Martina Franca. (International).(Review)

Deep in the heel of the boot of Italy, the city of Martina Franca is a baroque jewel. A touch provincial (though once the seat of a dukedom), it has for the past twenty-seven summers hosted the Festival della Valle d'Itria, prized for operatic fare as far off the beaten track as is the location. For the past eight years, the reins have been in the hands of Sergio Segalini, editor of Opera International (Paris) and author of numerous important books on operatic subjects. Staged in the modestly scaled, acoustically bewitching courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale, this summer's offerings as usual reflected journeys deep, deep in the archives. First up were Gounod's La Reine de Saba and Donizetti's La Zingara, both history by the time I arrived for Rossini's Ivanhoe (1819).

Ivanhoe? Well, in a chapter of Rossini's career ignored by Grove, it seems that the composer, once established in Paris, produced a series of French bel-cantesque operas comiques, with spoken dialogue. These forgotten works belonged to the category of "pastiche," or patchworks, cannibalized from existing scores. The first of them, Ivanhoe (loosely based on the novel by Walter Scott), integrates excerpts from Semiramide, La Cenerentola, La Gazza Ladra and several other Rossini operas -- but also anticipates the famous gallop from the overture of Guillaume Tell. Later on, Rossini's personal involvement in pastiches that bore his name may well have been minimal, but Ivanhoe was to be his calling card in a new and potentially lucrative market, and as such it seems to have received his full attention. In fact, it went down as Rossini's only true hit with the French public. Subsequent productions brought the work to Strasbourg, Ghent, Lille, Dublin, London (Covent Garden), New York and Philadelphia.

To contemporary taste, the action of Ivanhoe may seem dated and adolescent. The ...