It was just as well that I opted to hear the first of the two performances given of this year’s Barga Opera Festival main item, Vivaldi’s serenata “Mio cor, povero cor,” in Lucca’s San Francesco church rather than Barga’s Fosso. Not only was the 6 p.m. starting time more congenial to me, not only were the acoustics more hospitable to the music but Sardelli, who has done so much to bring Vivaldi’s operas back to life, was suddenly taken ill and could not conduct the Barga performance. (I gather he is now well on the way to recovery).
I can do no better than to translate Sardelli’s note to the serenata into English as it is full of useful insights.
“Among the seven surviving serenate by Vivaldi, RV 690 is undoubtedly the most singular, the least performed, the most interesting and the most problematic from the historical point of view. But what was a serenata in Vivaldi’s time? It was music to be performed outdoors in the evening. Serenate were songs or madrigals sung by the suitor under the beloved’s window and were usually accompanied by plucked instruments. In aristocratic courts, however, the serenata became a type of mini-opera. It was a pastoral, Arcadian or heroic drama performed under moonlight in the gardens of noble residences on the occasion of weddings, birthdays and name days. A serenata was thus a theatrical experience outside of the theatre, one that was smaller in size, with fewer characters and usually divided into two parts, instead of the normal three acts of an opera.
Vivaldi’s surviving serenate testify to the splendour and richness of that age’s dramatic tastes. RV 690, however, gives musicologists a hard time. We do not know who the client was or the date and place of its premiere. A horrible event underlines the innocent pastoral intertwining of the amorous skirmishes of the two nymphs Eurilla and Nice and the shepherd Alcindo: the persecution of the Jansenist abbot Jean de Tourrei, exiled from France and at first welcomed in Rome and Florence, only to be betrayed by his guests, imprisoned in Castel Sant’Angelo and subjected to the tortures of the Inquisition from 1711 to 17I5. The serenata, usually a happy and carefree genre, in fact ends with the final demand of the two nymphs for an inquisition (aria “Punish, tear, kill”) for poor Alcindo, alias de TourreiI. It’s still unclear who the libretto’s author was. Perhaps the serenata was performed in Rome in the entourage of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, patron of Vivaldi (as well as of Corelli, Scarlatti, Handel and many others). But since documents date the serenata between 1716 and 1719 (when Vivaldi had not yet arrived in Rome), the possibility remains that the opera was written and performed in Mantua or Venice. Apart from these puzzles, Vivaldi’s music stays clear, fresh and full of ideas and instrumental colours. The arias with oboes, bassoon obbligato and hunting horns witness the great richness of ideas in the composer’s maturity. This little known and performed beautiful and unique serenata does not even have a title! The manuscript opens with the first aria, beginning “Mio cor, povero cor,” which is perhaps the best name we can give to Vivaldi’s serenata.”
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I was indeed astonished by the variety of arias in the serenata. Everything from sweet triple-time pastorals to energetic calls-to-action with magnificently rasping horn playing to an embedded violin concerto was performed. It’s as if Vivaldi wanted to show off as many of the musical qualities that he was able to create. It’s sad that this fine Venetian composer, who influenced J. S. Bach so much in his concerti, should have died destitute in a Viennese slum. But then, as a friend who was also present at the concert explained to me, when one’s patron (in this case Emperor Charles VI) suddenly dies then one’s remuneration usually dies with him.
The serenata is still very much with us. By Mozart’s time it had become a largely instrumental composition and was called a serenade. In the nineteenth century great composers like Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Elgar wrote delightful serenades and the term, used to describe music of a more laid-back nature, survives to the present times.
All players and singers performed quite magnificently. (It was the leader of the ‘Modo Antiquo’ orchestra, Frederico Guglielmo, who had to take over from the indisposed Sardelli for the work’s second presentation.) I especially liked the expressive way soprano Sonia Tedla sang her part as the nymph Eurilla.
It seems astonishing that less than forty years ago Italian H(istorically) I(nformed) P(erformances) on authentic instruments were virtually non-existent. (There were fine Vivaldi performances by such groups as ‘I Musici’ but they didn’t use cat-gut strings for example). The shadow of the’ melodramma’ was still strong and I remember baroque arie being sung like nineteenth century bel canto. Today, of course, Italians have fully espoused H.I.Ps. After all, so much of the finest baroque music is Italian! That’s why it is so important to support institutions like Barga Opera in this especial year of need when so many cultural events appear tottering on the brink of annihilation. Let’s hope that before not too long we shall again see a fully staged Vivaldian opera gracing Barga’s Teatro dei Differenti.
