Customer Reviews

Cesti: Le disgrazie d' Amore

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Recommended for all. This is that rare thing in baroque opera--a delightful, mirth-filled romp. Cesti, a contemporary of Cavalli, was a well-traveled post-Monteverdian composer who'd seen a lot and heard a lot in seicento Europe. He wrote this work late in his career (1667) when the new art of opera was beginning to get some pushback from the Catholic Church for its glorification of pagan mythology. Librettists and composers cleverly solved this problem by (as here in "Le disgrazie...") not dropping mythology as a subject matter per se, but rather satirizing it--thus getting to have their cake and eat it too. Here the Olympian deities suffer from all-too-human foibles: endless squabbling, clumsy lusting, and petty jealousy and greed--not in the classical Hellenistic way of mirroring the human condition, but more like Shakespeare's low characters. In other words, what we have here is a kind of early baroque, gentle opera buffa. It seems like a road that one might naturally expect Italian composers to go down--but a road that would be ignored later by the weightier tradition of opera seria.

The story (by librettist Francesco Sbarra) begins with husband-and-wife Vulcan and Venus, the victims of a forced marriage, in an argument worthy of Ralph and Alice Kramden, Cupid steps in to try to mediate, but this merely causes both husband and wife to turn on him. The little love god is eventually annoyed enough to bite the ear of Vulcan. After this affront, he's chased off. At this point, much of the rest of the story follows Cupid's travels in search of a way to heal the marriage. He encounters a variety of mythological and allegorical characters, all replete with some sort of weakness or human failing, and many providing Cesti and Sbarra opportunities for sly comments on contemporary social mores. Finally, conceding that he'll never get the couple to actually love each other, Cupid returns with the allegorical figure of Friendship, whose conciliation is the best that can be hoped for between the fiery blacksmith and his goddess-of-beauty wife.

Cesti ended his career in triumph, as the Vice Kapellmeister to the Imperial Court in Vienna, where this opera was premiered. The imperial appointment allowed for luxurious productions: large expert casts, expensive sets, costumes, and stage machinery, and dance. It's easy to imagine the production here, by Auser Musici led by Carlo Ipata, in such a staging. The all-Italian ensemble gives a spirited performance completely worthy of this material. I found occasional vocal weaknesses here and there but....so what. This doesn't affect at all the delightfulness of this set. Double-CD jewel in slipcase with libretto in Italian and English.