Stephen Storace
The Comedy of Errors (Gli Equivoci)

Music by Stephen Storace, 1786
Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte; English translation by Arthur Jacobs

The Deanery Garden, Bampton, July 2000
The Orangery Garden, Westonbirt School, July 2001

Cast

Synopsis

Act I
A violent storm shipwrecks Euphemio of Syracuse and his servant - unluckily they have arrived at Ephesus where any Syracusan must pay a ransom or face execution. Meanwhile in the city the elderly Aegeon is under that very sentence. However, his story moves the Duke Solinus to grant him a day's remission: Aegeon had been searching for his twin sons (with their twin servants), one of whom had been lost in another storm many years ago.

When Euphemio and Dromio slip into the city, every separation and meeting between them brings inexplicable misunderstanding, and they soon fear the presence of witchcraft. When they meet with two beautiful sisters, Euphemio is roundly berated by Adriana, who claims him as her philandering husband. Eventually he gives way and goes in to dine with Adriana and Luciana, whilst Dromio is posted to keep watch at the gate.

Meanwhile, Adriana's real husband, Euphemio of Ephesus, is counselled by the goldsmith Angelo from whom he has ordered a chain. His servant Dromio is attacked by a raving woman, Lesbia, who claims to be his long-abandoned wife. The Ephesians are horrified when they are refused entry to their own home, and they angrily attempt to beat down the door. Mounting confusion turns to mayhem, and everyone fears the arrival of the night-watch.

Act II
Further misunderstandings develop around the delivery of Angelo's gold chain, and Euphemio of Ephesus tries to track down his 'unfaithful' wife. The Syracusans remain perplexed when everybody addresses them – strangers in the city – by name. Euphemio of Syracuse attempts to woo Luciana, who is incredulous at the duplicity of her 'brother-in-law'. Euphemio of Ephesus is arrested for failing to pay for the chain, and in prison Angelo disguised as a magician tries to exorcise the 'lunatic'. Lesbia at last comes across her lost husband, Dromio of Syracuse, and confronts him with their child, Dromia.

In the town square, as the Duke prepares for the execution of Aegeon, Adriana petitions him for help over the irrational behaviour of her husband. When all parties gather, the true extent of the comedy of errors is revealed.

Cast - Synopsis
...beyond description beautiful - Production photographs
back to top

'…beyond description beautiful'

The strength of Stephen Storace's remarkable but little-known achievement was founded on an international background and perspective which enabled him to work with a fertile synthesis of Italian, Viennese and English musical culture. His father was a Neapolitan double-bass player who, like so many of his compatriots, was better able to further his career abroad through the widespread fascination with Italian opera. Working in Dublin and London, Stefano married the daughter of the owner of the Marylebone Gardens, where he directed summer seasons of Italian operas in the 1750s.

Their two children, Stephen, born in 1762, and Ann, known as Nancy and born three years later, were able to benefit from their parents' many musical and theatrical contacts both in England and Italy. Stephen was sent to study the violin at the San Onofrio conservatory in Naples, where he was reported as preferring ex-patriot parties and sketching to his musical studies. By the time he was joined in Italy by his sister, Stephen had taken to the harpsichord and to composition with some seriousness, skills which were quickly to be directed to supporting Nancy's rapid rise as one of the most outstanding vocal celebrities of the age.

Nancy's four-year engagement with the Italian opera in Vienna from 1783 led to a series of triumphant rôles in premières by the greatest operatic composers in the city, including Salieri, Paisiello, Martín y Soler and Mozart. Stephen, who visited Nancy from England several times during this period, benefited at the highest level from his sister's immense success and popularity: the Emperor Joseph II commissioned him to compose an opera buffa for the Burgtheater, Gli sposi malcontenti. Despite the disastrous première on 1 June 1785 when Nancy, heavily pregnant, lost her voice, the opera was a resounding success and Stephen quickly received a second commission, resulting in Gli Equivoci, a remarkable work for a young and relatively inexperienced composer.

In May 1786 Nancy- ‘the delight of all Vienna’ - starred as the maid Susanna in what has since become the most famed première of the period: Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, set to Lorenzo Da Ponte's brilliant version of Beaumarchais' controversial play. Stephen was surely able to benefit from his knowledge of Mozart's score (the two composers were good friends, although Storace was probably not formally Mozart’s pupil) and from his collaboration with the same redoubtable librettist.

According to the colourful Reminiscences of the Irish tenor Michael Kelly (Don Basilio and Don Curzio in Figaro) the choice of Shakespeare's farce, The Comedy of Errors, for his second imperial commission was the composer's own: 'Storace had an opera put into rehearsal, the subject his own choice….. It was made operatical, and adapted for the Italian, with great ingenuity. He retained all the main incidents and characters of our immortal bard; it became all the rage, and well it might, for the music of Storace was beyond description beautiful.

In his own memoirs da Ponte (who was working simultaneously on the opera which was to prove the greatest success of all in Vienna, Martín y Soler's Una Cosa Rara) was more dismissive: 'For directly I finished Figaro, Storace's brother…had obtained the Emperor's permission for me to write a libretto for him. So to please him and get the matter out of the way quickly, I adapted one of Shakespeare's comedies.'The result is what was perhaps the first throughly operatic setting of a Shakespeare play, notwithstanding several earlier masques and melodramas. In many ways, da Ponte's script is as successful as his now revered adaptation of Beaumarchais – 'deft and delightful' as Roger Fiske has described it. As he spoke no English at this time, he worked from a French translation of Shakespeare under the title Les Méprises, condensing the five acts into two, and rearranging some of the minor characters. Thus Shakespeare's Abbess and Courtesan are omitted, but Dromio of Syracuse gains a wife, Lesbia, and a child. The twin masters Antipholus were renamed as Eufemio, and the sisters Adriana and Luciana became Sofronia and Sostrata (Arthur Jacobs, in his 1974 translation used tonight, restored the women's Shakespearian names). The problematically austere opening scene between the condemned Aegeon and Duke Solinus is successfully displaced to fall after a witty curtain-raiser depicting the shipwreck of the Syracusan master and servant. da Ponte built on his own recent experience in writing Figaro to provide several ensembles and extended and highly varied finales to each act, which Storace turned to superb effect with complex music of immense energy and excitement.

At the première at the Burgtheater on 27 December 1786 Nancy played Sofronia (Adriana) and probably Benucci, the first Figaro, was Dromio of Syracuse. Michael related: ‘I performed Antipholus of Ephesus, and a Signor Calvasi, Antipholus of Syracuse, and were both of the same height, and strove to render our persons as like each other as we could.

Despite the success of Gli Equivoci, it was soon overshadowed by Una Cosa Rara, and it never entered the repertory at the Burgtheater, although later performances between 1788 and 1797 were given at Pressburg (in German), Leipzig, Prague and Dresden. After the Storaces returned to London in 1787, Stephen and his friend Kelly failed to persuade Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the proprietor of the Drury Lane Theatre, to mount the work – the problem of finding two sets of singing 'twins' may well have proved a general impediment to performance. Consequently, Storace re-used some of the music in his later English operas, The Haunted Tower, No Song No Supper, and The Pirates. Kelly – on whom Gli Equivoci left a deep impression - later commented: ‘Storace certainly enriched his English pieces, but I lamented to see his beautiful Italian opera dismantled.’

Fortunately however, and unlike most of Storace's subsequent English works, the full score survived, and a small number of modern revivals have revealed the extraordinary skill with which this young friend of Mozart captured the intensity of Viennese-Italian opera and made it his own. The first UK production was at the Camden Festival in 1974 (a BBC studio performance was broadcast in 1977); subsequent productions have included those at Wexford in 1992 and Batignano in 1999.

Storace may not achieve the sublimity of Mozart, but it must be admitted that neither, in this instance, does Shakespeare equal the disconcerting psychology of da Ponte’s Così. Youthful and inexperienced as he was, Storace succeeds in producing an entirely original work which, despite the inevitable influence of Figaro in its structure, is no Mozartian pastiche. The energy and clarity of Haydn seem to lie behind the picturesque overture which skilfully depicts a sea storm, complete with parts marked for lampi, tuoni and grandine (lightning, thunder and hail), and the ostinato rhythmic cells on which much of the subsequent music is built suggest the influence of Italy, used with a remarkable dynamic drive which foreshadows Rossini. The orchestration throughout is ingenious and varied. The first appearance of Adriana and Luciana is a lyrical duet scored with two basset-horns. Solo clarinet and ‘cello lend particular expressiveness to some of the arias (and Adriana’s phenomenal solo towards the end of Act I is a worthy rival to Fiordiligi’s Come scoglio) , but from the opening duet Storace establishes that this is no conventional aria opera: complex ensembles predominate, with pivotal quartets in both acts, a malicious and outrageous second-act sextet depicting the taunting of the imprisoned Ephesians, and two extended finales (essential features of the Italianate opera buffa style) of unprecedented length and energy.

Naturally it was the librettist who laid down the structure for these, and da Ponte was passionate about the form: ‘Particularly in this, the genius of the composer, the strength of the singers, and the greatest effects of the plot must shine – everything is sung and in it must be found every kind of tempo.’ Storace brilliantly matched da Ponte’s skill, concluding the first act with a powerful twenty-minute sequence of interconnected movements (punctuated by a delicious drinking song for Dromio of Syracuse scored in the popular ‘Turkish’ manner for piccolo and tambourine) which build up to a breathtaking dénouement of breakneck speed. The misunderstandings and gropings in the dark garden at the end of Figaro could not have been far from the minds of da Ponte and Storace as they tackled this delightful (and mostly non-Shakespearian) night-time confusion of misunderstanding and frustration – ‘Ah! The wind has blown the lamp out!’ In the equally developed second-act finale, the ‘light of sense and reason’ eventually transforms anger and pain – a veritable dissolution of chaos through the redeeming clarity of the Enlightenment.

Jeremy Gray

Cast - Synopsis
...beyond description beautiful - Production photographs
back to top

• Home
• Current season
  • Performances
  • Singers
  • Supporters
• Booking information
• Venues
• Newsletter
• Friends
• Repertory
• Conductors
• Directors
• Singers
• Reviews
• Editions
  & translations
• Education
• Contact us
• Acknowledgements
• Links