When Bernardo Pasquini's opera “L'Idalma” was put on the private stage of a nobleman during the carnival season in Rome in 1680, despite papal bans, an entire palace had been converted beforehand.
Ceilings had been removed and walls moved so that the performance could be staged as splendidly as possible.
Almost three and a half centuries later, Alessandro De Marchi, in his last year as director of the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music, brought the piece out of oblivion.
Pasquini came to Rome in 1655 as an eighteen-year-old keyboard virtuoso, soon made a career there as a sought-after harpsichord teacher and for decades served Prince Borghese as a famous musician until his death in 1710.
His three-act "Idalma" was created in competition with operas by the young Alessandro Scarlatti, who at the time received commissions from other patrons.
Giuseppe Domenico de Totis' libretto for Pasquini's “Commedia per musica” follows the tradition of Spanish coat-and-sword pieces.
The funny texts are full of allusions to the Don Juan material that was popular at the time.
Their ambiguous gags still ignite today.
In Pasquini's entertaining and life-wise setting, which penetrates the characters' interior, they also develop serious undertones.
"Whoever perseveres wins"
This exemplary masterpiece of the genre, which was once re-enacted in many Italian cities, has long been on Alessandro De Marchi's wish list. Together with Giovanna Barbati, he has now edited the score for the Innsbruck production from handwritten sources. Because the Tiroler Landestheater has been refurbished since June, the new Haus der Musik serves as an alternative quarter. In the Great Hall, which has neither a stage with the appropriate technology nor an orchestra pit, the situation is very cramped. Although the audience is allowed to occupy all seats without any distance or mask, the rows of chairs extend right up to the full width of the orchestra. The raised playing area directly behind it leaves the vocal ensemble hardly more space than with a concert performance.
Alessandra Premoli's production is inspired by the situation in which this “Idalma” was premiered. Their action takes place while an old castle is being renovated. An architect is leading the conversion of the dilapidated building into a museum. During on-site visits with construction workers, she imagines what may have happened here earlier. Paintings that show former residents of the castle let them fantasize about all kinds of fictional occurrences, push themselves in front of the current reality and gain more and more a life of their own. Events and time levels interpenetrate. For the craftsmen, this castle seems to be haunted. On the other hand, their modern technology irritates the opera staff, who are busy with themselves and their love affairs, who with a wink of the eye describe the half-hearted attempt by two married couples toto "repair" their damaged relationships after manifold errors and confusions. That such restoration efforts only succeed superficially is left to no doubt in the libretto. The alternative opera title “Chi la dura la vince” (“He who perseveres, wins”) is meant ironically from the start.
Make a virtue out of lack of space
Lindoro, a pocket-sized Don Giovanni, kidnapped Idalma, secretly married, but then abandoned him because he was drawn back to his ex Irene.
But she is now married to his buddy Celindo.
Lindoro's servant Pantano, a rascal like Leporello, is lured with money, but basically has his heart in the right place.
When he is confronted by Celindo, a doppelganger of Mozart's honorable Don Ottavio, for hitting Irene, he tries to buy time with excuses before he can escape.
Meanwhile, Irene's would-be ladyboy Lindoro bites granite, but in the end does not go apocalyptically to hell, but ends up under pressure from Celindo in the harbor of a marriage hell with Idalma, who is more interested in the status of her husband anyway.
Nathalie Deana's stage turns the lack of space into a virtue. Laterally sliding brochures show the inner walls of a castle with doors, pictures and pillars. Anna Missaglia has tailored the protagonist of the play historical costumes from the time it was made. Like ghosts they come to the introductory symphonia wrapped in sheets on the stage, haunt around between extras in modern clothes, sometimes freeze in poses that, in Antonio Castro's refined lighting, are reminiscent of paintings by Murillo. De Marchi leads the colorful festival orchestra from the harpsichord, uses stereo effects from the concertino and concerto grosso groups and has the many rhythm changes safely under control.Pasquini's astonishingly varied score is unfolded transparently in the manner of chamber music and in places amazes with twists and turns that one thinks is familiar from Handel.
Arianna Vendittelli attests to Idalma's hysterical outbursts of self-pity with brilliant soprano coloratura. Rupert Charlesworth, as a windy Lindoro with a beguiling tenor, complains that he simply does not manage to keep his instinctual life in check. No less powerfully Rocco Cavalluzzi as Pantano stages his voice with creaky deep bass tones. Morgan Pearse's baritone, the bespectacled hunter, gives Almiro the determined despiser of love, but behind his tenoral presence cannot hide the fact that in reality he is just uptight. With a sensationally voluminous contralto, Margherita Maria Sala asserts herself as resolute Irene. Juan Sancho Tenor as the noble Celindo and Anita Rosati Irene's Page Dorillo also enchant with voices that one cannot get enough of.