Paisiello, Il Barbiere di Siviglia - Cavatina

On February 16, 1816, four months before his death, followers and supporters of Giovanni Paisiello decided to attend the premiere of Rossini's The Barber of Seville with the purpose of creating riots and causing the opera to fail. They were angry with Rossini. More than thirty years ago Paisiello had premiered in St. Petersburg an opera based on Beaumarchais' famous comedy, with great success, the first of all previous adaptations. The work toured Europe with similar acclaim. Its title was: Il Barbiere di Siviglia, ovvero La Precauzione inutile.

So when his supporters saw in Rome the announcement of a work entitled Almaviva o sia La inutile precauzione with music by Gioacchino Rossini they had reason to be outraged. They felt that Maestro Rossini had not worn himself out in search of a novel topic but had merely worked comfortably on a tried-and-true work. That's why they were angry. And they got their way, Rossini's premiere turned out to be a failure.

Giovanni Paisiello
(1740 - 1816)

Paisiello versus Rossini
This was not the case with the following performances. But if Rossini's work is the most performed opera to this day, it is no less true that in its time it had to struggle arduously with Paisiello's work. Despite all the time that had elapsed since its premiere in September 1782, Paisiello's Il Barbiere di Siviglia was more popular than Rossini's work for a significant period of time. Rossini would eventually surpass it, but that would not happen until the middle of the 19th century. Paisiello's opera will disappear from the stage, but not completely from the world music scene.

Cavatina "Saper bramate"
In the first act, the Count of Almaviva sings a serenade to Rosina, introducing himself to her as Lindoro, a poor student. The cavatina, which begins with the words Se il mio nome saper bramate (something like "If my name you long to know"), is one of the surviving arias from Paisiello's opera. Moreover, the piece took on a new air since the insightful Stanley Kubrick included it in the soundtrack of Barry Lindon, in an instrumental version, to accompany the scene shown in the image that heads this article: the Lindon family makes music while the father, disengaged from home, goes around town visiting gambling houses.

The video has been created with scenes from the film.

Chopin, Waltz Opus 70 No 2

With the city occupied by the Russians, the cultural life of Warsaw around 1830 did not compare to that of Vienna or Paris, but it was not so poor either. At the theater, one could attend performances of Racine, Moliére, or Shakespeare. In music, Chopin did not miss any of the ten performances Paganini gave there.
He also listened to his colleagues Hummel, Rossini, and some ladies, such as the Polish pianist Maria Szymanowska, and his French colleague Anne Caroline de Belleville, only two years his senior, on tour in Warsaw. Of course, all this was before the November uprising, which inspired Chopin's "Revolutionary" Etude.

Anne Caroline de Belleville had been a talented pupil of Czerny's and had attracted the attention of Beethoven. She was also compared with Clara Wieck, favourably. In a letter to a friend, Chopin speaks of her in very good terms: "Here is also a certain Mlle Belleville, French, who plays the piano very well, with much grace and elegance". We know that Chopin was not at all fond of complimenting colleagues, so we must assume that Mlle Belleville, called Ninette in private, must have been a remarkable performer.

Anne Caroline de Belleville
French pianist (1808 - 1880)

A little waltz
Ten years after writing these words, having already become in Paris the famous pianist and composer we admire today, Chopin sent Ninette a "little waltz", dedicated to her and for her own exclusive pleasure, as he did not wish to see it published. And so he tells her:

"As for the little waltz I had the pleasure of writing for you, I beg you to keep it. I do not wish it to be published. But I would like to hear it played by you, dear lady, and to attend one of your elegant réunions, in which you wonderfully perform such great masters as Mozart, Beethoven and Hummel, who were the masters of us all. The adagio by Hummel which I heard you play a few years ago in Paris, at the house of Mr. Erard, still resounds in my ears; and I assure you that in spite of the great concerts offered here, there is little piano music that can make me forget the pleasure of having listened to you that evening."

Waltz Opus 70 No 2

The little waltz, dated 1842, was finally published, in 1855, six years after the death of its author. It is one of the three waltzes of opus 70, and one of the six (of the total of fourteen) waltzes published posthumously. Given its incomparable and simple beauty, it is surprising that Chopin did not want to see it published. But... he also wanted to throw his Fantasie Impromptu on the bonfire.

The performance is by eight-year-old Anne-Laure Bride-Lanoë, in a 2010 performance at the Salle Pleyel, Paris.

Mozart, "The Abduction from the Seraglio", Overture

After attending the successful premiere of his opera Idomeneo, Re di Creta in Munich, Mozart had to move to Vienna in March 1781, following his patron Colloredo, to be present at the festivities of Joseph II of Habsburg's accession to the throne as Austrian emperor.
In May, the altercation with Colloredo occurred, which ended with Mozart's resignation. The twenty-five-year-old composer would then settle in Vienna to develop a career as a freelance musician. In July, he received an "orientalizing" libretto, for which he would write the music.

The "original" libretto
It had come at a good time. Joseph II, son of Maria Theresa of Austria, and brother of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette (not yet but will be), encouraged the creation of a German opera. To this end, he commissioned his "playwriter" Gottlieb Stephanie, to write a libretto that, musically staged, would result in a jovial, joyful spectacle. Stephanie, a disreputable character in Vienna, did not think long or very hard about it. He took one already published and modified it according to his own ideas (the original author claimed "plagiarism", but without much eagerness, since he had taken it from another).

A box-office success
Well, there in Vienna was Mozart, the celebrated author of Idomeneo, looking for opportunities... The two artists worked for a year in perfect harmony and the premiere of the three-act singspiel The Abduction from the Seraglio was celebrated with overwhelming success at the Burgtheater on July 16, 1782, with Mozart conducting from the keyboard. With excellent box office, performances abounded although the composer received no income from them. He was only paid once for the work.

The Plot
The libretto was not exactly a masterpiece, but with its music, Mozart succeeded in making Stephanie's breezy stanzas his first big hit in Vienna. The libretto responds to the taste for "the exotic", which was all the rage in those years, although there was really nothing new about the fashion. As a leading historian and musicologist has pointed out, "Turkish operas, Turkish comedies, and Turkish novels were already in vogue in the 1600s". The story narrates the vicissitudes of Constanza, her maid and her fiancé, another servant, who after being captured during a pirate boarding, now serve a Turkish pasha, in his seraglio, his palace. Constanza's fiancé will try to rescue them. The story ends happily, thanks to the Pasha's clemency.

Cymbals and triangles
The novelty, perhaps, lies in the inclusion of "Turkish music" by means of instruments uncommon in the West for the time, such as cymbals or triangles, to create an "oriental" atmosphere. This is already noticeable in the Overture, with a very colorful atmosphere, capable of immediately introducing the audience to a fable-like ambiance.

With just over five minutes in length, the Overture is presented here, in a Vienna Symphony Orchestra performance, conducted by the Italian conductor Fabio Luisi.

Alban Berg, a little review - Lyric Suite - Andante amoroso

The Austrian composer Alban Maria Johannes Berg, together with his colleagues Schoenberg and Webern, make up the famous triumvirate of the Second Vienna School, one of the most important movements in the evolution of Western music in the 20th century. Their contributions constituted a renovating impact on the art of combining sounds, with the abandonment of tonality, then the adoption of the dodecaphonic technique, and later serialism; the latter, a Webern's contribution, mainly.

The young Berg

Alban Berg joined the future trinity of composers in 1904, at the age of nineteen, when Schoenberg took him on as a pupil after learning a number of songs composed by Alban. Born in Vienna into a well-to-do family of German origin, the young Berg was at that time a civil servant in the administration of the empire, and music was little more than a serious hobby for him. But as fate would have it, Alban's mother inherited no small fortune. The future composer gave up everything and devoted himself entirely to music.

Early works, and marriage

Under Schoenberg's tutelage, Berg composed his first works between 1907 and 1910. The following year he married, although his father-in-law never regarded him as the ideal husband for his daughter. He had his reasons, clearly class-based: the groom's financial insecurity and the low respectability of his family (Berg's sister was a lesbian).

Recognition, and the affair

But after the 1925 premiere of the opera Wossek, his masterpiece, Berg became both a recognized figure and a controversial author. His financial situation also improved and he was then able to focus on composing more comfortably.
That year and the following one, the author experienced one of his most pleasant periods, including a passing extramarital affair that, according to some scholars, is present in the background of one of his most seductive and mysterious works, the Lyric Suite for String Quartet, composed between 1925 and 1926. It was the first time the author made use of the twelve-tone system created by his master.

The good health of romanticism

Apart from an enigmatic cipher using German notation to seal his and the fleeting beloved's initials in the score, it is the naming of the suite's six sections that has brought the idea of the love story that would be hidden behind it. To each tempo indication, Berg added an adjective with "romantic" resonances that, seen as a whole, illustrate the obligatory plot of a typical love enthusiasm from the beginning of the world.

Sections:

Allegretto gioviale - Andante amoroso - Allegro misterioso - Adagio appasionato - Presto delirando-tenebroso - Largo desolato.

Andante amoroso
The most sensual and intimate movement, albeit with a somewhat whimsical atmosphere, is the Andante amoroso. It is presented here in a performance (audio only) by the famed Alban Berg Quartet, an ensemble born in Vienna in 1970, and dissolved in 2008 after the death of one of its most prominent members in 2005.

Schumann, Cello Concerto in A minor

During his relatively short existence, even for his time, Robert Schumann could only write seven works for soloist and orchestra. Of these, the Piano Concerto (1854) and the one written for cello in 1850 have today a regular presence on the world's stages. The former is in excellent health. Although less popular, the Cello Concerto can be pointed out as one of the favorites of the virtuosi of the instrument, given the reduced presence of great cello concertos of the Romantic period.

Düsseldorf
Happily married for ten years to Clara, the couple and their five children had just escaped the Dresden uprisings of May 1849 (in which Wagner participated enthusiastically, even on the barricades). In December of that year, he was offered the post of music director in Düsseldorf. As soon as he arrived, he composed the Cello Concerto, according to legend, in just two weeks. But he did not stay long in the city, as the maestro, it seems, was not cut out for conducting orchestras. After a year, his contract was rescinded. Robert and Clara will go on tour.

Robert Schumann in 1850
(1810 - 1856)

Concerto for cello and orchestra in A minor, opus 129
Schumann died six years later, and never saw the premiere of the concerto. The work will be performed for the first time in Leipzig in 1860 in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the composer's birth.
The work, deeply romantic although largely devoid of dazzling virtuoso moments, includes three movements that follow one another, without pause, their tempi named in German.

Movements:
00:00   Nicht du znell (not too fast)
11:25   Langsam (slow)
15:19   Sehr lebhaft (very lively)

The rendition is by the young Austrian-Iranian cellist Kian Soltani, accompanied by the SWR Symphonieorchester, conducted by Christoph Eschenbach.