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MASCAGNI: Parisina.(Review)
MASCAGNI: Parisina
[] Mazzola, Demurishvili, Brioli; Taraschenko, Vaneev, Ivanov; Latvian Radio Chorus, Montpellier Philharmonic, Diemecke. Italian/French libretto only Actes Sud OMA-34103 (3) (Harmonia Mundi, dist.)
Parisina (1913), listed by Grove as the twelfth of Mascagni's seventeen operas, is the most ambitious and seriously "artistic," revealing unsuspected facets of the composer's sensibilities. Having already tried symbolic and poetic theater in Iris (1898), with mixed results, the composer was now collaborating with Gabriele d'Annunzio, whose passion for music made him eager to write operas as well as plays. D'Annunzio's text for Parisina has many of the requisite elements for effective musical setting, but in the long run -- in this case, that's the correct term -- it suffers from a fatal affection for the sound of one's own words.
D'Annunzio took a story that had been treated by Byron (1816) and made into an opera by Donizetti (1833); it concerns a woman who has been forced to marry an older man, only to fall in love with her husband's son. D'Annunzio had treated a similar motif in Fedra (1909), made into an opera by Ildebrando Pizzetti (1913); earlier, though, the writer had determined to bend this tale into a sequel to his Francesca da Rimini, building a proposed trilogy about the Malatesta family. The problem, in the stories of both Francesca and Parisina, is that very little happens; and what does happen is virtually the same in both cases.
Obliged to contend with mood and emotion rather than events, Mascagni gave his best effort to matching the poetic flights of D'Annunzio's text. The result is a score saturated with color and atmosphere. Though the core is one of Romanticism and intense sensuality, there is considerable variety in the music. The antiphonal hunting horns at the first arrival of Parisina's husband, Nicola d'Este, were scored by someone who knew his Gabrieli; and the end of Act I, stroked by a quietly voluptuous solo viola, is magical. In Act II, a lush introduction ...
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