When setting out on their new collection of recordings dedicated to the musical travels of famous singers from the past, entitled ‘Sirene’, Antonio Florio of I Turchini and Dinko Fabris could have considered no other, no better voice from today than that of Roberta Invernizzi to assume the starring role. Invernizzi has, after all, played a crucial role over the years in many of I Turchini’s concert programmes and recordings devoted to Neapolitan music of the Baroque and beyond.
With these Viaggi musicali di celebri cantanti the leading Italian musical scholar Fabris and his colleagues are recreating for the modern listener the musical soundworlds of singers who helped forge opera as we know it today: these were the musicians who trekked across Europe at the specific requests of composers, impresarios or audiences to add glitz and star quality to new productions. One such was Faustina Bordoni, whose performing career lasted from 1716 to 1751, starting off in her native Venice before criss-crossing Europe. She appeared in court and public opera houses alike whilst becoming one of the greatest singers of her time (and getting involved in a very modern series of spats with fellow soprano Francesca Cuzzoni)
On this new recording from Glossa made in Naples (the setting for important triumphs for Bordoni), Roberta Invernizzi, Antonio Florio and I Turchini recapture the lustre of 18th century opera – in music rarely, if ever, heard today, from composers such as Leonardo Vinci, Domenico Sarro, Nicola Porpora and Francesco Mancini – with a video from the sessions being available on YouTube. To set the scene for this new collection Dinko Fabris talks about the dramatic times of Faustina Bordoni, 18th century Naples and Roberta Invernizzi.
What are you and your colleagues aiming to present with the series, “Sirene – viaggi musicali di celebri cantanti”?
From the beginning of the 17th century the growth of opera fostered the massive presence of important solo voices on the stage, commencing first in Italy and then spreading all over Europe. Scholars have more than adequately studied this phenomenon, reconstructing the careers of many of these vocal protagonists who were strongly associated with the dissemination of Italian opera.
However, the wider public, even the faithful followers of the recent “early opera revival” – those who know even the rare titles by minor composers – have barely had the opportunity to discover the names of such eminent predecessors of Callas or Pavarotti from previous centuries such as Renzi, Bordoni, Cuzzoni, Senesino, Caffarelli, Berenstadt, Millico, Gizzi, Velluti, right up to the age of Malibran; these were the first “divas”, or the “sirens” as they would have been termed in their own times. Of course, Farinelli is a case apart, but more because of the celebrated film about him than as a result of a comprehensive knowledge and awareness of his career.
In this series, under the direction of Antonio Florio and me, and with the collaboration of the eminent Spanish musicologist Juan José Carreras amongst other specialists, we are wanting to provide a number of portraits of such divas from across three centuries, seen under the special magnifying glass of their travels. The dynamics of the dissemination of opera all around Europe are in fact strongly dependent upon the travels of these singers; in some cases this was the more remarkable if one considers how difficult travelling was in the past.
The booklet accompanying each CD will offer a complete reconstruction of the career of the singer in question, relevant iconography and a list of their travels with dates, all done with a special musicological care but given in an easy and attractive style.
We are lucky to be working with a conductor – and with such an expert – as Antonio Florio, and with the best voices of our own age. Additionally, the choice of the music – music which in many cases has been hitherto unpublished – will, of course, be connected to the operas performed during the travels considered.
Naples plays a very strong role in this series. Why had it become such an important musical capital for opera in the 18th century? What was the quality of opera composing in Naples in the 1720s from the composers and librettists?
There were a series of elements that transformed Naples into the true capital town of opera from precisely this point in time. It came about as the result of a slow process which had been developing over the 17th century, during the Spanish (until 1707) and then the Austrian domination of Naples (until 1734): the creation of the four music conservatories determined the massive production of operatic works – at an industrial level, one could say – involving hundreds of talented musicians and singers, that spread all around Europe spreading the myth of the town of their origin.
The activity in Naples of Alessandro Scarlatti from 1683 until his death in 1725 also amplified the international reputation of “the town of sirens” as Naples was named. In their turn, the succeeding generation of composers to Scarlatti began a new style of composing opera; scholars consider today this as the point of departure for the new galant style, epitomized by Leonardo Vinci (who died in 1730), who was the first Neapolitan composer able to gain an international reputation, first in Venice and then in London, where his music was discovered by Handel.
Naples around 1720 additionally saw the beginning of the careers of Pietro Metastasio (the most important librettist of the century), the German-born Johann Adolf Hasse (who was educated in Naples) and the young Farinelli.
The four opera houses in the city offered foreign visitors every kind of vocal music productions, from opera seria in the San Bartolomeo to the new comic operas in the Neapolitan tongue in the minor theatres. And there was music everywhere in the town: in the 500 churches, in the open air, in the streets and in the squares. To sing in Naples was a fundamental achievement for any singer in the 18th century and beyond.
Your first famous ‘travelling singer’ from the past is the (mezzo-) soprano Faustina Bordoni. What kind of success did she enjoy when she was first in Naples?
Faustina Bordoni visited Naples twice, and it is around the two trips that she made there that we have built the content of this first CD. In 1721-23 she was still at the outset of her career but the enormous success that she obtained, in particular as Rosmira in Sarro’s La Partenope greatly facilitated the subsequent steps in her career: the revival of the same libretto with music by Vinci in Venice was presented under the title Rosmira, probably in her honour. As Giulia Veneziano (the musicologist author of the booklet for “I Viaggi di Faustina”) has discovered, when Faustina left Naples in 1723 Vinci dedicated to her “Parto ma con qual core”, a melancholic cantata suffused with nostalgia.
Faustina’s second visit to Naples, a decade later, was triumphant. In the intervening period she had become the celebrated competitor of Francesca Cuzzoni in the Handelian productions in London, as well as the wife of Hasse in her native Venice, and had started a new life as a court musician in Dresden. At this time, Naples was on the verge of important changes, which included it being granted the status of an independent capital town in the Kingdom of the Spanish Bourbon Carlos VII (later Carlos III of Spain) in 1734.
What can be deduced of Faustina Bordoni’s character from the music that was written for her? What would audiences of the day expect from such a singer?
A notable description of her ability was that of Johann Joachim Quantz (as given by Charles Burney) around the end of her career when she was considered a mezzo: “Faustina had a mezzo-soprano voice. She possessed what the Italians call un cantar granito [a crystalline hardness]; her execution was articulate and brilliant. She had a fluent tongue for pronouncing words rapidly and distinctly, and a flexible throat for divisions, with so beautiful a shake that she put it in motion upon short notice, just when she would. She had a very happy memory, in arbitrary changes and embellishments, and a clear and quick judgment in giving to words their full value and expression. In short, she was born for singing and acting.”
Of course this judgement provided near the end of the career of Bordoni cannot describe what she was like as a brilliant soprano at its outset, but the pieces written for her in Naples can support many of the statements made by Quantz: a compass not extended with a favour for passages which displayed her talent for “fluent tongue”, articulation and improvisation of embellishments in the repetitions. It is possible that Faustina discovered in Naples the importance of acting when singing onstage.
Roberta Invernizzi has collaborated with you and Antonio Florio in many projects associated with Neapolitan music. What encouraged you to ask her to participate in this new series of recordings, and in this first one devoted to Faustina Bordoni?
Roberta Invernizzi became one of the best singers specialized in Baroque music of our present day, and she has acquired a total security in all the qualities required by a diva from the 18th century: she has the cantar granito (in Burney’s words), a facility in changes and adding improvised embellishments in perfect style, a marvellous articulation of the Italian language with all the nuances in the pathetic, as well as great strength in the arie d’ira. In addition, such is her personality onstage that we can well consider her to be a modern siren or diva.
How do you regard Roberta Invernizzi’s capacity for characterization of so many different roles, from so many different composers (especially in music from the Baroque era)?
Roberta started out on her career with a strong musical preparation already in her background; this included playing the double-bass and performing in different music genres, and a considerable experience of choral performances. At the same time, she has always been cultivating a wide interest for all the elements of knowledge around a musical score, including literature, history, theory, methods, and so on. Recently she has become a teacher of historical singing methods at the same Naples conservatory where Antonio Florio holds the chair in Baroque music and singing practice with orchestra.
Her enchanting voice has the ability and the flexibility to adapt without any trouble to different kinds of repertoire and style across three centuries. I remember her outstanding roles from Monteverdi or Provenzale as well as in early Romantic music. However, in the middle of this repertoire sweep you can insert any composer in whose music she excels, composers as different as Scarlatti, Purcell, Lully, Handel or Paisiello.Roberta really is the “Nuova Sirena” (as Faustina Bordoni was called in Venice) of our modern times.
MARK WIGGINS © 2013 Note 1 Music / Glossa Music stills from a film by Irene de la Selva and Raffaele Cuccu