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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 August 2008
‘First performed in 1840 and praised by Liszt for its orchestration and workman-ship, the score does not deny Meyerbeerian influence. The present recording, which sounds as if it has been taken from a live performance in the theatre, has a first-class cast and is altogether fascinating.’ The object of this encomium is La vestale by the Italian composer Saverio Mercadante (1795–1870), the first commercial recording of which was issued on CD in 1989. The quotation, taken from a leading record magazine, seems representative of the response that recordings of Mercadante's works can currently expect: scarcely a single review fails to mention Meyerbeer's positive influence on Mercadante. But how far is one in fact justified in linking these two composers?
The following article is a short version of a paper presented to the International Meyerbeer Conference in Thurnau on 27 September 1991. The original will be published as part of the conference proceedings.
1 Fono Forum (03 1990), 76.Google Scholar
2 On the current understanding of Mercadante, see the articles on the composer by Chiera, David De in Die Musik in Geschichte and Gegenwart, IX (Kassel, 1961), 115–17Google Scholar and Rose, Michael in The New Grove (London, 1980), XII, 170–6Google Scholar, as well as the secondary literature listed there. There remains a need for a musicological assessment of Mercadante; a monograph on the composer's life and works (including a work-list) will be published shortly by the present writer.
3 To a certain extent, this is true even of Rossini's French operas, which received far fewer performances than the works of his Neapolitan period. For a corroboration of the situation pre-1850, see the index to the Leipzig Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, which regularly summarised the activities of Italian opera houses and hence provided a picture which, even if incomplete, is none the less statistically significant. For the La Scala statistics, see Gatti's, CarloIl Teatro alla Scala, 2 vols. (Milan, 1964), II, 29–70.Google Scholar
4 (Milan, 1882), 432–44.Google Scholar
5 See Palermo, Santo, Saverio Mercadante: Biografia-Epistolario (Fasano di Puglia, 1985), 72.Google Scholar Florimo's original remarks on the subject do not appear to have survived, but Mercadante refers to them explicitly in his letter to Florimo, of 10 07 1835 (Palermo, 44).Google Scholar
6 See the Gazzetta musicale di Milano, 14 09 1873Google Scholar; L’An musical, 29 08 1872.Google Scholar
7 Musiciens contemporains (Paris, 1856), 191–3.Google Scholar
8 This is less surprising when one realises that Mercadante left an extensive but largely unknown body of instrumental music and that even during his time as a student he was already experimenting with such arcane instrumental groupings as a quartet for terzino and strings and a trio for flute, flauto d’amore and bassoon.
9 Spohr, Louis, Lebenserinnerungen, ed. Göthel, Folker, 2 vols., I (Tutzing, 1968), 14–15.Google Scholar That Mercadante led performances of the student orchestra in 1817 is well attested by reviews in the Giornale del Regno delle due Sicilie.
10 Letter of 14 February 1824 (Palermo, 6).
11 Mercadante held this important post from 1823 to 1825, a fact that appears to have escaped notice. His appointment thus fills the apparent gap between Rossini's departure from Naples in 1822 and Pacini's appointment in 1826. This also suggests that the San Carlo's impresario, Domenico Barbaia, pursued a specific policy in appointing personnel, always engaging the services of young composers from Rossini and Mercadante to Pacini and Donizetti who, in the public estimation, were the most talented of their day. On Mercadante's engagement, see his letter to Barbaia, of 5 10 1822 (Palermo, 3).Google Scholar
12 éLetter to Florimo, of 3 10 1835 (Palermo, 52).Google Scholar
13 See the notice in Lucifero, 6 05 1846.Google Scholar
14 Mercadante's final opera, Pelagio, was completed at the end of September 1856; his last opera to be performed – Virginia – had been finished at the end of 1851 but did not reach the stage until 1866. Neapolitan audiences did not hear Le Prophète until 1865.
15 The interpolated aria, ’Grazie clementi Dei – A to rido, o caro figlio’, which appears in the London 1830 edition of Il crociato in Egitto, is not an original composition, but an aria di baule that soprano Rosmunda Pisaroni had taken from Mercadante's, Gli amici di Siracusa (Rome, 1824).Google Scholar
16 Mercadante seems, though, to have been convinced of the opera's merits: his only daughter, born in 1837, was always called Ismalia within the family circle.
17 Mazzini, , ‘Filosofia della musica’, Opere: Scritti, ed. Salvatorelli, Luigi, II (Milan, n.d.), 277–318.Google Scholar
18 On the Paris performances of Mercadante's operas, see Soubies, Albert, Le Theatre-Italien de 1801 è 1913 (Paris, 1913).Google Scholar According to Soubies, Elisa e Claudio was regularly performed between 1823 and 1828. That it was successful is also suggested by the fact that an ’opéra bouffon’, Les Noces di Gamache, was advertised under Mercadante's name and premièred at the Théètre Odéon on 9 May 1825. The work was in fact a pasticcio by Luc Guénée based on music from Elisa e Claudio.
19 See Palermo, 45–6Google Scholar, 49–51, 53–60.
20 To the extent that critics took any notice of I briganti, reactions were positive: see above all the Revue et Gazette musicale, 3 (1836), 99–101.Google Scholar
21 It is worth adding, however, that he was by no means barred from returning to Paris. In April 1837 he seriously considered launching a new attack on the capital with a French comic opera (see Palermo, , 67Google Scholar). It was no doubt the great success of his ‘reform operas’ of 1837–40 that dissuaded him from seeking to realise these plans. His appointment as director of the Naples Conservatory in the autumn of 1840 brought with it a reappraisal of his compositional activities, with the result that he began to turn increasingly away from the theatre. His reputation in Paris remained sufficiently high for him to receive a new invitation to visit the city in 1847 (see Palermo, , 122).Google Scholar
22 Although the libretto suggests that this is simply an abridged version of the original Paris production, an examination of the surviving scores (I-Mr, I-Mc) reveals that the Milan production was a genuine revision that went far beyond a mere rewriting of the piece to suit local conditions. Of particular interest is the score in the Archivio Storico Ricordi, which is clearly Mercadante's own working copy and gives a good idea of his compositional method: the basic edition is a fair copy of the Paris version, into which Mercadante entered minor retouchings, with entire gatherings added for more substantial changes. The fact that, as with Didone abbandonata, we are dealing with a bar-by-bar revision of the earlier work makes the parallel between Mercadante's editorial methods of 1824 and 1836 strikingly clear.
23 Among the audience at this performance was Franz Liszt, who was sufficiently moved by what he heard to praise the work in his Lettres d'un bachelier-ès-musique, stating that among all the works he heard in Italy, Mercadante's operas were ‘by far the most correct and best orchestrated’. See his Pages romantiques, ed. Chantavoine, Jean (Paris, 1912), 185.Google Scholar
24 Z’ ne Operas of Verdi, I (London, 1973), 321–2.Google Scholar
25 Crescini wrote here: ’Io avrei volentieri scelto un fatto dalla Storia della Francia, o della mia patria, le cui glorie e sventure presentano ad ogni poesia larghissimo campo. Ma la ristrettezza del tempo, e l’argomento da altri preferito, m’han fatto condiscendere al presente soggetto.’
26 11 March 1837.
27 Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, 40 (1838), 539–40.Google Scholar
28 Letter to Cammarano of 8 August 1839 (see Palermo, , 87Google Scholar).
29 This apparent return to traditional forms has sometimes led writers to advance the erroneous view that Mercadante's later works contain regressive features.
30 While Coccia's opera was published by Ricordi in a complete vocal score, Mercadante's opera remained in manuscript: Autograph I–Mr (Acts II–V only); copies A–Wn (Act I only) and I-Vlevi (formerly Vt).
31 A detailed comparison of the three operas is contained in D'Amico, Fedele, ‘Il “Ballo in Maschera” prima di Verdi’, Chigiana, 26/7, New Series, 6/7 (1971), 501–83.Google Scholar
32 Significantly, Hamilton decides on the murder only when he begins to doubt the identity of his son's father.
33 From the Gazzetta di Venezia, quoted in the AllgemeineMusikalische Zeitung, 42 (1840), 424.Google Scholar
34 Quoted in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, 45 (1843), 947–8.Google Scholar
35 See the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, 46 (1844), 542–3Google Scholar; and 47 (1845), 187.
