Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Paisiello: Nina

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816) wrote more than eighty operas in his long career. Many of them were comic operas. His "Barber of Seville" from 1782 set the standard in Italian opera buffa until Rossini's now famous "Barber" came along in 1816. Paisiello wrote in other related operatic genres, too, like his Nina, ossia La Pazza per Amore ("Nina, or The Madness for Love," 1793), styled a dramma giocoso, i.e. a romantic comedy with a special, more serious melodramatic element.

Before this work there had never been a prolonged representation of insanity on the operatic stage. It was intended to arouse the audience's sympathy for the plight of the heroine, an earnest young woman who has been driven mad when led to believe her much beloved fiancé has been killed in a duel with a rival suitor for her hand. She is something like Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet. All the heroines in nineteenth century Italian opera who go mad are descendants of Paisiello's Nina. The world famous La Scala opera house of Milan revived Nina onstage in 1999, and it was subsequently recorded by RAI Radio Italy of Milan at the Teatro Strehler. Riccardo Muti conducts the orchestra and chorus of the Teatro alla Scala. The Italian Agora label released Nina in 2000 on compact disc. I last broadcast this BMG Ricordi digital recording on Sunday, August 15, 2004.