Respighi's Marie Victoire from cpo

[Alan Howe]

Also due out in September is Respighi's 1913 opera Marie Victoire:
http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/Ottorino-Respighi-1879-1936-Marie-Victoire/hnum/8776672
Here's some more info about the production:
http://operachic.typepad.com/opera_chic/2009/04/marie-victoire-in-berlin-aka-why-respighi-matters-and-takesha-rocks.html
And also here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125164881

[Alan Howe]

I have rather neglected Marie Victoire since buying it on its release. Listening to it again after a few years, I find it a magnificent feast of an opera, with obvious roots in the verismo style, but with evident Straussian influence too. Does anyone else know it? Adriano, perhaps?

[Mark Thomas]

Totally new to me but, on this recommendation, it's now downloaded and ready for audition! Thanks, Alan.

[BerlinExpat]

It's not a new release, but a price reduction!
I was so bowled over when I heard the radio broadcast of the première in Rome (2004) that I bought tickets for two performances of the Deutsche Oper Berlin production in 2009 and then once again two years later for the revivial.
It's a wonderful French Revolution piece with everything an opera needs. I guess it's my favourite Respighi opera although Semirama comes pretty close.
The original première was planned for 1914 and then 1915 but WWI put paid to that.
There's another Marie Victoire by Edmond Guirauds that had a successful première at the Théâtre Antoine on 7th April 1911.
A recording of Respghi's first opera Re Enzo would complete his operatic oeuvre on disc.

[eschiss1]

Good on cpo!
Are all the Respighi operas available at least in one recording that's more or less complete, or do some of them still need much less cut recordings?

(Given cpo's past behavior, I somewhat suspect theirs may be probably pretty much complete. They seem to have a nice though of course not invariable habit of producing complete, or even extra-complete, recordings of works previously available in cut recordings.)

[adriano]

Yes, they all are, except Re Enzo.

[eschiss1]

Thanks!
Another by Edmond Guiraud- same librettist different composer?

BTW an incomplete autograph manuscript full score (lacking some of the vocal parts, not completely filled in) (1914) gives Respighi's opera as Maria Vittoria. (this doesn't surprise somehow.)

[adriano]

Why? I have in front of me the MS copy of the original vocal score entitled "Maria Vittoria", with all cast in Italian, and, of course, all sung parts in French. Ricordi had it (erroneously) catalogued that way after receiving it and later officially published it in 1991. The Italian translation may have been added later for an eventual easier promotion; in any case it's written in, in that same volume. Respighi had withdrawn this score, he never wanted having it performed. It was I who studied it for the first time (in 1978!) and it was I who had convinced Elsa to hand it over to Ricordi. She needeD two years to agree, but I never gave up insisting. In his interviews on the 2004 Rome premiere, Maestro Gelmetti proudly used to tell that he himself had "discovered" this piece! Incidentally, already in 1979 I had a copy of its full MS - and had borrowed from Elsa two volumes of the original score for diplay in my Respighi Centenary Exhibition at the Lucerne Festival. In the 1990s I had already set up a full budget calculation for having it eventually recorded it in Bratislava, but Klaus Heymann never wanted this piece.

[adriano]

Then we have an opera by Respighi, written in 1908, entitled "Al mulino" ("At the Mill"). The orchestration of the last act is not complete, meaning that the composer had also lost his interest in this piece. It was only performed once, using the piano reduction, in a private concert. Before that, he had just written his "Concerto all'antica" - and during that whole year 1908 he would not write another original work, and transcribe instead a dozen old sonatas, pastorales and chaconnes by Locatelli, Porpora, Tartini, Veracini, Viavldi, Bach, Vitali and Monteverdi. In 1909, thanks God, the resumed as an orginal composer, and, in 1910-11 already "Semirâma" and "Aretusa" were completed.

[eschiss1]

I'm not sure what I meant- probably just that the title was Maria Vittoria, not Marie Victoire - having written 592,743,426.5 things down i guess perhaps I ought to have specified which failed to surprise me. (Will make a point of streaming it sometime soon.)