FULL LA PROVA DI UN’OPERA SERIA (Gnecco) Rovigo 2023
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: LA PROVA DI UN'OPERA SERIA
- Composer: Gnecco Francesco
- Libretto: Giulio Artusi Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Teatro Sociale, Rovigo, Italy
- Recorded: March 2023
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Students of the singing classes of the State Conservatory of Music Francesco Venezze from Rovigo
- Conductor: Elisabetta Maschio
- Orchestra: Orchestra del Conservatorio Statale di Musica Francesco Venezze di Rovigo
- Stage Director: Anna Cuocolo Giulio Magnetto scenes
- Stage Designer: Giulio Magnetto
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Teatro Sociale - Comune di Rovigo
- Date Published: 2024
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Francesco Gnecco ( Genoa , 1769 – Milan , 1810 or 1811) was an Italian composer .
The data we have received regarding Gnecco’s biography and artistic career are rather fragmentary and sparse. Gnecco began studying the violin with Giacomo Costa (known conductor , maestro di cappella in S. Lorenzo, teacher of Paganini , Serra and Sivori ) and later studied composition with GL Mariani ( 1737 – 1793 ), maestro di cappella in Savona cathedral .
Gnecco’s instrumental music production consists of a fair number of compositions, mainly for chamber ensembles .
While on the one hand the work of Gnecco, Costa , Sivori and Paganini testifies to the prestige of the Genoese violin school and the interest of the public of this city in instrumental music, it is worth underlining the vitality of the local opera theatres. With the inauguration of the Teatro del Falcone ( 1652 ) and then of the Teatro di S. Agostino ( 1702 ), there was a notable increase in the representations of melodramas by the most illustrious Italian composers and city authors. In an article in the “Notices of Genoa” (n° 9, 12 May 1792 ) there is news of Gnecco’s debut as an opera singer at the S. Agostino theater on the evening of 8 May 1792 , with “Madama Auretta and Masullo, that is, the setback” , the first of numerous theatrical works (for which he was often also the author of the libretto ), the productions of which had great success both in Genoa and in other Italian cities .
The author’s international success came with La prova di un’opera serie , originally written in one act with a libretto by Artusi in 1803 with the title La prima prova di un’opera serie , and divided into two acts, with a libretto by Gnecco himself , in 1805 . If the first version was a parody of Domenico Cimarosa ‘s Orazi e Curiazi , the second refers to a phantom Hector in Trabisonda , in which the stylistic excesses and inconveniences linked to the staging of an opera are mocked .
From a formal point of view, the music follows the traditional line of the comic opera of Cimarosa , Pergolesi and Paisiello , with ideas that are not particularly original, but effectively functional to the stage action.
As evidence of the consensus obtained by this score (of which there are multiple versions) there are the numerous manuscripts found in the most important European theatres. In England it was performed for fifty years with a cast of the highest level: Giuditta Pasta , Curioni and Luigi Lablache participated in the first London production (at the King’s Theatre) . Its revival in 1983 with the soprano Leyla Gencer now in her last operatic commitment is interesting.