the voices. The final aria of the opera, given to the potentially tragic Sandrina, is perhaps the finest, sublime in its sentiment and its tender mellowness. Sandrina, resigned to marry the relatively wealthy Nencio rather than her beloved but impoverished Nanni, nostalgically prefers the ‘simple pathways’ of her former unsullied life to the ‘wordly pomp’ offered by Nencio: the music is an expansive and serene allegro with horns and oboes, restrained in passion and yet of the most moving sincerity.

The first UK performance of L'infedeltà delusa was a concert at the Royal Festival Hall in October 1960, followed by its staged premiere in 1964 at St Pancras Town Hall. Amongst its occasional later performances have been ones at the Wexford Festival in 1969 and at Garsington in 1993. Tonight’s production is a version of that presented by Bampton Classical Opera at the English Haydn Festival in Bridgnorth on 5 June 2004. This production imagines a further (fictional) production at another royal palace. The Empress Maria Theresa’s fifteenth child and young sister to Maria Christina was Marie Antoinette (1755 – 1793), who married the French Dauphin, later Louis XVI, in 1770. Marie deeply enjoyed music, and especially supported the career of Gluck and also of Salieri. She was also very fond of the music of Haydn, and his Symphony no. 85 (1785) bore the title ‘La Reine’ in homage.

Marie tried in many ways to escape the stifling etiquette and lack of privacy at the court at Versailles and often retreated with her friends to the Petit Trianon in the royal estate; here she encouraged informality of manner and dress, and took part in many theatrical and musical performances, building a special theatre there in 1780. In due course she had built for her a model farm (hameau) with cottages, a mill and a dovecote, where she continued to encourage a return to primitive and pastoral values. On the stage she especially enjoyed playing shepherdesses, village maidens and chambermaids. The character of Vespina would surely have appealed to her, and perhaps with her courtly friends Yolande de Polignac, and the Comtes de Vaudreuil, d’Artois and d’Adhémar, the ill-fated Queen of France could have sought solace in the simple and rural values of L'infedeltà delusa.

Jeremy Gray

Cast 2005 - Synopsis - Court spectacle and rustic simplicity - Cast 2007
Cast 2004 (Bridgnorth) and reviews of the Bridgnorth performance
Production photos 2005
back to top

Cast 2007

Wantage , Wotton, Thaxted, Buscot

Cast 2004

English Haydn festival, Bridgnorth

Cast 2005 - Synopsis - Court spectacle and rustic simplicity - Cast 2007
Cast 2004 (Bridgnorth) and reviews of the Bridgnorth performance
Production photos 2005
back to top

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