Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Rossini: La Cenerentola

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

I always try to include an Italian opera buffa in my Summer season programming. The Italian operatic classification of melodramma giocoso injects comic or buffa elements into a more serious romantic story leading up to the requisite happy ending.

Perhaps the finest example of this sub-genre is Gioacchino Rossini's La Cenerentola (1817). Basically, it's a retelling of the of the old Cinderella fairy tale minus the magical elements. Jacopo Ferretti's libretto omits the fairy godmother altogether. Rossini borrowed music from previous works such as "The Barber of Seville" in assembling the score of La Cenerentola. He tinkered with the score after its premiere production in Rome and other hands corrupted the musical numbers and violated Rossini's original dramatic intentions.

We get back to those original intentions in the performing edition of the score based on Rossini's own carefully written manuscript. That revised edition, published by Riccordi, was employed in the production of La Cenerentola mounted at the 1971 Edinburgh Festival. It was recorded for Deutsche Grammophon and soon thereafter issued on three DG stereo LP's. Claudio Abbado was directing the London Symphony Orchestra for the festival performance. The sublime (and now historic) voice of mezzo Teresa Berganza is heard as Angelina, ie. Cinderella. Other illustrious voices of the era support hers in the Edinburgh production: tenor Luigi Alva as Don Ramiro and bass Renato Capecchi as Dandini. I draw upon those old DG vinyl discs for today's broadcast. This LP recording of Rossini's La Cenerentola resides in our WWUH classical music record library.

I have broadcast recordings of La Cenerentola twice before: first, long ago on Sunday, July 29, 1984. On that occasion I worked from even older London LP's. The British Decca recording preserves for posterity a production of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino starring Giulietta Simionato. Then on Sunday, December 27, 1998 I aired on London CD's the recorded production of the Teatro Communale of Bologna, starring Cecilia Bartoli.