This is an exquisitely delightful performance from beginning to end of Haydn's "L'Infedeltà delusa" ("Infedelity outwitted"). The singers are superb, also as actors, the most versatile in response to the many facets of her role being Gabrielle Varbetian as Vespina (= "Little Wasp"): a real joy! Likewise, the young musicians of the Conservatoires of Lyon and Paris, under the expert leadership of veteran Sigiswald Kuijken, are very expert and motivated. The orchestral colors are superb (the violins less so, however, they sound rather thin): due to the small ensemble of just 16 the wind instruments are very prominent, with beautiful effect (there are some challenging horn parts, as so often with Haydn). Especially the strong bass group contributes a decisive impulse to the nervous forward drive of the music. It's interesting that a seating arrangement has been chosen that is similar to the one known from several paintings of the period, i.e. with the musicians sitting facing each other in two parallel rows in front of the stage. On those historical pictures, however, the continuo group with the cembalo (and thus the "conductor") is placed to the left, whereas in this performance Sigiswald Kuijken is sitting in the middle, directly facing the stage (without any doubt a sensible decision), with the cembalo and the cello at the left as usual in Haydn's time, but with the rest of the continuo group (double-bass and the two (!) bassoons) at the right end. All this is utterly enjoyable. All the more to be regretted, however, are the extensive cuts which have been made in the score. Missing, in particular, are the following numbers (act 1): n°9, Aria of Vespina "Come piglia si bene la mira", Scena 4 (she confesses her love for Nencio) n°12, Aria of Nencio "Chi s'impaccia di moglie cittadina", Scena 6 (he sings a serenade under Sandrina's window) n°13, Recitativo "È qui l'amico" with Vespina, Nanni, Filippo, Nencio and Sandrina n°14, Finale "O piglia questa", a quintet with all five characters. Act 1 ends at 51'00". The cuts listed above amount to a total of 22-and-a-half minutes of music, which is close to 40% of the 1st act. Act 2 starts at 1°03'12". The following numbers have been cut (ca. 6 min of music): n°23, Recitativo "Vieni, sbrigati Nanni" with Vespina and Nanni, Scena 6 n°24, Aria "Ho tesa la rete" of Vespina ("I've spread the net") Instead, instrumental pieces have been included not all of which are part of the opera: - During the change of scene after Nanni's aria n°8, Scena 3, starting at 42'45", the orchestra plays an excerpt from the music to Vespina's aria (n°9) which itself has been cut (see above). - Between the two acts three instrumental pieces foreign to this opera are included. The first insertion is the Andantino from the Overture to Haydn's opera "L'Incontro improvviso" (1775; i.e. the 3rd part of that Overture), unfortunatley, however, in a soporific tempo: obviously, as its designation expresses ("a little Andante"), an Andantino should have a light character. To my taste Manfred Huss' much more fluent tempo on his complete recording of Haydn's Overtures fits the character of the piece better (BIS-CD-1818, 2009). Then follows the Presto from the Overture to "L'Incontro improvviso" (i.e. its 2nd part). Unfortunately, here too, the exceptionally aggressive character of this D major overture is totally lost without the trumpets and "Turkish" percussion instruments of the original score. Again, what it can sound like is to be heard to magnificent effect on Manfred Huss' recording of Haydn's complete Overtures ("L'Incontro improvviso" is based on a story similar to Mozart's "Entführung" which, however, was composed 7 years later). The 3rd insertion is the slow movement of symphony n° 26, "Lamentatione" (1768), which doesn't make any sense in this context. - Instead of n°23 and n°24 in act 2 the Andantino from the Overture to "L'Incontro improvviso" is repeated. The opera continues at 1°38'09" with the Recitativo n°25, Scena 8. In contrast to these cuts, the text of those recitatives which have not been eliminated seems to be complete, whereas in Antal Dorati's recording (1980), it's the recitatives which have often been stripped-down, sometimes drastically so. L'Infedeltà delusa has been composed in 1773 and premiered at the Eszterhaza opera house on July 26 of that year, and was repeated there on September 1 in the presence of none less then Empress Maria Theresia. In modern times the opera has been resuscitated in Budapest in 1959 during the Haydn Congress, and in 1963 at the Holland Festival on the initiative of H. C. Robbins Landon and the artistic director Peter Diamand. According to Robbins Landon, "L'Infedeltà delusa" has been Haydn's most successful opera in modern times from a commercial point of view. This was true at least till 1999, when Robbins Landon wrote his memoirs "Horns in High C". As I have already written as a comment to Haydn's "La Canterina" by the same group (2016; th-cam.com/video/y1AO8J933Dg/w-d-xo.html), it is to be hoped that further Haydn operas will be staged at the Paris Conservatoire when performances will again be possible after the Corona crisis. Also available on TH-cam by the Conservatoire de Paris is "Il Mondo della Luna", in another venue and with another conductor (March 2019): th-cam.com/video/D23HrRIF3Jw/w-d-xo.html.
Dear Robert Spruijtenburg, this is Marie Kuijken anwering to your lovely comment. Being it me, as stage director of this production, who has decided the cuts in the opera, I can explain them to you. The production is a students' project with a limited time frame for rehearsals. In just 11 days' time we have gone from the first rehearsal up to the general rehearsal!! The whole production could not exceed two weeks, performances included. So to cut this opera was a necessity: not more then more or less 80 minutes of the opera itself could be effectively learned by the singers and staged during the short (very intense) rehearsal period. For instance, due to complexity, it was not thinkable to include both finales: that would have been too time-consuming in this context... so the first finale, logically together with the scenes working towards it, had to "fall". Moreover, some aria's of Vespina have indeed been cut out, to come to a more or less equal amount of scenes and especially arias pro singer in this context of a students' production, whereas in the opera as it is, Vespina has many more arias then all other characters. So the big cuts that have been made for this project are NOT thought as necessary cuts generally, but they are an obliged choice in the context of the students' productions of the Conservatoire. Indeed, as you rightly observe, to the other hand nearly no cuts have been made in the recitatives that are included: this is an artistical choice. For me as singer, singer's coach and stage director, the recitativos in 18th century opera are essential, they are the moments of action, wit and dialogue between the singing actors, they are absolutely fantastic! So nearly no cuts there, and a maximum of attention to their performance, working really in depth and details on the text prosody, expressivity, intentions and reactions of the characters, and a staging that reflects and uses everything the libretto and score are offering. We had also to invent a break for the singers that would not be a break for public, hence including some instrumental music of Haydn while the singers could rest and change. The production has had performances also in the historical theatre Blossac in Châtellerault, where we've been able to use the two historical sceneries, and during the change of the sceneries we also needed this extra instrumental music. As for the disposition of the orchestra, we choose to experiment the 18th century tradition. Of course, Sigiswald leading from the violin and not from the cembalo, he needed to be in the best position for contact with the singers. Many considerations...leading to this final result, where yes the opera has been shortened, but the storyline is understandable. La Petite Bande is planning to do this same production in 2021, and in that case there will be no cuts :)
@@mariekuijken7903Dear Mrs. Kuijken, It is a great honour for me that you make the effort to write a personal comment to me. Thank you! That’s exactly what I had understood: that you had to take into account the rehearsal time and the abilities of the student singers. Eleven days for the entire preparation is indeed extremely challenging, the sheer effort of memorizing the roles, i.e. the text, the music and the acting. One knows that at Eszterhaza Haydn’s singers in average had three weeks to learn a new opera, and there were up to 125 opera performances in one year (1786)! And that the student singers needed rests in between is absolutely understandable. Of them one cannot expect, of course, what Constanze has to perform in Mozart’s “Entführung”, i.e. to be on stage for 20 minutes in a row in order to deliver two of the most difficult arias. Especially Vespina has a heavy load with FOUR arias in the original score against the two each of the other characters, besides the long recitatives in which she has the lion’s share too. I found Gabrielle Varbetian absolutely superb, both as a singer and as an actress, and I hope that one day she will break through on the international stage. Apart from this you can’t believe how much I appreciate the result of your coaching with regard to how elegantly the characters move on the stage, up to their hands and fingertips, and with regard to the extremely lively performance of the recitatives (in Dorati's recording they don't "speak", apart from having been heavily cut). And you can’t believe neither how much my wife and I suffer from the “crimes” committed by the majority of today’s stage directors vis-à-vis the masterworks of the opera repertoire, using the plot to invent their own stories as an “ego-trip” instead of studying carefully and in depth the score and the librettos with all their subtle implications and unmistakable stage directions. The result is that we have stopped going to the opera, which per se is a shame. Will the uncut 2021 performance of "L’Infedeltà Delusa” be posted on TH-cam too? H.C. Robbins Landon considers it to be Haydn's most successful opera, and one has practically never the opportunity to see and hear it. It's highly regrettable that since Dorati's pioneering recordings of the 1980-ies so few modern, i.e. historically informed performances of Haydn's operas have been recorded: they are badly needed. On my “wish-list” would be that you consider one day to stage at the Conservatoire the Paris Haydn’s “Le Pescatrici” (1769/70). There would be, however, several challenges: first it is Haydn’s only true ensemble opera (7 ensembles in total), and second, it’s incomplete, but H.C. Robbins Landon has prepared a version that can be staged, and which was produced with great success in 1965 and 1966 at the Holland Festival and Edinburgh Festival. Unfortunately, there is only one mediocre version on CD of this opera by a Lithuanian group conducted by Olga Géczy (2009). So a performance which does real justice to this refreshing and endearing opera is very highly desirable. Ik had U dit alles ook in het Nederlands kunnen schrijven, maar daar ik intussen meer dan 60 jaar uit het land ben en ik nauwelijks nog gelegenheid heb de taal te spreken en te schrijven, kost mij dat nogal wat moeite. Overigens heb ik als kind drie jaar in Brussel gewoond (1959-61) en was later ongetelde keren voor mijn werk in Tienen. België is dus een deel van mijn leven. Sinds 1962 leef ik in Zwitserland.
Marie Kuijken Many thanks for your response to RS which addressed almost all the points I might have raised myself about this production which I enjoyed very much. I think this is a wonderful repertoire choice and it was fantastic to see the young musicians and singers given an opportunity to tackle some very fine music. I was particularly pleased to see that the opera will be performed complete in 2021 and hopefully with adequate rehearsal time, one or two of the inevitable little quibbles I might have had here will be eradicated. It seems churlish to criticise, but I really found the background fussing around very distracting whilst Sandrina was delivering ‘E la pompa un grand’ imbroglio’, perhaps the best known aria of the opera. I also think that with further rehearsal time, this set-piece aria can be spectacular and that in the 18th century, it would have been delivered with total focus on the singer. It seems unfair to pick on one small point in the midst of such a wonderful effort by so many young people, but for me, that aria is one of several highlights to which I always look forward in this work; I offer a viewpoint for you to consider or not! The quality of the singing was superb given the time constraints, it must have been an inspiring fortnight. Sincere thanks and congratulations to everyone involved.
Robert Spruijtenburg As ever, you have left me with very little to say, though I have added one small criticism in my reply to MK above! What a marvellous effort by everyone concerned, I thoroughly enjoyed the performance and it was interesting that the use of such a small orchestra revealed several details in the orchestral accompaniment that I had hitherto not noticed.
Here is how I translated it: Oh che gusto | Oh, what delight! Se mi tocca a veder questo vecchiaccio | If I get to see this old man sputar bava dalla bocca, arrabbiarsi, arrapinar | foaming at the mouth, raging, fuming... La marchesa cuciniera quando alfin si scoprirà | The marchioness, the cook, when it's finally revealed... che gridar, che brutta cera | What yelling, that ashen face Quell stregone che farà? | What will that old wizard do? Io mi credo dalle risa già d'avermi a sbellicar | I believe I'll die of laughter, that I'll burst
![ILLSLICK - KILLSHOT REMIX [FULL VERSION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RIK8RrqIAzE/mqdefault.jpg)
Formidable ! Une telle jeunesse pour ressusciter ces œuvres qui méritent mieux que l’oubli
Bravo bravo et merci .
This is an exquisitely delightful performance from beginning to end of Haydn's "L'Infedeltà delusa" ("Infedelity outwitted"). The singers are superb, also as actors, the most versatile in response to the many facets of her role being Gabrielle Varbetian as Vespina (= "Little Wasp"): a real joy!
Likewise, the young musicians of the Conservatoires of Lyon and Paris, under the expert leadership of veteran Sigiswald Kuijken, are very expert and motivated. The orchestral colors are superb (the violins less so, however, they sound rather thin): due to the small ensemble of just 16 the wind instruments are very prominent, with beautiful effect (there are some challenging horn parts, as so often with Haydn). Especially the strong bass group contributes a decisive impulse to the nervous forward drive of the music. It's interesting that a seating arrangement has been chosen that is similar to the one known from several paintings of the period, i.e. with the musicians sitting facing each other in two parallel rows in front of the stage. On those historical pictures, however, the continuo group with the cembalo (and thus the "conductor") is placed to the left, whereas in this performance Sigiswald Kuijken is sitting in the middle, directly facing the stage (without any doubt a sensible decision), with the cembalo and the cello at the left as usual in Haydn's time, but with the rest of the continuo group (double-bass and the two (!) bassoons) at the right end.
All this is utterly enjoyable. All the more to be regretted, however, are the extensive cuts which have been made in the score. Missing, in particular, are the following numbers (act 1):
n°9, Aria of Vespina "Come piglia si bene la mira", Scena 4 (she confesses her love for Nencio)
n°12, Aria of Nencio "Chi s'impaccia di moglie cittadina", Scena 6 (he sings a serenade under Sandrina's window)
n°13, Recitativo "È qui l'amico" with Vespina, Nanni, Filippo, Nencio and Sandrina
n°14, Finale "O piglia questa", a quintet with all five characters.
Act 1 ends at 51'00". The cuts listed above amount to a total of 22-and-a-half minutes of music, which is close to 40% of the 1st act.
Act 2 starts at 1°03'12". The following numbers have been cut (ca. 6 min of music):
n°23, Recitativo "Vieni, sbrigati Nanni" with Vespina and Nanni, Scena 6
n°24, Aria "Ho tesa la rete" of Vespina ("I've spread the net")
Instead, instrumental pieces have been included not all of which are part of the opera:
- During the change of scene after Nanni's aria n°8, Scena 3, starting at 42'45", the orchestra plays an excerpt from the music to Vespina's aria (n°9) which itself has been cut (see above).
- Between the two acts three instrumental pieces foreign to this opera are included. The first insertion is the Andantino from the Overture to Haydn's opera "L'Incontro improvviso" (1775; i.e. the 3rd part of that Overture), unfortunatley, however, in a soporific tempo: obviously, as its designation expresses ("a little Andante"), an Andantino should have a light character. To my taste Manfred Huss' much more fluent tempo on his complete recording of Haydn's Overtures fits the character of the piece better (BIS-CD-1818, 2009). Then follows the Presto from the Overture to "L'Incontro improvviso" (i.e. its 2nd part). Unfortunately, here too, the exceptionally aggressive character of this D major overture is totally lost without the trumpets and "Turkish" percussion instruments of the original score. Again, what it can sound like is to be heard to magnificent effect on Manfred Huss' recording of Haydn's complete Overtures ("L'Incontro improvviso" is based on a story similar to Mozart's "Entführung" which, however, was composed 7 years later). The 3rd insertion is the slow movement of symphony n° 26, "Lamentatione" (1768), which doesn't make any sense in this context.
- Instead of n°23 and n°24 in act 2 the Andantino from the Overture to "L'Incontro improvviso" is repeated. The opera continues at 1°38'09" with the Recitativo n°25, Scena 8.
In contrast to these cuts, the text of those recitatives which have not been eliminated seems to be complete, whereas in Antal Dorati's recording (1980), it's the recitatives which have often been stripped-down, sometimes drastically so.
L'Infedeltà delusa has been composed in 1773 and premiered at the Eszterhaza opera house on July 26 of that year, and was repeated there on September 1 in the presence of none less then Empress Maria Theresia. In modern times the opera has been resuscitated in Budapest in 1959 during the Haydn Congress, and in 1963 at the Holland Festival on the initiative of H. C. Robbins Landon and the artistic director Peter Diamand. According to Robbins Landon, "L'Infedeltà delusa" has been Haydn's most successful opera in modern times from a commercial point of view. This was true at least till 1999, when Robbins Landon wrote his memoirs "Horns in High C".
As I have already written as a comment to Haydn's "La Canterina" by the same group (2016; th-cam.com/video/y1AO8J933Dg/w-d-xo.html), it is to be hoped that further Haydn operas will be staged at the Paris Conservatoire when performances will again be possible after the Corona crisis. Also available on TH-cam by the Conservatoire de Paris is "Il Mondo della Luna", in another venue and with another conductor (March 2019): th-cam.com/video/D23HrRIF3Jw/w-d-xo.html.
Dear Robert Spruijtenburg, this is Marie Kuijken anwering to your lovely comment. Being it me, as stage director of this production, who has decided the cuts in the opera, I can explain them to you. The production is a students' project with a limited time frame for rehearsals. In just 11 days' time we have gone from the first rehearsal up to the general rehearsal!! The whole production could not exceed two weeks, performances included. So to cut this opera was a necessity: not more then more or less 80 minutes of the opera itself could be effectively learned by the singers and staged during the short (very intense) rehearsal period. For instance, due to complexity, it was not thinkable to include both finales: that would have been too time-consuming in this context... so the first finale, logically together with the scenes working towards it, had to "fall". Moreover, some aria's of Vespina have indeed been cut out, to come to a more or less equal amount of scenes and especially arias pro singer in this context of a students' production, whereas in the opera as it is, Vespina has many more arias then all other characters. So the big cuts that have been made for this project are NOT thought as necessary cuts generally, but they are an obliged choice in the context of the students' productions of the Conservatoire.
Indeed, as you rightly observe, to the other hand nearly no cuts have been made in the recitatives that are included: this is an artistical choice. For me as singer, singer's coach and stage director, the recitativos in 18th century opera are essential, they are the moments of action, wit and dialogue between the singing actors, they are absolutely fantastic! So nearly no cuts there, and a maximum of attention to their performance, working really in depth and details on the text prosody, expressivity, intentions and reactions of the characters, and a staging that reflects and uses everything the libretto and score are offering.
We had also to invent a break for the singers that would not be a break for public, hence including some instrumental music of Haydn while the singers could rest and change. The production has had performances also in the historical theatre Blossac in Châtellerault, where we've been able to use the two historical sceneries, and during the change of the sceneries we also needed this extra instrumental music.
As for the disposition of the orchestra, we choose to experiment the 18th century tradition. Of course, Sigiswald leading from the violin and not from the cembalo, he needed to be in the best position for contact with the singers.
Many considerations...leading to this final result, where yes the opera has been shortened, but the storyline is understandable. La Petite Bande is planning to do this same production in 2021, and in that case there will be no cuts :)
@@mariekuijken7903Dear Mrs. Kuijken, It is a great honour for me that you make the effort to write a personal comment to me. Thank you!
That’s exactly what I had understood: that you had to take into account the rehearsal time and the abilities of the student singers. Eleven days for the entire preparation is indeed extremely challenging, the sheer effort of memorizing the roles, i.e. the text, the music and the acting. One knows that at Eszterhaza Haydn’s singers in average had three weeks to learn a new opera, and there were up to 125 opera performances in one year (1786)! And that the student singers needed rests in between is absolutely understandable. Of them one cannot expect, of course, what Constanze has to perform in Mozart’s “Entführung”, i.e. to be on stage for 20 minutes in a row in order to deliver two of the most difficult arias. Especially Vespina has a heavy load with FOUR arias in the original score against the two each of the other characters, besides the long recitatives in which she has the lion’s share too. I found Gabrielle Varbetian absolutely superb, both as a singer and as an actress, and I hope that one day she will break through on the international stage.
Apart from this you can’t believe how much I appreciate the result of your coaching with regard to how elegantly the characters move on the stage, up to their hands and fingertips, and with regard to the extremely lively performance of the recitatives (in Dorati's recording they don't "speak", apart from having been heavily cut). And you can’t believe neither how much my wife and I suffer from the “crimes” committed by the majority of today’s stage directors vis-à-vis the masterworks of the opera repertoire, using the plot to invent their own stories as an “ego-trip” instead of studying carefully and in depth the score and the librettos with all their subtle implications and unmistakable stage directions. The result is that we have stopped going to the opera, which per se is a shame.
Will the uncut 2021 performance of "L’Infedeltà Delusa” be posted on TH-cam too? H.C. Robbins Landon considers it to be Haydn's most successful opera, and one has practically never the opportunity to see and hear it. It's highly regrettable that since Dorati's pioneering recordings of the 1980-ies so few modern, i.e. historically informed performances of Haydn's operas have been recorded: they are badly needed.
On my “wish-list” would be that you consider one day to stage at the Conservatoire the Paris Haydn’s “Le Pescatrici” (1769/70). There would be, however, several challenges: first it is Haydn’s only true ensemble opera (7 ensembles in total), and second, it’s incomplete, but H.C. Robbins Landon has prepared a version that can be staged, and which was produced with great success in 1965 and 1966 at the Holland Festival and Edinburgh Festival. Unfortunately, there is only one mediocre version on CD of this opera by a Lithuanian group conducted by Olga Géczy (2009). So a performance which does real justice to this refreshing and endearing opera is very highly desirable.
Ik had U dit alles ook in het Nederlands kunnen schrijven, maar daar ik intussen meer dan 60 jaar uit het land ben en ik nauwelijks nog gelegenheid heb de taal te spreken en te schrijven, kost mij dat nogal wat moeite. Overigens heb ik als kind drie jaar in Brussel gewoond (1959-61) en was later ongetelde keren voor mijn werk in Tienen. België is dus een deel van mijn leven. Sinds 1962 leef ik in Zwitserland.
Marie Kuijken Many thanks for your response to RS which addressed almost all the points I might have raised myself about this production which I enjoyed very much.
I think this is a wonderful repertoire choice and it was fantastic to see the young musicians and singers given an opportunity to tackle some very fine music.
I was particularly pleased to see that the opera will be performed complete in 2021 and hopefully with adequate rehearsal time, one or two of the inevitable little quibbles I might have had here will be eradicated. It seems churlish to criticise, but I really found the background fussing around very distracting whilst Sandrina was delivering ‘E la pompa un grand’ imbroglio’, perhaps the best known aria of the opera. I also think that with further rehearsal time, this set-piece aria can be spectacular and that in the 18th century, it would have been delivered with total focus on the singer.
It seems unfair to pick on one small point in the midst of such a wonderful effort by so many young people, but for me, that aria is one of several highlights to which I always look forward in this work; I offer a viewpoint for you to consider or not! The quality of the singing was superb given the time constraints, it must have been an inspiring fortnight.
Sincere thanks and congratulations to everyone involved.
Robert Spruijtenburg As ever, you have left me with very little to say, though I have added one small criticism in my reply to MK above!
What a marvellous effort by everyone concerned, I thoroughly enjoyed the performance and it was interesting that the use of such a small orchestra revealed several details in the orchestral accompaniment that I had hitherto not noticed.
pas de sous titres
A me piacerebbe sottotitoli in italiano!
Could someone please translate for me the aria O che gusto? (1:31:27)
Here is how I translated it:
Oh che gusto | Oh, what delight!
Se mi tocca a veder questo vecchiaccio | If I get to see this old man
sputar bava dalla bocca, arrabbiarsi, arrapinar | foaming at the mouth, raging, fuming...
La marchesa cuciniera quando alfin si scoprirà | The marchioness, the cook, when it's finally revealed...
che gridar, che brutta cera | What yelling, that ashen face
Quell stregone che farà? | What will that old wizard do?
Io mi credo dalle risa già d'avermi a sbellicar | I believe I'll die of laughter, that I'll burst
11.53 ouverture