Happily, the operas being performed this summer by prominent companies in and around Boston provide an instructive perspective on the birth and development of 19th century Italian opera, from Rossini early on to Mascagni at the end.  Conveniently, the opera schedules make it possible to teach these works in chronological order and thus to explore the evolution of the century’s primary genres, opera seria (Aureliano in Palmira to Iris) and opera semi-seria (La Gazza Ladra to L’amico Fritz). In the middle is Donizetti’s miniature opera buffa, Il Campanello, which captures the very essence of this delightful genre that he (and Rossini) so artfully reinvigorated.

            Session 1, June 22/23                            Rossini, Aureliano in Palmira (1813)

                                                                            (Caramoor Festival: July 16)

            Session 2, June 29/30                            Rossini, La Gazza Ladra (1817)

                                                                            (Glimmerglass: July 16, 25, 29; Aug. 7, 12, 16, 20, 25)

            Session 3, July 6/7                                 Donizetti, Il Campanello di notte (1836)

                                                                            (Boston Midsummer Opera: July 20, 22, 24)

            Session 4, July 13/14                             Mascagni, L’amico Fritz (1891)

                                                                            (Boston Midsummer Opera: July 20, 22, 24)

            Session 5, July 20/21                             Mascagni, Iris (1898)

                                                                            (Bard SummerScape: July 22, 24, 27, 29, 31)

To expand, the year 1813 (a landmark year for opera with the birth of both Verdi and Wagner) was the year in which Gioacchino Rossini won over the public at large, with works that also included Tancredi and L’italiana in Algeri. Although Aureliano in Palmira is infrequently performed today, the opera is a gem - lightly scored in Rossini’s youthful “neo-classic” manner. Four years (and nine operas) later Rossini would write perhaps his greatest success in the theater, the archetypal opera semi-seria La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie) - a work so rich in character and color that, with the approaching romanticism, Rossini became the undeniable precursor to the works of Bellini and Donizetti.

“Of Rossini’s greatness there is no question,” wrote the foremost scholar of Italian opera, Philip Gossett. “He invented this art form. But Donizetti imbued it with humanity.”  Indeed so, but on this occasion at mid-career, he writes the music and libretto for a taut one-act farse, Il Campanello di notte (The Night Bell), whose familiar commedia dell’arte plot crops up frequently throughout 19th century comedy: an old man takes a young wife, a theme Donizetti would take up six years later in his great buffo masterpiece, Don Pasquale. Donizetti’s music is pure delight, tuneful and jovial, with razor-sharp comedy. The engaging work was a great success in his day and enjoys frequent revivals today, as luckily will be the case this summer when it pairs with L’amico Fritz in Boston Midsummer Opera’s enticing double bill.

Towards the end of the century, Mascagni wrote some fifteen operas of which the non-Italian public of today probably knows just his second opera, Cavalleria Rusticana (1890), which made him famous overnight with its explosive realism.  His very next opera a year later was the charming commedia lirica, L’amico Fritz.  Pointedly he chose an idyllic semi-seria subject of more subtle character.  Hailed as the most important operatic event since that of Verdi’s Otello four years earlier, the opera consolidated almost immediately his already international reputation as the most promising composer of the younger generation.

Mascagni’s close friend Puccini, however, would soon usurp that title, but not before Mascagni himself would pave the way with his poignant melodrama Iris of 1898. With this opera and its Japanese setting he, and his librettist Luigi Illica, inaugurated the vogue for fin-de-siecle exotic opera that would soon peak with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, also with Illica as librettist. Significantly, BardSummerscape, whose focus is on Puccini this summer, chose to present Mascagni’s Iris as its sole opera production. With this work I close our brief survey of 19th century Italian opera and its representative genres.

How could I resist emerging from retirement to teach such an appealing and instructive survey?  Join me for a summer of Opera Italiano con Brio, even if perhaps you are unable to attend all the available performances.

Opera Rarities for a New England Summer

One-month Summer Offering

Five Sessions beginning on June 22/23, 2016