Amongst Haydn’s most notable character traits was his great modesty. Only exceptionally did he highlight any of his own works. When he wrote about La fedeltà premiata, “that a work like this has not yet been heard in Paris and possibly even less so in Vienna”, it shows that he was well aware that with this opera, he had created a masterwork.
La fedeltà premiata was premiered on 25 February 1781 at the dedication of the newly-built theatre in Esterháza, where it was was to become one of the most frequently performed operas. But it soon fell into obscurity, the music materials were dispersed, and only excerpts continued to be performed. It was only ‘rediscovered’ in 1968, following the discovery of the Turin manuscript, when a complete score prepared by the Haydn-Institut in Cologne was published for the first time by Henle-Verlag. Now, 200 years after Haydn’s death, this edition sees the publication for the first time of the complete performance material based on the score of the Complete Edition. With this, everything is in place so that this masterwork can be revived in its original form.
At the outset, the exciting overture radiates energy and beauty. Haydn used it as the fourth movement of his Symphony No. 73 under the name “La chasse”, and the hunt also forms the mythological framework which dominates the opera. The plot unfolds around the temple of Diana, the goddess of hunting, who at the end rewards true love and punishes wrongdoings. In a sense all the characters are hunters and hunted, hunting for love and happiness in a mood of deliberate confusion.
In this opera, serious and comic elements blend together in the most wonderful way. Only the pair of lovers, Celia and Fileno, clearly come from opera seria, and even with these characters, Haydn extended the forms of this genre. The simple-minded Lindoro is closest to the buffo character. But even Nerina who, with her liveliness and sharp tongue is the most cheerful figure, was blessed with arias of lyrical sensitivity by Haydn. For the passionate, capricious Amaranta, who also has thoroughly comic traits, he wrote deeply felt music full of pain and disappointment. Melibeo, the scheming priest of the Temple of Diana, might appear buffo-like with his dramatic way of expressing himself, if his slyness and riskiness didn’t also feature. The situations which Count Perruchetto gets into are hilariously funny, and it is he who causes the greatest merriment. But he is certainly no joker. Everything which he expresses is seriously meant and vividly felt, and with his imaginative and occasionally poetic way of presenting himself, and thanks to the constantly dramatically-conceived music which Haydn gives him, he develops into a character beyond compare in the operatic repertoire.
For each of the nineteen arias Haydn finds a different form, developed both from the characters as well as from the situations, which are as free as his imagination. Here he achieves a fundamental reassessment of the orchestra’s role: as well as accompanying the singers, it maintains a commenting function, and as an example of the refined art of instrumentation, it becomes an independent partner to the vocal parts.
Besides this, Haydn creates a refined system of key-relationships. The opera begins and ends in D major, and particular characters are assigned specific keys. The magnificent finale of the first act, mounting in intensity, and like that of the second act, a showpiece of the opera, leads in 822 (!) bars from B flat major via nine changes in key and tempo back again into B flat major.
Some parts of La fedeltà premiata exist in various different versions, written by Haydn himself. The significance of this edition lies in its inclusion of these new versions and variants.
Peter Brenner
(translation: Elizabeth Robinson)
from: [t]akte 1/2009
A masterwork is rediscovered. Joseph Haydn’s opera “La fedeltà premiata”
Joseph Haydn
La fedeltà premiata. Dramma pastorale giocoso (1780). After a Libretto by Giambattista Lorenzi
Edited by Günter Thomas. Joseph Haydn Werke, Vol. XXV/10 (G. Henle Verlag)
1.3.2009: Opernhaus Zürich, conductor: Adam Fischer, director: Jens-Daniel Herzog
2.3.2009: London, Royal Academy Opera, Royal Academy of Music Sinfonia, conductor: Trevor Pinnock, director: Alessandro Talevi
Staff: Fillide (Soprano), Fileno (Tenor), Amaranta (Soprano), Conte Perrucchetto (Bass), Nerina (Soprano), Lindoro (Tenor), Melibeo (Bass), Diana (Soprano), Coro di ninfe e pastori, cacciatori e cacciatrici, seguaci di Diana. Ballo di pastori e pastorelle
Orchestra: Flauto I, Oboe I, II, Fagotto, Corno I, II, Tromba I, II, Timpani, Violino I, II, Viola, Bassi (Vc. e B.), Basso Continuo
Performance material: on hire, vocal score for sale (both Bärenreiter-Verlag)