Chorus (with soloists)
and piano (solos: Sp
MezT2BarB - 2(picc).2(cor
ang).2(Bkl).2(dble bsn) -
3.2.3.0 - timp.perc.(2) -
Cel - str - stage music:
2trp.timp.perc)
SKU:
BR.EB-9433
A
Theatrical Caprice in One
Act. Composed by
Ferruccio Busoni. Choir;
Softbound. Edition
Breitkopf. Opera; Music
theatre; Early modern;
Late-romantic.
Piano/Vocal Score.
Duration 60'. Breitkopf
and Haertel #EB 9433.
Published by Breitkopf
and Haertel (BR.EB-9433).
ISBN 9790004189108. 9
x 12 inches.
German.
Text by the
composerTranslation:
engl. (E. J. Dent), ital.
(V. Levi), port. (G. de
Medeiros)Place and time:
Bergamo, around the 18th
century.Characters: Ser
Matteo del Sarto, master
tailor (baritone) -
Abbate Cospicuo
(baritone) - Dottore
Bombasto (bass) -
Leandro, Cavaliere
(tenor) - Arlecchino
(speaking part) -
Colombina, Arlecchino's
wife (mezzo-soprano) -
Annunziata, Matteo's wife
- Zwei Sbirren - Ein
Karrner - a Donkey -
People at the windows
(silent parts)The idea
behind this work was to
combine a major speaking
role with a part for a
female singer and
orchestra in the spirit
of the opera buffa. The
overall tone is
pacifistic and
anti-bourgeois. Busoni's
inspiration was that of
an opera-play in the
style of Italian
improvised comedy; he
wanted types and
characters on stage whose
varying typology would
provide the source of
conflict ... The title
hero absconds with the
young wife of the
Dante-reading tailor
Matteo. He returns as a
false barbarian
commander, as a husband
who engages in a duel
with the suitor Count
Leandro, and as a
conqueror who announces
the moral of the story in
the epilogue: how to be
able to bow in rags and
still retain one's
dignity and rights. The
piece takes a turn for
the absurd when the
Abbate, at the sight of
Leandro, who is presumed
dead, begins to sing a
chorale-like song of
praise to the donkey of
Providence who comes
trotting in at that
moment. This introduces
the most musically
refined number in the
piece, the quartet, in
which Leandro's love aria
and his duet with
Columbina satirize the
attitudes prevalent in
Italian opera from
Scarlatti to Verdi.
Musically, Busoni uses
throughout the entire
work an idiom of
dance-like, blissfully
transparent comedy and
hides harmonic audacities
behind touches of
lightness. The orchestral
sound radiates an
incomparable brightness
and buoyant elegance.
(Hans Heinz
Stuckenschmidt,
1967)
In the
appendix, EB 9433
contains the later
composed aria Wer siegt?
Wer fallt?..
