Cimarosa: La Finta Parigina.

[] Gemmabella, Sparacio, Sunseri, Ramini; Battiato, Bellavia, Cutolo, Gambina, Galli; Franco Ferrara Philharmonic, Lombardini. Text and translation. Bongiovanni GB -2269/71 (3) (Qualiton, dist.)

Though best remembered for Il Matrimonio Segreto, the fifty-third of his sixty-eight (!) operas, Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801) was a major contributor to Neapolitan opera, a genre of dialect comedy very popular in his day. At the early end of his output comes his second opera, La Finta Parigina, which had its premiere in Naples in 1773. This type of comedy depends on character playing--the sillier and more eccentric the better, with a spate of folkloric types embroiled in a ridiculously contrived plot. The Neapolitan dialect itself was an extra source of humor for audiences who spoke "regular" Italian.

Even so early in his career, Cimarosa had expert control over his medium. For instance, he constructs a mock duel scene via instrumentally accompanied recitative, its cantabile lines gradually developing into an ensemble. Like Boccherini, Cimarosa wrote in an idiom akin to Mozart's but less complex, notably in the finales. He aimed for a broader, less sophisticated audience; but the humor, spiced with puns and other linguistic gags, can develop an intricacy of its own. The prima donna of La Finta Parigina sings in pseudo-French, posing as a Parisian lady to disguise herself from her estranged husband, who thinks he accidentally killed her a while back. Later, disguised as a fortune-teller, she befuddles him further; but, this being a comedy, they're eventually reconciled.

The recorded sound of the Bongiovanni album, taken live from an Opera-laboratorio stage performance at the Teatro Politeamo in Palermo, belies its recent date of origin, October 1999. Although the orchestra in the overture starts out sounding archivally tubby, the voices are reproduced well enough, and one soon transfers one's anxieties to the sometimes scrappy orchestral execution. Still, under Danilo Lombardini's baton, things move along at a peppy clip, and the performers enjoy themselves, livening up the recitatives as the plot thickens. An opera-loving tourist would count himself lucky to stumble upon a provincial ...