It’s fifty years since the curtain first went up in Prague on Bohuslav Martinu’s comic opera Mirandolina after Goldoni. The work, which recalls Rossini’s motor-rhythms, then fell into obscurity as tastes in styles changed. A rediscovery is long overdue, especially in this anniversary year.
Where can unknown operas such as this be heard? At the Wexford Festival of course, the ambitious opera festival in Ireland which has devoted itself to resurrecting neglected operatic treasures and has reintroduced, for example, the complete range of Heinrich Marschner’s romantic operas to the repertoire. Is it therefore any surprise that Bohuslav Martinu’s opera buffa Mirandolina was rediscovered here in 2002? After the Prague premiere in 1959, the German premiere in Essen a year later and just occasional further performances, the spirit of the age banished this piece, with its seemingly outdated neoclassicism, to the shadows. A brilliant, lively work with a well-structured orchestral score and skilful vocal ensemble – was this destined to languish in an archive for ever? This summer Mirandolina was performed again in the British Isles, this time at Garsington Opera, near Oxford.
In several respects, Mirandolina couldn’t really live up to the expectations of opera fans in the second half of the 20th century. On the one hand, it lacks the plot treatment of that “critical”, open or subcutaneous trait analytical of society, which, for example, Hans Werner Henze made a considerable feature in his Der junger Lord composed around the same time (admittedly Ingeborg Bachmann’s sophisticated libretto had far more style than the libretto of Martinu’s Mirandolina with its dramatic skill, but no literary pretensions). On the other hand, with the choice of Italian subject matter, Martinu had to forego some of the qualities which frequently characterised his works and gave them a special nostalgic flavour: musical reminiscences of his southern Bohemian homeland. He, the most universalist-cosmopolitan of the four Czech “classics” (Smetana, Dvorák and Janácek had developed a more-or-less native-national musical language, also in conscious opposition to German cultural hegemony), frequently evoked these themes in his music.
Smetana, the founding father of Czech music, had also spent several years abroad and worked as a music director in Sweden. When Martinu went to Paris on a small scholarship in 1923, he at first only wanted to stay for a few months to study with the much-admired Albert Roussel (Martinu, enormously productive throughout his life, even brought him a hundred unpublished works as evidence of his abilities). But things turned out differently. At first he was captivated by the artistic atmosphere of the capital city by the Seine, with its many controversial artistic and intellectual currents. Then the political situation in central Europe made a return a bitter prospect. Martinu also did not want to come to terms with the real socialist regime. An exile for the second half of his life, he lived mainly in the USA.
In terms of his temperament and life, Martinu clearly reminds us of his Russian colleague Sergei Prokofiev. The latter’s abandonment of a considerable international career in the west, and his homesick return to Stalin’s empire turned out disastrously; his later years in the Soviet Union were both a psychological and physical torment for him, and led to an early death. Prokofiev’s operatic output was similarly colourful and defined by many different influences as was Martinu’s. The world of Mirandolina seems to be most closely related to Prokofiev’s great, richly-fashioned opera buffa Betrothal in a Monastery (after the same cloak-and-dagger subject by Sheridan as Roberto Gerhard’s La Duenna).
The baroque writer of comedies Carlo Goldoni, who can also be described as a chronicler and glorifier of Italian folklore, naturally inspired many generations of (not only) Italian opera composers. One of the most charming Goldoni aficionados around the turn of the 20th century was the German-Italian Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari who, with subtly sugary cantilena mellifluousness, gossamer-like orchestral colouring and mainly unalloyed, bright major keys, undertook to counter the then-overpowering Wagnerianism like a light revolution in the Italian style. His best-known work was I Quattro rusteghi.
If you hold scores by Wolf-Ferrari, their density is surprising; their weight, the sheer number of notes. Of course, fast-moving music requires many pages of notes. Parsifal required relatively little paper. In this way, the heavy packet of music for Mirandolina indicates its content: this is mainly fast music, even though it is of a quite different musical character than Wolf-Ferrari’s Goldoni settings. Instead, it is Rossini who comes to mind, with his compelling and highly-taut motor-rhythms. Martinu’s machine-like associations were naturally shaped by the early 20th century; the eloquently handled tonal language of the “extended tonality” also gives much scope to the character of the vocal parts. The coloratura soprano acrobatics of the title role dominate; these reach their highpoint in a large-scale aria (in the sixth scene of the first act). But also in the carefree final ensemble, Mirandolina’s long held high A outshines the other singers’ contributions. The plot varies the topos of the duped “superior” admirer and the triumph of the unsophisticated lover of equal rank: the charming shirt-sleeved landlady Mirandolina turns down the noblemen with all their kinds of scurrilous quirks and takes up, after three entertaining acts, with her waiter – following which the business really thrives. Martinu displays a traditionally Italian spirit, particularly in the “Saltarello” intermezzo before the third act (Martinu spent some time in Italy in 1954, which gave him the idea for this most Italian of his operas).
As a well-structured theatrical gem, Bohuslav Martinu’s Mirandolina has gradually earned its place in the theatre. The opera buffa repertoire isn’t so large that it can do without this homage to Italy by a sophisticated Czech composer.
Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich
from [t]akte 2/2009
A cosmopolitan Czech, inspired by Italy. Martinu’s “Mirandolina”
Bohuslav Martinu
Mirandolina
Comic Opera in three acts H. 346 (1954)
Text: Bohuslav Martinu (after Carlo Goldoni's "La locandiera", 1752) (Italian)
World Première: 17. Mai 1959, Praha
Translation: Carl Stueber (German)
Cast: Mirandolina (soprano), Hortensia (soprano), Dejanira (alto), Fabrizio, Kellner (tenor), A servant of the Cavaliere (tenor), Conte Albafiorita (tenor), Cavaliere Ripafratta (bass (bariton)), Marchese Forlimpopoli (bass), A Juweller(silent role) – ballet (ad lib.)
Orchestra: 3(picc),2,2,2 – 4,3,3,0 – timpani, percussion(3) – strings
Publisher: Bärenreiter
Photos: Mirandolina at Garsington Opera 2009 (Copyright: Johan Persson)