The Ultimate Verismo Opera...?

[Alan Howe]

Some tantalising excerpts can be sampled here:
http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/Ermanno-Wolf-Ferrari-1876-1948-I-Gioiella-della-Madonna/hnum/8164396
And try this performance of the famous Intermezzo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7OcDfspgZM

[Revilod]

Right! Thanks! My appetite could hardly be any whetter! I just haven't been particularly impressed by the other W-F operas I've heard.

[Alan Howe]

Gioelli is a one-off in W-F's output - a work he could never top, I suspect.

[pcc]

Has anybody here heard the "Souvenirs of Verismo Opera" CDs put out by IRCC in the 90s?  I'm waiting for vols. 1 & 2, and I posted a question earlier on Ubaldo Pacchierotti, whose L'ALBATRO is represented in vol. 1.  Vol. 2 has quite a bit of GIOIELLI, but I've read some passionately enthusiastic reports on Renato Virgilio's JANA (1907) of which the CD also has several excerpts (the remainder is a long set of ISABEAU extracts - again, not exactly standard fare).  I think the IRCC series ran to at least 4 CDs of period recordings, most of which are from operas that have remained unstaged since the early 1920s. Two resourceful Italian scholars have recently written a biography of Virgilio, of whom I know nothing (except he may have been Sardinian, seems to have lived a long time, and frequently got into quarrels with publishers and impresarios), and from what I've been finding in the Eastman School library _verismo_ is still pretty sketchily researched, at least in English.  There seems to be rather a lot of music awaiting reinvestigation here, not to mention exactly who wrote it.

[pcc]

Some modification: JANA is from 1905 and is set in Sardinia (Virgilio was from Barletta and trained in Naples).  Evidently posters of the opera are better known than the opera itself (like ISABEAU).

[edurban]

I've ordered Gioielli, and await its arrival with b.b., as Bertie Wooster might say.

David

[Jor]

Gioelli is a one-off in W-F's output - a work he could never top, I suspect.

I have yet to listen to I Gioielli but I Quatro Rusteghi is a masterpiece for me.
I especially appreciated the venetian vernacular since I'm from the region.
So exquisite.

Gioielli was a "one-off work" simply because Wolf-Ferrari was always more voted for comic opera.

Some modification: JANA is from 1905 and is set in Sardinia (Virgilio was from Barletta and trained in Naples).  Evidently posters of the opera are better known than the opera itself (like ISABEAU).

Yeah, I'm too interested in Jana but I've yet to find/buy that volume of Souvenirs from Verismo.

Poor guy, he died in poverty far from home.

[Alan Howe]

Gioielli was a "one-off work" simply because Wolf-Ferrari was always more voted for comic opera.

That may well be so. And it could explain why Gioielli comes as such a surprise when one hears it for the first time. It's my operatic discovery of 2013.