Reviewing the then new Giulini recording of Mozart's Don Giovanni in February 1961, the late Philip Hope-Wallace thought it worth ''... What? A year at a foreign university? I don't believe I exaggerate''. Corraled at the time in an English boarding school, I duly bought the set and imagined myself discussing Mozart's dramaturgy with the jeunesse doree of Heidelberg or Geneva. In fact, PH-W was right. A Don Giovanni of that order of excellence is an education in itself as well as being a joy of—to date—three decades' standing. Meanwhile, I would say that Opera Rara's fascinating ''One Hundred Years Of Italian Opera, 1800-1810'' ((LP) ORH101,10/83) and this newest edition that takes us from 1810 to the last days of 1819 are almost literally the equivalent of a spell abroad; though as this is a slightly more recondite subject we are probably looking at a postgraduate year in Bologna rather than the more leisurely junket I had envisaged for Don Giovanni.
To conservative operatic tastes, the music on these records may seem unduly obscure. In practice, the set mixes fine music salvaged from works of otherwise limited distinction with music that sharpens our sense of the wonder of established masterworks of the period. Into this latter category would come the 'Goodnight Quintet' from Francesco Morlacchi's Il barbiere di Siviglia, written in 1815 but not given its first performance, in Dresden, until 1816, three months after the uproarious prima of Rossini's famous setting. Even more interesting, there is the Act 1 trio for Dandini and the Ugly Sisters from the Cinderella opera, Agatina, written by Stefano Pavesi for La Scala, Milan in 1814 and freely plagarized by Rossini's librettist Jacopo Ferretti three years later. As with Mosca's L'italiana in Algeri, featured in Opera Rara's first volume, we can admire the energy and declamatory skills of Rossini's contemporaries and immediate predecessors whilst rueing their lack of interest in the witty use of musical forms that is one of the cornerstones of Rossini's comic genius.
At the start of this second decade of the century composers were untroubled by Rossini; but by 1816-17 his influence is increasingly felt, whether it is in a Pacini overture or something like the delightfully pert trio from Meyerbeer's Romilda e Costanza. Equally, we can sample the work of composers—in particular, Mayr—and aesthetic movements that were profoundly to influence the course of Rossini's Neapolitan career and, by devolution, the future development of nineteenth-century Italian opera. Things like the trio from Peter Winter's Maometto (no relation to Rossini's Maometto II), solemnly beautiful, are obviously striking, as is the closing scene of Gabriella di Vergi by Michele Carafa, a great crony of Rossini's who was still around in the 1860s propping up the cocktail cabinet during Rossini's famous soirees. In Naples in the summer of 1816 Carafa composed this chilling azione tragica to a libretto by Tottola, just months before Rossini commissioned from Berio di Salsa a libretto based on Shakespeare's comparably violent and sanguinary Othello. In the final scene of the Carafa opera, the imprisoned Gabriella is visited by her husband who effectively ends her life by presenting her with an urn containing the heart of first love, Raoul. In Naples, Gabriella was sung by Isabella Colbran (Yvonne Kenny is the excellent singer for Opera Rara) and the murderous Fayel by Andrea Nozzari, respectively Rossini's Desdemona and Otello later that same summer. Nowadays, Rossini's Otello is not unfamiliar; and this superb 18-minute closing scene from Gabriella di Vergi is its necessary historical complement.
Rossini himself crops up with Torvaldo's cavatina from Torvaldo e Dorliska (Rome, 1815), strongly but rather loosely sung by Chris Merritt, and a quartet from that dramatically implausible operatic epic Ricciardo e Zoraide, a rarity that promises to become less rare after this year's Pesaro Festival revival [see ''Letter from Italy'' on page—Ed]. I have my doubts, though, about the insertion into Domenico Puccini's Il trionfo di Quinto Fabio which is here attributed to Rossini on a semi-speculative basis. Still, the case is set out in fine detail for us by Don White's note, so it is simply a matter for individual collectors of reading, hearing and deciding.
The four Mayr items are all important—here was a man who greatly influenced Rossini and others—but you will find them on the CDs only: LP collectors are assumed to have bought Opera Rara's Mayr LP ((LP) ORH102). It is important to have the famous trio from his Wars of the Roses opera La rosa bianca e la rosa rossa, though some may ask why there is an item from the relatively well-known Medea in Corinto. In fact, like most works of its day, it underwent considerable revision. Newell Jenkins's 1972 Vanguard recording (nla), for example, rather naughtily began Act 2 with a substitute aria written for Milan in 1823. What Opera Rara provide is the original opening to Act 2. The jaunty orchestral introduction and choral greeting are the same in both versions, and both arias are harp-accompanied. But the original is not only much longer, it is an altogether lovelier and more finely elaborated piece of music.
Elsewhere in the set, we hear Meyerbeer getting into his stride, and Donizetti. Enrico di Borgogna, Donizetti's first staged opera, dating from 1818, has an aria that directly predicts ''Al dolce guidami'' from Anna Bolena (1830). It is superbly sung here by Della Jones. And there is also a fine pre-Lucia sextet from an opera helpfully listed as Pietro il Grande but which is more usually (and less memorably) known as Il falegname di Livonia. As for Meyerbeer, not only do we hear a number from his own precociously vital pre-Rossini Semiramide, we also hear immediately afterwards the stunning sextet, a six-voice canon rather freely deployed, that he quarried from Semiramide for insertion in his opera Emma di Resburgo.
Weber, of all people, creeps in by the back door with a concert scene and aria to an Italian text after the manner of Beethoven's Ah! perfido. Yvonne Kenny is again the accomplished interpreter. There is also a delightful number from Manuel Garcia's first Italian opera Il Califfo di Bagdad. Not being content as a leading tenor of his day, Rossini's first Almaviva, Garcia was also an impresario, father of a famous line of singers and teachers, and the composer of 40 operas. They don't make them like that any more.
It also turns out that Garcia launched one of Rossini's favourite Paris-based singers, Laure Cinti-Damoreau in Il Califfo in 1817. This is the kind of fascinating information that crops up line by line in the course of the superb background essays that Jeremy Commons has written, with Don White's assistance, to accompany each item. As well as texts and translations, we get plot summaries, musical commentary on each number, invaluable biographical material, and a richly elaborated historical context: 245 pages encyclopaedic in their range. My only regret is that the booklet doesn't have a contents list with page numbers. My own copy is already dog-eared by all the hunting about. Some people may also regret the lack of track timings, though I suspect these are principally of use to BBC producers, lecturers in further education and others of their kind. The CDs—I haven't had the LP set—are well filled and generally decently recorded, though I did experience distortion towards the end of the second and third discs, and elsewhere, too, on occasions. This is an unusual feature on CD and presumably originates from the original tapes.
David Parry conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Geoffrey Mitchell Choir. Without a full collection of the relevant scores, it is not possible to make specific comments on interpretation, but the performances generally have a fresh and unaffected feel to them. Singers cross major hurdles adroitly enough, not only the stars like Yvonne Kenny and Della Jones but also someone like Russell Smythe in Costantino's big scene from Mayr's Elena. The Philharmonia wind playing is helpfully up to standard: the horn solo in Alcino's aria from Mosca's Le bestie in uomini, the night music in Pacini's Annetta e Lucindo. But in the end it is not solo performances that count. Rather, it is the set's value as a work of reference. Already, two decades into this 100 years of Italian opera, the project is looking Pevsner-like in its thoroughness and indispensability.'