Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble/Paul O’Dette, Stephen Stubbs
CPO 555 6222 116:00 mins (2 discs)
Pergolesi’s comic musical playlet La Serva Padrona reflects an interesting moment in music history. Like Livietta e Tracollo, it was designed as an intermezzo: a cheap and cheerful music drama, to be inserted between heavyweight pieces of opera seria. It was also the work which sparked the ‘Querelle des bouffons’, the pitched battle in 18th-century Paris between the champions of French and Italian opera, which Italy won on points.
It is in effect a teasingly long-drawn-out mating dance between Uberto, a crotchety bachelor, and his cheekily ungovernable servant Serpina. She makes clear in copious asides that her intention is to trick him into marrying her, while he nervously debates at length whether he dare marry across the social divide.
Soprano Amanda Forsythe and baritone Christian Immler make a lovely pairing, their quickfire exchanges aptly echoed by those of a small orchestra. It’s a long time before tenderness creeps into Forsythe’s voice, but when it does, one is instantly reminded that this jolly little work is by the man who, in a different hat, was one of music’s great tragedians.
Livietta e Tracollo is also a dramatised mating dance, in which soprano Carlotta Colombo (Livietta) and baritone Jesse Blumberg (Tracollo) are the excellent protagonists, and Pergolesi’s dramatic recipe works a treat. Again, there’s just one aria when he gets serious, and Colombo delivers it ravishingly.
Under the joint direction of Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, these productions possess all the fizz they must have had when first performed in the 1730s.