Six performances of Mascagni's
Amica will take place in the coming days in Rome: Tuesday 7, Wednesday 8, Thursday 9 and Friday 10 at 8:30 PM, Saturday 11 at 6 PM, and Sunday October 12 at 5 PM.
Contrary to what was thought earlier, the work will be given in the original French with Italian supertitles, which is excellent news as Mascagni composed the music directly to the French libretto by Choudens. Only later was the libretto translated to Italian, in a translation which I think is quite coarse.
The last time the opera was performed in Rome was on May 13, 1905, in the Italian version, conducted by Mascagni himself, as he took the habit of conducting his own works early in the career.
Hisorically,
Amica is one of the least performed Mascagni operas, especially in French. It is therefore encouraging to see renewed interest in this extremely interesting work (with "echoes of Wagner, Mahler and Ravel" according to Antonino Fogliani), after the performances in French at Martina Franca in 2007. The upcoming performances in the beautiful setting of the Rome opera house promise higher quality and will hopefully do justice to the work.
The cast will be as follows:
- Conductor: Antonino Fogliani
- Amica: Amarilli Nizza / Patrizia Orciani
- Giorgio: Enrique Ferrer / Maurizio Comencini
- Rinaldo: Alberto Mastromarino / Angelo Veccia
- Padron Camoine: Marcello Lippi
- Maddalena: Lucia Mastromarino
- Orchestra and chorus of the Rome opera
- Chorus master: Andrea Giorgi
- Mise en scène: Jean Louis Grinda
- Sets: Rudy Sabounghi
- Teresa Acone: costumes
- Laurent Castaingt: lights
References:
These performances are co-produced with Opéra di Montecarlo and Teatro Carlo Goldoni of Livorno.
Pianist Marco Sollini is playing today at the Cherry Hill Plantation in North Carolina. Sollini "oversaw the publication by Boccaccini and Spada of the piano music of Puccini, Mascagni, Giordano, Leoncavallo, and Bellini as well as chamber music by Rossini and Mascagni" (as reported in the article linked below).
The illustrious Venice opera house, Teatro La Fenice, has announced performances of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana on the following dates:
Six performances of Mascagni's Amica will take place in the coming days in Rome: Tuesday 7, Wednesday 8, Thursday 9 and Friday 10 at 8:30 PM, Saturday 11 at 6 PM, and Sunday October 12 at 5 PM.
I just got this pretty nice card, which features a scene from Cavalleria rusticana. It bears the number 28, and was part of a series of trading cards distributed with Guérin-Boutron chocolate boxes. I found a reference online to a series of 78 cards dedicated to music composers, and this one was probably part of that set.
I just found out that conductor Alberto Veronesi will conduct L'amico Fritz at the Berlin Opera on September 20 and 22, in concert form. The most interesting part is that the protagonists will be sung by Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu, who already performed L'amico Fritz at least once in Monte Carlo in 1999 already.
Steven Ritter has written a new review of the recently published Zanetto recording (with Jennifer Larmore, conducted by Peter Tiboris) at Audiophile Audition. Overall the reviewer loves the opera and he writes of Larmore:
The Rome Opera now has all the information about the August 2008 performances of Amica. The cast is as follows:
