In keeping with the Austrian-Spanish wedding festivities, the old couple Philemon and Baucis become a young couple. Gluck’s one act “Atto di Bauci e Filemone” with its bravura arias deserves to be revived.
Gluck’s Atto di Bauci e Filemone was performed for the first time as part of the magnificent wedding celebrations for the Archduchess Maria Amalia to the Infante Ferdinand of Spain in summer 1769 in the court theatre in Parma. It is part of his Feste d’Apollo, a work commissioned by the Empress Maria Theresia for the wedding of her daughter. It comprises several one-act sections which make reference to the celebrations as allegories. A Prologo is followed by three thematically independent acts, pastoral in character, the Atto di Bauci e Filemone, the Atto d’Aristeo and the concluding Atto d’Orfeo.
The libretto for Atto di Bauci e Filemone was by Luca Antonio Pagnini and is based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Pagnini adapted the story from Greek mythology about an aged pair of lovers Philemon and Baucis, making a young couple out of the aged couple. Giove, the father of the gods, comes to Phrygia disguised as a traveller in order to punish the inhabitants for their crime. In a rural area he meets the shepherd and his wife, who welcome him into their simple hut. Giove then reveals his identity and tells them at the wedding that in future, they will live together in his temple, and on their death they will become demigods and protectors of the region.
The work comprises five scenes; following an introduction, four arias, two duets, four choruses and an instrumental piece (Tempesta) alternate with recitatives. Of the twelve self-contained numbers, Gluck took half of these from his earlier works and revised them accordingly; he re-used five in his later French works. The court theatre at Parma, under its manager the French minister Guillaume Du Tillot, was extremely interested in combining French and Italian culture, and during Du Tillot’s period of office from 1759 onwards in particular, the Duchy of Parma became a melting pot for both cultures. So in the Feste d’Apollo and in the Atto di Bauci e Filemone, as well as virtuoso Italian arias and the requirement for a soprano castrato, the choruses play an important role; they are integrated into the plot in the French style and are mainly danced.
At the wedding celebrations in Parma, the 26-year-old soprano Lucrezia Agujari was engaged to sing the role of Bauci. She was an opera singer with an exceptionally high vocal range who performed throughout Europe. Her great three-section bravura aria “Il mio pastor tu sei” in the third scene goes up to g’’’. Leopold Mozart, who heard her with his son Wolfgang in Parma, wrote about her outstanding vocal talent in a letter dated 24 March 1770: “In Parma the Sgra Guari … invited us to dine, and sang 3 arias for us. It was impossible for me to believe that she was to sing to c Sopraacuto: the ears alone convinced me of this.” The soprano castrato Vincenzo Caselli was engaged as the lover Filemone. He had already sung in a Gluck opera as the seconda donna Ismene in the first performance of Antigono in 1755. Mozart heard him in 1770 in Mantua and reported in a letter to his sister: “the opera at mantua was pleasant, they performed Demetrio, … the leading man, the musician, sings beautifully, but has a very uneven voice, he is called Casselli”. The role of Giove, the father of the gods, was sung by the tenor Gaetano Ottani, who was also known to Gluck as he had sung the title role in his Clemenza di Tito in 1752 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.
As was typical for Italy then, neither the score nor the parts of the Atto di Bauci e Filemone were published, and only survive in contemporary manuscript copies. The complete Feste d’Apollo has now been published in a scholarly-critical edition as part of the Gluck Complete Works.
Gabriele Buschmeier
(from [t]akte 2/2019 – translation: Elizabeth Robinson)