Opera Barga have just announced that their production for the Opera Barga Festival 2012 will be the opera “Gli equivoci nel sembiante” by Alessandro Scarlatti composed in 1679
They have also calling for auditions for the role of soprano, mezzo soprano and tenor to be held at the Teatro Verdi in Pisa on Thursday the 23rd March and Friday 24 March from 10 am to 2 pm.
The opera will be a co- production with the Associazione Musicale Auser Musici conducted by M° Carlo Ipata.
It is expected that the first performance will be on the 14th July at the Teatro dei Differenti in Barga, with a second performance the following day, the 15th July before the company then moves on to Pisa, Naples and Slovenia.
Gli Equivoci Nel Sembiante was Scarlatti’s first opera. It premièred in Rome at the Carnival in 1679, at a time when theatrical performances were being suppressed by the Vatican
Pope Innocent XI had been in power just two years, but he had already banned all women from the stage, he had forbidden theatrical productions before a paying public, and had forbidden church musicians from taking part in any secular theatrical productions. Rome’s largest theatre, the Tordinona, was closed and its doors locked during his entire reign.
Wealthy Cardinals and Rome’s aristocracy still supported the theatre, and often had performances of operas given at the their homes and in their private theatres.
Gli Equivoci was premièred at the house of an architect. It has only four characters in the opera, and the staging effects needed are minimal, so it was well suited to such an environment. Queen Christina of Sweden was at the premier, and had the production moved to Clementine College so that the populace at large would be able to attend. Scarlatti soon after became her maestro di cappella.
The libretto was written by a cleric by the name of Domenico Filippo Contini. It is a well balanced drama set in a pastoral mode full of the clichés of seventeenth century romantic literature. Full of intrigues and love triangles, there is mistaken identity, and long lost brothers becoming reunited. Gli Equivoci Sembiante, or Equivocal Appearances, became one of Scarlatti’s most successful operas.
Opera Barga ha appena annunciato la principale produzione del festival previsto per l’estate 2012. Si tratta dell’opera “Gli equivoci nel sembiante” di Alessandro Scarlatti, composta nel 1679
Nei prossimi giorni intanto sono state indette le audizioni per il ruolo di soprano, mezzosoprano e tenore che si terrà presso il Teatro Verdi di Pisa, giovedì 23 marzo e venerdì 24 marzo dalle 10 alle 14.
Lo spettacolo sarà in co-produzione con l’Associazione Musicale Auser Musici diretta dal M ° Carlo Ipata.
Altre notizie sulla prossima edizione del festival per il momento non sono trapelate anche se è previsto che la prima dell’opera “Gli equivoci nel sembiante” sarà il 14 luglio presso il Teatro dei Differenti a Barga (replica il 15).
La produzione dovrebbe poi essere proposta anche a Pisa, Napoli e Slovenia.
Gli equivoci nel sembiante è la prima opera mai composta da Alessandro Scarlatti che finirà per comporne più di cento. Su libretto del Sig. Filippo Contini, l’opera ebbe uno strepitoso successo all’epoca nonostante il divieto di pubbliche rappresentazioni imposta da Papa Innocenzo XI. Dopo prime rappresentazioni in casa del librettista la regina Cristina di Svezia fece trasferire lo spettacolo già la settimana successiva al suo debutto al teatro del Collegio delle Clementine e questo perchè solo pochi avevano avuto l’opportunità di partecipare alle precedenti serate a causa delle ridotte dimensioni del luogo.
Successivamente l’opera venne data a Vienna, Firenze, Palermo, Napoli e si hanno notizie di sue repliche fino a 10 anni dopo.
A Barga viene proposta per la prima volta in Italia e per quanto si sappia l’unica versione in forma scenica in tempi moderni è avvenuta a Innsbruck nel 1989, vale a dire il secolo scorso.
Direttore – M° Carlo Ipata | Regia – Dagny Hornig | Scene – Nicolas Bovey | Costumi – Kerry Bell | Orchestra Auser Musici.
Alessandro Scarlatti’s music forms an important link between the early Baroque Italian vocal styles of the 17th century, with their centers in Florence, Venice and Rome, and the classical school of the 18th century, which culminated in Mozart. – He was born in Palermo, then part of the Kingdom of Sicily. He is generally said to have been a pupil of Giacomo Carissimi in Rome, and there is reason to suppose that he had some connection with northern Italy, since his early works show the influence of Stradella and Giovanni Legrenzi. The production at Rome of his opera Gli Equivoci nell sembiante (1679) gained him the protection of Queen Christina of Sweden (who at the time was living in Rome), and he became her maestro di cappella. In February 1684 he became maestro di cappella to the viceroy of Naples, through the influence of his sister, an opera singer, who was the mistress of an influential Neapolitan noble. Here he produced a long series of operas, remarkable chiefly for their fluency and expressiveness, as well as other music for state occasions.
In 1702 Alessandro Scarlatti left Naples and did not return until the Spanish domination had been superseded by that of the Austrians. In the interval he enjoyed the patronage of Ferdinando de’ Medici, for whose private theatre near Florence he composed operas, and of Cardinal Ottoboni, who made him his maestro di cappella, and procured him a similar post at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome in 1703.
After visiting Venice and Urbino in 1707, Alessandro Scarlatti took up his duties in Naples again in 1708, and remained there until 1717. By this time Naples seems to have become tired of his music; the Romans, however, appreciated it better, and it was at the Teatro Capranica in Rome that he produced some of his finest operas (Telemaco, 1718; Marco Attilio Regolò, 1719; La Griselda, 1721), as well as some noble specimens of church music, including a mass for chorus and orchestra, composed in honour of Saint Cecilia for Cardinal Acquaviva in 1721. His last work on a large scale appears to have been the unfinished serenata for the marriage of the prince of Stigliano in 1723. Scarlatti died in Naples.