CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Cecilia Bartoli

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 8:00 PM

Cecilia Bartoli, Mezzo-Soprano
Orchestra La Scintilla of Zurich Opera

GARCÍA Overture to La figlia dell'aria
GARCÍA "E non lo vedo...Son regina," from La figlia dell'aria
PERSIANI "Cari giorni," from Ines de Castro
MENDELSSOHN Scherzo from Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20 (orch. Mendelssohn)
MENDELSSOHN "Infelice," Op. 94
ROSSINI Tempest from Il barbiere di Siviglia
ROSSINI "Nacqui all'affanno...non più mesta," from La Cenerentola
DONIZETTI Andante sostenuto from Concertino for Clarinet in B-flat Major
ROSSINI "Bel raggio lusinghier...Dolce pensiero," from Semiramide
ROSSINI Overture to Il Signor Bruschino
ROSSINI "Assisa al piè d’un salice...Deh, calma," from Otello
BÉRIOT Andante tranquillo from Violin Concerto No. 7 in G Major, Op. 73
BALFE "Yon Moon o'er the Mountains," from The Maid of Artois
HUMMELL "Air à la tirolienne avec variations," Op. 118
MALIBRAN "Rataplan"

Encores:
MALIBRAN "Oh dolce incanto"
ROSSINI "Non più mesta accanto al fuoco" from La Cenerentola
CURTIS "Non ti scordar di me"

Program Notes:

The history of opera in America begins on November 29, 1825, at the Park Theater, located just east of Ann Street in lower Manhattan. That evening the García family troupe performed Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia in Italian. Whereas opera in America had previously been translated into English, with spoken dialogue replacing recitative, the audience at the Park heard a completely sung work in a foreign language.

Tenor Manuel García played Almaviva, reprising the role originated under Rossini’s baton, and his daughter, Maria, starred as Rosina. She charmed New York audiences: “The least glimpse of her is greeted with repeated cheerings from box, pit, and gallery,” reported one observer. Maria (who took her husband’s name Malibran in 1827) was similarly acclaimed in Philadelphia, Rome, Naples, Bologna, Paris, and at Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and La Scala. Writer George Sand, herself a mighty mind, deemed her “the foremost genius of Europe.”


MANUEL DEL PÓPULO VICENTE GARCÍA (1775–1832)
Overture and “E non lo vedo ... Son regina,” from La figlia dell’aria
During its residency at the Park Theater in 1825–1826, the García Family mounted 79 performances of nine operas. Among them were two works by Manuel García that showcased the star of the company, his daughter Maria. One of these was La figlia dell’aria, which premiered on April 25, 1826, and ran for six performances. (By contrast, the most popular work in the Garcías’ repertoire, Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, played 21 times.)

The scene and aria “E non lo vedo ... Son regina” finds Semiramide desperately seeking her lover, Mennon, who is to be blinded by the jealous and tyrannical King. The recitative is dark and dramatic; the aria proper begins on a proudly martial, rebellious note (“Son regina”), which quickly yields to a pastoral melody accompanied by flute and clarinet (“E sopra i popoli cari”). The length of this scene—which still makes extreme demands on singers today, with its rapidly shifting emotions, uncommonly virtuosic runs, and wide range—all testify to Maria’s talent and skill even in the earliest years of her career.


GIUSEPPE PERSIANI (1799–1869)
“Cari giorni,” from Ines de Castro
The king of Portugal has imprisoned Ines de Castro, wife of his son, Don Pedro, and mother of their two children. Convinced the children are illegitimate, the King has taken them from Ines, who despairs of proving her virtue. “Cari giorni” finds her longing for days past. The first stanza is sung straight through, its simple texture and accompaniment evoking a poignant lullaby. In its second iteration, the accompaniment assumes a more active role, interjecting between phrases and dropping out at crucial moments; the dialogue between voice and orchestra captures the melancholy play of memory and transcribes a tortured conversation within the self. Ines harkens back to “cherished, peaceful days”; recalls their joys; and tries to resurrect them. Although brief moments of musical light break through the oppressive gloom, the minor mode asserts itself in the end. Her loss is irredeemable.


FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809–1847)
Scherzo from Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20; Infelice, Op. 94
As musicologist Larry Todd succinctly states, the Octet, composed the same year the Garcías came to New York, “is generally acknowledged as Mendelssohn’s first masterpiece.” The Scherzo was inspired by a fantastic scene in Goethe’s Faust: A party of fairies and elves are entertained by an imagined orchestra of flies, mosquitoes, frogs, and crickets, as well as a bagpipe blowing soap bubbles.

As a teenager Mendelssohn wrote four dramatic works, one of which received a public performance. Disheartened by its poor reception, the composer held back the others for private showings. He spent the rest of his life searching for a suitable libretto. In 1845 he took up the Lorelei legend and began to compose a three-act opera. He died having finished only the first.

Infelice comes not from an opera but is an independent concert aria commissioned by the Philharmonic Society of London in 1834 for Maria Malibran. In the recitative (the declaimed text) that precedes the aria, the singer heaps contempt upon her beloved, who has abandoned her. Her outburst develops into a thoughtful soliloquy that oscillates between love and hate. A violin solo ushers in tender recollections of her lost happiness, but before long she is overcome by a fresh grief.


GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792–1868)
Tempest from Il barbiere di Siviglia; ‘Nacqui all’affanno . . . non più mesta,’ from La Cenerentola (1817)
Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia takes as its subject the first play in the Figaro trilogy by Beaumarchais (Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro being the second of the three). The thunderstorm is an instrumental interlude that takes place in the second act.

The Garcías were not the first to perform the opera in the US. The Barber of Seville premiered in New York at the Park Theater on May 3, 1819, but that Barber was not Il barbiere. Rossini’s original had been adapted—‘Englished,’ in contemporary parlance—by Henry Rowley Bishop, best remembered as composer of the nostalgic tune “Home, Sweet, Home” (“Be it ever so humble / there’s no place like home”). As Rosina, María interpolated Bishop’s wildly popular song into the lesson scene in Il barbiere di Siviglia—an obvious, and successful, appeal to an American audience.

When the Garcías brought the opera in Italian to the Park Theater, they single-handedly introduced foreign-language opera to the US. Opening night was “fully and fashionably attended,” and a critic in the Evening Post concluded that “the question whether the American taste will bear the Italian Opera [was] settled.” In fact, “It will never hereafter dispense with it.”

La Cenerentola, which Rossini composed in a mere three weeks, was an international hit. After its premiere in Rome on January 25, 1817, Cinderella traveled to Barcelona (1818), London and Vienna (1820), Paris (1822), Berlin (1825), Moscow (1825), Buenos Aires (1826), and New York on June 27, 1826, where Maria sang the title role.

“Nacqui all’affanno e al pianto” marks the happy ending: Angelina (Cenerentola) celebrates her happiness with Prince Ramiro, marvels at her improved circumstance, and forgives her family for their cruelty.


GAETANO DONIZETTI (1797–1848)
Andante sostenuto from Concertino for Clarinet in B-flat Major
Donizetti is lauded as an opera composer in the bel canto style, and such works as L’elisir d’amore, Lucia di Lammermoor, and Don Pasquale remain popular. Not all his operas were greeted so warmly: Maria Stuarda (1834) was performed in Milan thanks only to the advocacy of Maria Malibran and ran for a mere six performances before censors yanked it from the stage.

Donizetti’s instrumental works are lesser known, and the Concertino for clarinet does not even exist as a finished work but has been reconstructed from the composer’s sketches.


GIOACHINO ROSSINI
“Bel raggio lusinghier ... Dolce pensiero,” from Semiramide; Overture to Il Signor Bruschino; “Assisa al piè d’un salice ... Deh, calma,” from Otello
The cavatina “Bel raggio lusinghier” is a virtuosic showpiece and affecting love song. Its vocal pyrotechnics capture perfectly Queen Semiramide’s joy at the return of the young commander Arsace. The popularity of this aria likely drove the choice of Semiramide as the first Rossini opera seria (non-comic opera) to be performed at the Metropolitan Opera in November 1990.

An early one-act farce, Il Signor Bruschino is best known for its overture, which calls for the violins to slap their bows on the metal shades of their candle holders—or today, given electricity and fire codes, against their music stands.

Known as the “Willow Song,” the canzona “Assisa a piè d’un salice” is Desdemona’s song to console herself as she pines for Otello, who has been banished from Venice. The strophic structure, which fits successive verses to repeated music, is concealed by vocal ornaments that decorate the basic melody as do blooms on a trellis. The music grows ever more florid through three strophes, then is stripped bare by the winds of a storm—internal and external—that whip through Desdemona, leaving her unable to continue. She drifts off into a shattered arioso, the musical wreckage of her personal ruin.


CHARLES-AUGUSTE DE BÉRIOT (1802–1870)
Andante tranquillo from Violin Concerto No. 7 in G Major, Op. 73
When Belgian violinist and composer Charles-August de Bériot met Maria García in 1829, both were smitten. She took up with Bériot, traveling and concertizing with him even while still married. In 1836, having secured an annulment, she and Bériot finally wed. Within six months, however, Maria was dead. Grief-stricken, Bériot retired from the stage for a time but resumed his career in 1838, performing with Pauline, Maria’s younger sister.

His music reflects his playing, which was reported to be both virtuosic and lyrical, combining the fiery bravura of Paganini with elegance of the classical French violin school.


MICHAEL WILLIAM BALFE (1808–1870)
“Yon Moon o’er the Mountains,” from The Maid of Artois
Isoline, the maid of Artois, gives in to the advances of the Marquis de Chateau-Vieux in hopes of saving her beloved Jules from a mercenary’s lot. After her principled indiscretion, she sings a melancholy song in which the romantic evening mood and rising moon remind her of the bygone joys of love in her native land.


JOHANN NEPOMUK HUMMEL (1778–1837)
“Air à la tirolienne avec variations,” Op. 118
Maria Malibran debuted this thrilling trifle, written specifically for her. The folksy song moves through many variations and features a stunning yodeling refrain.


MARIA MALIBRAN (1808–1836)
“Rataplan”
“Rataplan,” the onomatopoeic word for the sound of a drum, is one of some 50 songs composed by Maria herself and one of her most famous works. The orchestral version comes from Dresden, where it was found in the opera archives as part of a vaudeville show comprising an overture and 13 numbers performed sometime in the 1840s.
—Elizabeth Bergman

Elizabeth Bergman earned her Ph.D. in musicology from Yale University, and has authored numerous award-winning books and articles.


© 2009 The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Cecilia Bartoli, Mezzo-Soprano
Cecilia Bartoli has been one of the leading artists in the field of classical music for more than two decades. All over the world, her new operatic roles, concert programs, and recording projects—in exclusivity with Decca—are anticipated with great eagerness and curiosity. The exceptional amount of 6 million CDs sold, more than 200 weeks on the international pop charts, numerous Golden Discs, four Grammy Awards, seven Echos and a Bambi (Germany), two Classical Brit Awards (UK), the Victoire de la Musique (France), and many other prestigious awards reflect the immense success of her solo albums Vivaldi, Gluck, Salieri, and Opera proibita and have established her as today’s best-selling classical artist.

Ms. Bartoli brings classical music to millions of people worldwide, and, through the popularity of her projects, has spurred a widespread re-evaluation and rediscovery of neglected composers and forgotten repertoire.

Conductors with whom Ms. Bartoli worked early in her career included Herbert von Karajan, Daniel Barenboim, and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who noticed her talent at an early age when she had barely completed her vocal studies with her parents in Rome, her hometown. Since then she has collaborated with conductors, pianists, and orchestras of the highest renown. In recent years she has focused on collaborations with period instrument orchestras including Akademie für Alte Musik, Les Arts Florissants, Concentus Musicus Wien, Freiburger Barockorchester, Il Giardino Armonico, Kammerorchester Basel, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Orchestra La Scintilla. Projects with orchestras in which she assumes overall artistic responsibility have become increasingly important to her exemplified by recent programs with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ms. Bartoli regularly sings in the most important concert halls in Europe, the US, and Japan. Her stage appearances include prestigious opera houses and festivals such as the Metropolitan Opera; the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; La Scala in Milan; the Bavarian State Opera in Munich; the Salzburg Festival; and the Zurich Opera House, where she has presented many of her operatic roles for the first time. Most recently, her roles have included Rossini’s Fiorilla in Il Turco in Italia at Covent Garden and two Handelian heroines, Cleopatra (in Giulio Cesare with Marc Minkowski) and Semele (with William Christie) in Zurich.

In the 2007–2008 season Ms. Bartoli devoted her time to the music of the early 19th century—the era of Italian Romanticism and bel canto—and, especially, the legendary singer Maria Malibran. Malibran’s 200th birthday, on March 24, 2008, was marked by a historic celebration in Paris Malibran’s birthplace. Ms. Bartoli sang three concerts in one day as the centerpiece of a Malibran festival at the Salle Pleyel in which she collaborated with Lang Lang, Vadim Repin, Adam Fischer, and Myung-Whun Chung. In addition, her concert in Barcelona was broadcast on a large screen outside the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, where Ms. Bartoli’s mobile Malibran Museum was stationed to honor the singer. Other bicentenary events included the CD Maria, the DVD The Barcelona Concert: Malibran Rediscovered, extensive concert tours, and operatic appearances as Cenerentola, Sonnambula and Halevy’s Clari, in a Malibran opera which had not been performed since 1829.

Cecilia Bartoli has been endowed with the Italian Knighthood and is an Accademico effettivo of Santa Cecilia, Rome; a French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres; and an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, London.

Orchestra La Scintilla of Zurich Opera
Performance on historical instruments has been a tradition at the Zurich Opera House since the 1970s, when the cycle of Monteverdi’s three great operas was performed under the musical direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt. As worldwide interest in period instrument performance increased, so too did the player’s enthusiasm for this performance style.

In 1996 a separate specialist group was formed within the Zurich Opera Orchestra in order to regularly present operas from the 17th and 18th centuries on original instruments. What had ignited the interest of players and public alike also provided the inspiration for the group’s name, La Scintilla (Italian for “the spark”).

In recent years the Orchestra La Scintilla has performed and recorded at the Zurich Opera House under such pioneers of the early music movement as Nikolaus Harnoncourt (Lucio Silla, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, L’incoronazione di Poppea, and La finta giardiniera), William Christie (Orphee et Euridice, Iphigene en Tauride, Les indes galantes, Radamisto, Orlando, Semele, and Rinaldo), and Marc Minkowksi (Les Boreades, Il trionfo del tempo et del disinganno Julio Cesare), as well as Reinhard Goebel, Giugliano Carmignola, and Franz Welser-Möst.

The ensemble has been so successful that it now performs almost all the Baroque and Classical operas produced at the Zurich Opera House. Recent and future projects include performances and a DVD recording of Havely’s Clari with Cecilia Bartoli, a recording of Bellini’s La sonnambula with Juan Diego Florez and Ms. Bartoli, and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with Ricardo Chailly.

Under the direction of concertmaster Ada Pesch, the Orchestra La Scintilla performs regularly with Ms. Bartoli throughout North America and Europe. The most recent highlights of this collaboration are Cecilia Bartoli’s CD Maria and the DVD Maria, the Barcelona Concert.