The Cairo Goose
Mozart
Information
L’oca del Cairo (K422, 1783), incomplete opera buffa
Music by W A Mozart, orchestrated by Erik Smith
Libretto by Giambattista Varesco, English translation by Gilly French and Jeremy Gray
16 July 1994: The Deanery garden, Bampton
Cast
| Auretta, chambermaid to the absent Donna Pantea | Gillian French |
| Chichibio, major-domo to Don Pippo | Justin Harmer |
| Calandrino, Pippo's nephew and friend of Biondello | John Virgoe |
| Don Pippo, Marquis of Ripasecca | Mark McKerracher |
| Biondello, a wealthy gentleman from Ripasecca | Geoffrey Huntingford |
| Celidora, Don Pippo's daughter | Anne-Marie Keaney |
| Lavina, companion to Celidora | Amanda Pitt |
| Conductor | Guy Hopkins |
| Producer and designer | Jeremy Gray |
Chorus of Policemen and guards of the tower: The Burford Singers - Jo Glyde, Sue Glyde, Jean Plant, Elizabeth Hudson-Evans (sopranos), Ros Martin, Ruth Dipple, Pat Atyeo, Judy Eames, Jackie O'Brien, Anne Middleton (altos), Neil Pearson, Jan Welch, John Crayford, Anthony Wood (tenors), Ken Plant, Gerry Shields, Steve Bramson, Paul Atyeo (basses).
The Westminster Players: Sarah Jackman (leader), Felicity Carlick, Genevieve Dalzell, Rosamund Hughes, Nicholas Harris, Adam Park (violin), Steve Terepin, Giles Game (viola), Andrew Healey, Elizabeth Ling (cello), Florence Challands (bass), Janet Upton, James McKenzie (flute), Andrew Challinger, Sheila Nicholls (oboe), Kenneth McAllister, Gail Darby (clarinet), Brian Sewell, Simon Payne (bassoon), Tessa White, Christopher Sturdy (horn), Michael Allwood, Nick Stevenson (trumpet), Jonathan Katz (continuo and timpani).
Synopsis
The old Marquis Don Pippo, who believes his absent wife Donna Pantea to be dead, has shut up his daughter Celidora and her companion Lavina in a tower. He intends to marry Lavina that very day, though she pines for Calandrino, and he is forcing Celidora to marry Count Lionetto di Casavuoto instead of her lover Biondello. During the overture the chambermaid Auretta flirts with a sequence of tradesmen to avoid paying their bills. In the opening duet she boasts of her coquettish arts whilst her lover Chichibio is miserable about them. They make up their quarrel during the course of the duet. In a recitative, Don Pippo's nephew Calandrino asks if his uncle is still asleep. Chichibio goes off to find out, and Calandrino flirts with Auretta. They notice that Chichibio has seen their embrace; Calandrino pretends to be in the middle of an anecdote: ‘Like this they stood caressing, Apollo and Daphne...’ Auretta sings a teasing aria about jealousy, and Chichibio complains that beautiful women, despite their insistence to the contrary, are rarely faithful.
However, Biondello has a wager with Don Pippo: if he can rescue Celidora within a year of her incarceration, her hand will be his reward. It is the eve of the anniversary of this wager; the Marquis is confident that Biondello's rescue plans are failing and sings a jolly buffo aria about his forthcoming wedding. Later Biondello sings that true love, with a little help from Cupid and Venus, will win him the wager, and looks forward to Don Pippo's fury at his success. The two girls and their lovers sing a moving quartet, Auretta and Chichibio discuss their role in the rescue and workmen arrive to build a bridge. Auretta and Chichibio re-appear, panic-stricken as they have lost sight of Don Pippo, who indeed soon appears with a chorus of policemen and guards. The girls make lame excuses for being on the balcony but he is furious. The lovers are defiant but afraid, and the act ends with the assembled company being marched off to prison.
In Act Il a ship arrives at Ripasecca, carying Donna Pantea, the wife of Don Pippo, who was believed dead. Disguised, she is carrying a large mechanical goose, which she says is from Cairo. Don Pippo is fascinated by the goose, particularly when he is told that, if left alone at night in a walled garden, it will talk. In this way the goose- with Biondello inside it- gets inside the tower garden. Pantea’s true identity is revealed, Pippo is humiliated and all the lovers are reunited.
Historical Background
Jeremy Gray
After the success of Die Entfiihrung in 1782, the director of the Imperial Court Theatre, Count Orsini-Rosenberg, asked Mozart to compose an opera buffa for the Emperor Joseph II. Mozart was delighted, not least because the Italian buffo Benucci was particularly favourable to the Viennese. But by May 1783 he wrote to his father that he was still looking for a suitable libretto, having read over a hundred. A certain Abbate da Ponte (the librettist of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte) had promised him one but, as he was working with Mozart's great rival Salieri, it seemed unlikely that it would be soon forthcoming. In the end Mozart asked his father to contact Abbate Varesco in Salzburg, despite the negative reaction to his libretto for Idomeneo.
Mozart soon began to have doubts about Varesco's libretto. The main reason was the incarceration of the girls in the tower until the last moments of the opera. Mozart thought that the audience might tolerate the women singing from the ramparts for one act, but felt strongly that the second act should be set inside the tower. But, more fundamentally, he did not approve of the whole idea of the Goose- a kind of ‘Trojan horse’ by which a rescue is attempted- and only went along with the idea because it was approved by his father and Varesco, ‘two men of greater penetration and judgement than I’ as he explained in a letter to his father. Furthermore, Varesco expected there to be similar music for Celidora and Lavina’s (unwritten) arias, despite the mood of the text being quite the opposite. Early in 1784 Mozart laid the music aside, having written the vocal parts and bass lines to most of the first act, and it was not heard of again.
The performance history of L'Oca del Cairo is interesting. It was given a concert performance in Frankfurt in 1860, and a staged performance to a French libretto in Paris in 1867, in which the music was interposed with arias from another unfinished work, Lo sposo deluso, and some concert arias. It was staged in Italian at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1870 and there were several ‘new’ versions in the early twentieth century. The most recent production in this country to our knowledge was in 1960 at the Royal College of Music, in English. Since then there have been staged versions in Berlin in 1975, and, in 1991 at Batignano, Italy (arranged by the late Stephen Oliver), and at Illinois (orchestrated and part completed by Nicholas Temperley). Tonight's performance uses the 1991 edition and orchestration made by Erik Smith for Philips' Complete Mozart Edition (CD number 422 539-2); this will be the first public performance of this edition and is given in a new translation by Gillian French and Jeremy Gray. More modern versions in general do not attempt to complete the opera, hence obviating the need of an appearance by the Goose! As Mozart wrote no overture for L'Oca del Cairo, the performance will be preceded by a short incidental piece, La Chasse (K320f), also in the edition by Erik Smith.