Gluck: Opere Serie Surviving in Fragmentary Form
Complete Edition III/2
Expected to ship in about a week.
- Format: Full Score
- Binding: Hardcover
- Work Language: Italian
- ISMN:
- Size: 10.2 x 13.0 inches
- Pages: 256
- Urtext / Critical Edition
Description
Gluck's early "opere serie"—works in this dominant 18th-century operatic genre, which he progressively liberated from rigid conventions and ultimately reformed in the 1760s beginning with "Orfeo ed Euridice"—still await genuine rediscovery. At the start of his career, Gluck devoted himself extensively to this form of opera, composing a total of sixteen "opere serie" and operatic serenatas between 1741 and 1752 for the seasonal opera business in Italy and London, as well as for the touring companies of Pietro Mingotti and Giovanni Battista Locatelli. Most of these works were set to texts by Pietro Metastasio. Unfortunately, only six of these early operas have survived in complete form; of the remaining ten, less than half of the original material is extant.
Following the first volume of "Opere serie Surviving in Fragmentary Form," which focuses on the operas Gluck composed for Milan, the second volume presents the surviving individual numbers from works created for a wide variety of venues. These include the opera seria "Demetrio", composed for the Ascension season of 1742 in Venice, as well as Gluck's setting of the Alexander story under the title "Poro" for the 1744/45 Carnival season at the Teatro Regio in Turin. Alongside the two pasticcios he assembled in 1746 for London's King's Theatre—"La caduta dei giganti" and "Artamene"—the volume also features Gluck's second new production for Prague, "Issipile", which he premiered in 1752 as Kapellmeister of Locatelli's opera troupe.
Thirty-seven pieces from these operas have survived, twenty of which appear here for the first time in print and offer a delightful enrichment of the repertoire. The heterogeneous state of the sources for these individual pieces posed a particular editorial challenge: In addition to score copies, contemporary printed selections, and a small number of surviving autographs, the volume benefits especially from the recent discovery of eight arias from "Poro" previously believed lost, doubling the amount of surviving musical text from that opera.
Although these materials do not allow for fully staged revivals of the "opere serie", the individual pieces gathered here constitute an exceptionally appealing trove for aria recitals, singer-focused concert programs, and recordings. with all the surviving solo numbers for the title role of "Demetrio", the edition also provides four more arias for Felice Salimbeni. and for the equally famous castrato Angelo Maria Monticelli, Gluck composed the then enormously popular aria "Rasserena il mesto ciglio" in "Artamene" which can now likewise be awakened from its long slumber.
Contents:
- Vorwort
- Bildbeigaben
- Demetrio
- Poro
- La caduta dei giganti
- Artamene
- Issipile
- Kritischer Bericht
- Abkürzungsverzeichnis
- A. Quellen
- B. Allgemeines
- C. Einzelbemerkungen
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Gluck: Opere Serie Surviving in Fragmentary Form
