Yesterday I saw for the first time Rossini’s first opera, the one-act farce La Cambiale di Matrimonio (The Bill of Marriage). It is set in England, and the most amusing character is the Canadian Slook, who has crossed the Atlantic to pick up his mail-order bride. The DVD version I saw, directed by Michael Hampe and conducted by Gianluigi Gelmetti, puts Slook (Alberto Rinaldi) in a delightfully primitive Canadian costume. He arrives on a cold day dressed in furs and carrying a gun in one hand and a pair of peacepipes in the other:

Once inside he takes off his fur coat and hat to reveal a buckskin jacket with fringes, plaid shirt, and something that looks like a more elaborate version of a bolo tie:

How much of the costume is implied in Rossini’s score (1810) and how much is the director’s idea (1989) I do not know. I can heartily recommend the recording, which is well-sung, well-acted, and pleasingly free of Eurotrash pretensions. It is included in a very reasonably-priced box set of four early one-act operas. I bought it for $20.99 a few days ago, though the current low price on Amazon Marketplace is $24.25 new. Not bad for four delightful works in one package. On the other hand, the picture of the composer on the box may deter some buyers.

. . . and I almost missed it. Today is the 200th anniversary of the death of Vicent Martín i Soler. He seems to be a mere footnote* today, but what I’ve heard of his operas (Una Cosa Rara and La Capricciosa Corretta on CD) was enough to convince me that it isn’t so much Mozart’s operas as classical opera in general that I like. Seeing Salieri’s Falstaff at Wolftrap and Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio Segreto on DVD helped. So why are these operas so rarely produced? It’s not as if Mozart’s mature operas are all that numerous. Anyway, to commemorate the occasion, I just played the overtures and a few arias from each of my CD sets. Now if only someone would record one or the other (or both!) on DVD, so I can follow the plot: I’ve never really been able to follow an opera well without seeing it, which makes listening to the CDs a frustratingly incomplete experience.

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*A literal footnote about a metaphorical footnote: Una Cosa Rara was a big hit just before Don Giovanni, so much so that Mozart quotes a bit in the banquet scene and has the Don say “Bravo! Una Cosa Rara”.

In honor of the 2012th anniversary of the death of Horace, here is the opening of Act I, Scene XIV of Rossini’s delightful Il Turco in Italia, which I saw and heard for the first time today (on DVD). The speaker is the poet Prosdocimo, who constantly interferes in the action in a proto-pomo way:

Ho quasi del mio dramma
Finito l’orditura;
Ma un atto è poco a un dramma,
E Orazio dice che minore
Di cinque esser non può.
Ma in due parti dividerlo io dovrò,
Che gli uditori miei
Sarian ben presto, caro Orazio, stufi
Se fosser di cinque atti i drammi bufi.

I’ve almost finished
the plot of my play;
but one act is too little for a stage piece,
and Horace says that it cannot consist
of less than five.
But I’ll have to divide it into two parts,
otherwise, dear Horace,
my listeners would soon be irked
if comedies were written in five acts.

Text and translation are quoted from the liner notes to the 1998 La Scala recording conducted by Ricardo Chailly and sung by Cecilia Bartoli, Alessandro Corbelli, Michele Pertusi, and Ramón Vargas (London 289 458 924-2). Yes, I bought the CD and the DVD before listening to either: I’ve seen and heard enough Rossini to know I was unlikely to be disappointed.

I still have trouble seeing Horace as an authority on dramaturgy. In this case, Rossini seems to have the better of the argument. I watched the DVD of Salieri’s five-act Tarare a few weeks ago. Despite an amusing plot and a libretto by Beaumarchais, I found it rather a bore. On the other hand, Salieri’s two-act Falstaff, which I saw at Wolftrap a year or two ago, was quite diverting.

I suppose the most suitable memorial reading for Horace would be Carmina 3.30.

I always have a mild urge to call them ‘feetnotes’ . . . .

Two things that surprised me about Der Rosenkavalier at the Met yesterday:

1. I don’t think I’d ever heard a non-ironic non-metaphorical use of the word ‘lackey’ before, but the Met’s surtitles used the word dozens of times. Perhaps they use an archaic translation? If so, how to explain the first verb in this passage:

“Lerchenau’s men are stoned on brandy. They’re molesting our maids worse than Turks or Croatians. Fetch the lackeys!”

Any translation that uses both ‘stoned’ (except in reference to collective punishment) and ‘lackeys’ is having trouble maintaining a consistent stylistic register.

By the way, I wonder how long before the unapologetic ethnic slurs in some operas cause trouble. As I recall, the other Strauss’s Die Fledermaus mocks gypsies and Hungarians as well as lawyers, stutterers, and a couple of other groups I’ve forgotten. Not Jews, though, unless my memory deceives me, which is a pleasant surprise, now that I think about it — perhaps Johann thought that had been overdone.

2. No one else laughed when the three orphan girls begging for charity from the Marschallin sang

“Father fell on the field of honor. Following him is our goal.”

Am I wrong in seeing a mildly obscene pun? Surely a woman in 1911 could only ‘fall’ on the field of ‘honor’ by engaging in premarital sex. I suppose I should check the German text, but I’m guessing that the metaphor of ‘fallen woman’ and the restriction of ‘honor’ in women to chastity transcended linguistic boundaries.