[11/26/2010 preview] Verdi shows us three ways to open an opera -- an "overture," a "prelude," and an "introduction" (continued)

Alessandro Pagliazzi conducts the Brno State Opera Orchestra in the Prelude to Aida at the Lower Austrian Gars am Kamp outdoor festival, August 2008.

We've got two performances of the Nabucco Overture: Muti's slambang-ish one (recorded, for the record, 15 years after his EMI complete recording of the opera) and the more leisurely and more emotionally resonant Serafin one.

Nabucco (1842): Overture
Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, Riccardo Muti, cond. Sony, recorded Sept. 5-7, 1993
Philharmonia Orchestra, Tullio Serafin, cond. EMI, recorded Feb. 27, 1959

AND NOW A PRELUDE

By the time Verdi entered his middle period, he had mostly settled into the shorter prelude as his favored way to start an opera. After the Cairo premiere of Aida in 1871, he must have thought that so grand an opera needed a full-scale overture, and set about expanding the original Prelude to three times its original length. Before the 1872 Italian premiere he came to his senses and left the Prelude as it was. (We're going to hear the full Overture on Sunday.)

Aida (1871): Prelude

Philharmonia Orchestra, Tullio Serafin, cond. EMI, recorded Feb. 27, 1959
Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, Riccardo Muti, cond. Sony, recorded Sept. 5-7, 1993

OR YOU COULD HAVE JUST AN INTRODUCTION

In his final operas, Otello and Falstaff, as we've noted previously, Verdi dispensed with any introductory orchestral "piece" in favor of a brief orchestral introduction. But he'd already done this in Trovatore. The brief fanfare-style orchestral introduction leads us directly into a scene we'll hear more of tomorrow night. In tonight's excerpt we hear the cry of "All'erta! All'erta!" as Ferrando, a captain in the army of the Count di Luna, rousts the band of retainers with whom he's maintaining a late-night vigil outside one of the count's palaces.

Il Trovatore (1853): Introduction
Ivo Vinco (bs), Ferrando; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Tullio Serafin, cond. DG, recorded July 1962
Yevgeny Nesterenko (bs), Ferrando; Orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. DG, recorded 1983

MEANWHILE VERDI WAS WRITING . . .

Trovatore was the middle opera of three composed in an astonishing roughly two-year span, which announced Verdi's "middle" period. I thought it would be interesting to hear the very different preludes to Rigoletto (a dazzling piece of mood-setting which really doesn't even have a tune) and La Traviata (a matched pair to introduce the first and last acts).

Rigoletto (1851): Prelude
Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Rafael Kubelik, cond. DG, recorded July 1964

La Traviata (1853):
Prelude to Act I

Prelude to Act III
Rome Opera Orchestra, Tullio Serafin, cond. EMI, recorded June 12-22 and Oct. 4, 1959

IN TOMORROW NIGHT'S PREVIEW --

We move on to the "first events" of our three operas, and hear how Verdi gets from here to there -- all in preparation for Sunday's revelation of our link joining these particular pieces.


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