Balletomanes will keep in mind Don Quixote because the 1869 Petipa/Minkus three-acter by which the gaunt knight and his cynical sidekick encounter a barber, a bride and a wealthy fiancé in a small Spanish city and (with an amazing many faux-Flamenco dance strikes) set all to rights, the lady faraway from the suitor’s arms and wedded to the barber she loves. It’s well-liked with growing older ballet stars, for the reason that title position doesn’t really dance a lot however he will get the large bows.
The story is likely one of the few episodes from Cervantes’ novel that may be changed into a short stage comedy, and within the period when the e book was nonetheless acquainted to educated theater-goers, “The Marriage of Comacho” (that’s the wealthy fall man) was a frequent episode. There’s a misplaced Shakespeare comedy on the topic and twenty or thirty operas.
On Tuesday night time, within the commodious live performance corridor of the Morgan Library, the Boston Early Music Pageant forces introduced Georg Philipp Telemann’s Don Quichotte auf der Hochzeit des Comacho to New York, and the story, minus fan-flaps and razor-twiddles, was acquainted. Uncommon is the eighteenth-century opera story that was not set by multiple composer. And why not? Audiences in Hamburg have been unlikely to have heard the tunes of London or Naples.
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Telemann lived longer than his contemporaries, Vivaldi, Bach, and Handel—however ask an opera-goer to hum certainly one of his tunes. They’ll’t. He misplaced out large within the enduring fame sweepstakes. That’s a pity, as he wrote greater than fifty operas (to not point out scads of cantatas and oodles of instrumental music—300 overtures survive!) and ran the nice home in Hamburg for its ultimate twenty years. It had been the biggest opera home north of the Alps, presenting music from Italy and France in addition to Germany, and is the place Handel first realized stagecraft. By 1761, the octogenarian composer (who couldn’t stumble away from bed with out composing one thing—his spouse had run off with a Swedish officer and he had no distractions) grew nostalgic for greasepaint. A child in his twenties supplied him this libretto, and he pounced.
Rare revivals of his operas (I’ve heard two or three) reveal Telemann as a grasp tunesmith, with a extra folksy than courtly model. Hamburg, a metropolis state, had no royal courtroom to please. Telemann didn’t share—little question as a result of the burghers of Hamburg didn’t share—the Italian style for castrati or, apparently, for extreme show-off vocal decoration. Too, on his wanderings within the Slavic lands to the east, he seems to have jotted down among the wealthy trove of Slavic folks melody by which behavior he foreshadowed composers like Haydn and Richard Strauss. The end result is a straightforward, extremely interesting stage work.
Telemann’s Quichotte spends totally a 3rd of its size within the opening trade of arias by Don Q and Sancho Panza, the one idealistic and highfalutin, the opposite earthy and humorous. Of their semi-staged model, BEMF solid Christian Immler, a tall bass-baritone of extremely satisfying orotundity, and Jason McStoots, a plump, scene-stealing comedian tenor, whose musicianship was fairly Quixote’s equal. Even these of us conversant in BEMF’s stage smarts have been impressed by this degree of musical and theatrical allure.
Within the small BEMF Chamber Orchestra, the percussion had enjoyable indicating the windmills of Quixote’s thoughts and the clip-clop of Rocinante – to not neglect castanets for the marriage social gathering. And one detected many a hee-haw within the melodic traces of Sancho’s arias. To increase the fairly abbreviated nature of the rating, BEMF inserted actions from certainly one of Telemann’s tons of of orchestral suites (this one additionally impressed by Cervantes), and although there was no dance firm, we inhaled the festive temper.
The adventurers have been interrupted by a quintet of shepherds and shepherdesses, celebrating a marriage whereas bewailing the fortunes of their love-blighted buddy Basilio. Any lover of traditional opera is conversant in dancing peasants in black tie, and the sumptuous sentimental narration was entrusted to tenor Richard Pittsinger, who was touching.
The bride and (nominal) groom, in reality, had little or no to do on this model, and one feels the librettist may have given them extra—a blustering buffo air for Comacho, minor key rejoicing for the unwilling bride. The rating because it stands runs solely an hour. It may simply be half a double-bill.
The climax arrives with the doorway of Basilio the Barber, who has stabbed himself out of heartbreak. Along with his dying breath, he entreats Comacho to allow him to die married to the beautiful Quiteria. Everybody else joins the plea, Comacho unwillingly provides in—however Basilio has been faking the entire thing. (One thing like this labored for Nanki-Poo, too.)
Basilio was sung by a countertenor, Cody Bowers, appropriately on this golden age of that vocal class. However who sang it in 1761? A castrato? Or, extra seemingly, a mezzo in trousers? Anyway, Bowers has a clean and sizable sound, if maybe not the sensuality for heroic castrato roles.
Within the peasant dances of the completely happy conclusion, the string part of the BEMF Chamber Ensemble outdid (or undid?) themselves producing fairly folksy parts with plucking and bluesy whining from their devices. One other atmospheric contact.
Within the attraction of the unfamiliar work they introduced and the experience of the musicians they selected to carry out it, BEMF lived as much as its lofty fame. If solely New York had an early music group (particularly one which specialised within the baroque operas so well-liked throughout Europe) to match the delights native to the Hub.
Images: Kathy Wittman from earlier performances at New England Conservatory
