Pergolesi: Lo Frate 'nnamorato.(Video Recording Review)

Focile, Felle, Manca di Nissa, d'Intino, Norberg-Schulz, Curiel; Corbelli, Di Cesare, B. De Simone; La Scala, Muti. Opus Arte DVD OA LS3005 D (Naxos, dist.), 175 mins.

Lo Frate 'nnamorato, a full-length opera buffa by Pergolesi, a composer better known for La Serva Padrona, is the survivor of a once popular school with a very local appeal, and it is therefore difficult for modern audiences to "get." So much of the fun is topical or apparent parody of unknown originals that we must take many jokes on faith, far more than we do with Mozart or Rossini--or even Monteverdi. A paragraph or two in the DVD program booklet--there must have been articles in the program for these 1989 La Scala performances--might have helped set us straight, but though it contains the entire libretto (untranslated), plus an English synopsis, there is not a word of background.

Lo Frate seems to be a takeoff of opera seria, of which Naples was, in 1732, the acknowledged center. (Nearly all the castratos trained in Naples.) Thus, instead of disputatious and amorous monarchs, we are faced with two middle-class households of marriage-minded males and unwilling females, and a plot that advances, if that is the word, by a series of formal arias in which the singers spoof grand tragic attitudes. (Perhaps the original performers parodied the style of popular singers of the day.) As for the story: three idiots want to ...