Jacopo Foroni - Cristina, Regina di Svezia

[pcc]

Did anyone get to attend the recent Chelsea Opera Group performances of this opera? Everything seems terrific about the work, and I've ordered the Swedish CD of it. In digging on Foroni, whose life was quite short, (1825-1858), some of his other works interest me tremendously - a Spartacus opera (I GLADIATORI, 1851) to a Peruzzini libretto that got into trouble with the Austrian censors (can't imagine why, it's such an innocuous subject) and three concert overtures that Ricordi published in full score. I just heard the C minor overture from a 1945 NBC Symphony/Toscanini broadcast - it must have been a very personal choice, and God knows where they got the parts - and it was brilliant; I'd put it in the very top rank of all Italian 19th century overtures, including Rossini and Verdi (it's much better orchestrated than any of Verdi's overtures).  Does anybody here know any more about him, have access to any of his scores, or have a report on CRISTINA? 

[eschiss1]

A vocal score of Cristina, published by Ricordi perhaps in the 1850s, is in the collection of the University of California @ Berkeley library. See Worldcat. (Plates (#s) 22845-22846, 22851-22852, which is more or less 1850 approximately from IMSLP's Ricordi plate tables. Plate table - date correspondence is never always exactly chronological however, so if date is interesting, can look for other contemporary evidence, e.g. mentions of the publication as new in digitized contemporary Italian publications, &c ...)

[alberto]

Exists a Sterling recording of the Concert Overture n.3 in A Major (Mats Liljefors St. Petrsburg Hermitage Orchestra, Sterling 1009-2); I have  got it (couplings by Berwald, Norman, Randel, Soederman, Kraus).
According to the booklet two (among three) overtures by Foroni where resurrected by La Scala in 1878.
One or two Foroni overtures were often conducted by Toscanini in his early days.
"Cristina Regina di Svezia" was resurrected also at the Wexford Festival and that was debated on this forum.

[giles.enders]

Yes, I attended.  I liked it very much and believe it should be in The Swedish Opera's repertory.  It might warrant occasional performances elsewhere.  The last twenty minutes lacked the sort of drama one might expect from the finest Italian composers.  There was also a very well researched pre concert talk, though sadly very poorly delivered.

[pcc]

Good to hear of the fine performance and sad to hear of the poorly-delivered talk. (I always tell my students that when they speak they have to "sell the product" a bit, especially if the subject is somewhat arcane. I've heard too many papers dully "read", and no more, at conferences - it drives me batty.) The Foroni C minor overture opened Toscanini's NBC programme on V-J Day, 2 Sept. 1945; I'd like to find an official issue of it, but the broadcast version (with NBC announcement) is on YouTube, if I am permitted to mention that.

[eschiss1]

SBN.IT lists quite a few works by Foroni at Italian libraries, including several Ricordi editions of the 3 overtures (ca.1849 and later). (Also quite a few other operas, a "Ouverture di concerto in do minore... riduzione per due pianoforti a quattro mani ciascuno di Guglielmo Andreoli"; "Sinfonia in Do minore : 188(x?) / Jacopo Foroni ; istrumentazione di D. Barreca" (pub.1901) ; a recently (2003) published "Un essai : quartetto per archi in re minore ... revisione Giulia Argentino, Lelio Di Tullio, Antonio Porpora Anastasio".

A copy of the libretto of Cristina is listed by SBN as being in Turin and Venice libraries (text by Giovanni Carlo Casanova.) A reduction for voice(s?) and piano by G. Truzzi, and selections therefrom, are also listed in SBN (think of it as an Italian Worldcat with better coverage of Italian libraries etc. than Worldcat has, by far.)