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Don Chisciotte alle nozze di Gamace

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Template:Salieri operas Don Chisciotte alle nozze di Gamace (Don Quixote at Camacho's Wedding) composed by Antonio Salieri (1750–1825), is an Italian-language opera in one act (five scenes), originally denoted a divertimento treatrale. The libretto was written by Giovanni Gastone Boccherini, dancer, poet and stage manager, brother of the composer Luigi Boccherini. The work was a hybrid opera buffa and ballet with the ballet's chorographed by Jean-Georges Noverre.

This opera was the third of Salieri's to be publicly performed, as well as his third collaboration with Boccherini. This was Salieri's fourth complete opera.[1]

Performance history

Salieri, wrote Don Chisciotte in Vienna in 1770, according to his first biographer Mosel it may have been the second work he wrote. It received its first performance during Carnival season the next year at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna, most likely on January 6, 1771.

Roles

Role Voice type Premiere cast, Carnival, 1770 or 1771
(Conductor: Antonio Salieri (most likely))
Gamace, peasant, Bridegroom of Chitteria tenor Francesco Bussani
Chitteria, bride of Gamace mezzo-soprano Teresa Eberardi
Don Chisciotte, wandering knight bass Vincenzo Schiettini
Sancio Pancia, his squire tenor Antonio Boscoli
Menco, peasant tenor Kurzin
Lena, peasant in love with Menco soprano Gabriella Tagliafferi
Il Cavalier del Bosco, knight tenor Rizzoli
Nasone, his squire bass Santini
Rosa, a peasant's wife soprano Clementina Chiavacci
Gnocco, head of the cooks tenor Deville
Alfeo, a male peasant who dances non-singing role
Giocondina, a female peasant who dances non-singing role
Chorus of peasants (male and female) and cooks
Ballet of peasants

Synopsis

Time: the 17th century
Place: rural Spain, the wedding near the farmhouse of Gamace.

Summary: Don Quoxite and Sancho Panza arrive at the wedding of Comacho (Gamace) and participate in dances and verbal intrigues as the wedding feast is prepared.

Structure, genre, critical reception

The work combines dances, dance suites for ballet with arias, short songs, recitatives, and ensembles in an attempt to create a new artistic hybrid between Goldonian opera buffa and French ballet.

The work did not please and was apparently never revived in Vienna or elsewhere.

Salieri reused the opening theme of the overture later in 1795 for his revision and completion of the opera Il mondo alla rovescia.

Recordings

There is no known studio recording of the complete opera; however, Antonio Salieri: Overtures, (Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava), conducted by Michael Dittrich, Naxos 8.554838) has a recording of the overture.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Rice, pp. 153-62

References

  • Rudolph Angermüller, Antonio Salieri, 3 Vol. (Munich 1971–74)
  • Volkmar Braunbehrens, Maligned Master – the Real Story of Antonio Salieri, transl. Eveline L. Kanes (New York 1992)
  • V. Della Croce/F. Blanchetti, Il caso Salieri (Turin 1994)
  • I. F. Edler v. Mosel, Über das Leben und die Werke des Anton Salieri (Vienna 1827; reprinted Bad Honnef 1999, edited with notes by Rudolph Angermüller)
  • John A. Rice, Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera (Chicago 1998), ISBN 0-226-71125-0, ISBN 978-0-226-71125-6
  • Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Salieri: Rival of Mozart (Kansas City 1989)