Artist

Admin

Bampton Classical Opera

Conductor

Thomas Blunt

Stage director

Jeremy Gray

Singer

Bass-baritone

Jonathan Eyers

Buonafede

Mezzo-soprano

Margo Arsane

Lisetta

Soprano

Iúnó Connolly

Clarice

Siân Dicker

Flaminia

Countertenor

Catherine Backhouse

Ernesto

Tenor

Nathan Vale

Ecclitico

Sam Harris

Cecco

Orchestra

Orchestra of Bampton Classical Opera

Others

English

Il mondo della luna -  (Life on the Moon)

Bampton

United Kingdom

St John's Smith Square

Westonbirt

Westonbirt School Orangery Theatre

Deanery Garden

Il mondo della luna Franz Joseph Haydn

Private

Public

Life on the Moon

Approved

Il mondo della luna Haydn,FJ

Joseph Haydn’s Il mondo della luna, composed in 1777 for a lavish aristocratic wedding at Eszterháza, where the composer was employed, is the best-known of several operatic settings of a delightfully crazy libretto by the great Venetian master of farce, Carlo Goldoni (1707-93).  As Mozart was to do later with Così fan tutte, Haydn was inspired by a bizarre plot of disguise and deception to create a score of refreshing wit and ravishing beauty.

Along with Gluck and Salieri, Bampton Classical Opera has taken particular delight in presenting Haydn opera to new audiences, and Il mondo della luna will be the third of his Goldoni settings to be performed.  It will be sung in a new English translation by Gilly French under the title Fool Moon.  How better to persuade an over-protective but gullible father to allow the marriages of his daughters than to convince him that he has landed on the moon?  The eponymous fool is Buonafede, something of a domestic tyrant, whose feisty daughters Clarice and Flaminia are determined to marry Ecclitico and the chevalier Ernesto, whilst his maid Lisetta is set on the servant Cecco.  Buonafede tries to keep the girls safely away from temptation and, besides, he has his own eye on Lisetta.  Ecclitico, an enterprising astronomer of dubious integrity, develops an elaborate and expensive ploy, pandering to Buonafede’s ignorant enthusiasm for all things lunar.  Ecclitico ingeniously plants the fancy that the moon is inhabited by desirable and appealingly forward young women.  With the help of a potion – conveniently soporific – Buonafede is ‘transported’ to the lunar surface where he meets an indulgent cast of ‘aliens’: his visit is both wondrous and unnerving.  But under the strict command of the Emperor of the Moon, whose face is worrying familiar, lunar marriages can be arranged, as Buonafede discovers to his chagrin…

Haydn was never shy of experimentation with compositional structures and orchestral effects and Il mondo della luna is characteristically varied, tuneful and full of surprises.  As the critic Andrew Porter once wrote: “What Haydn has done is to write page after page of his most lovely and imaginative middle-period music, rich in melting melodies, surprising details of harmony, and subtle orchestral effects.”   The C major overture is grandly symphonic (Haydn recycled it in his Symphony no 63) and introduces the incisive rhythms and vigorous energy which characterise much of the opera.  The opening scene, centred on the all-important telescope, unfolds in wistful serenity as Ecclitico sings a hymn in praise of the moon – the key is E flat, which Haydn adopts to evoke lunar wonder.  There are many gems throughout the score – the sisters seem to foreshadow Fiordiligi and Dorabella in their forthright bravura arias in the second scene, whilst the perky andante for Lisetta will remind Mozart-lovers of Despina.  The extended multi-sectional finales to the acts are magnificent, especially the airy transparency of the Adagio (E flat again) at the end of Act 1, as the doped (and duped) Buonafede imagines being wafted up into outer space.  Dance movements characterise much of the music in Act 2 ‘on the moon’, whilst near the end of the opera is an extended love duet, exquisitely sensuous, for Ecclitico and Clarice.

Those with long memories may recall Bampton Classical Opera’s outer-space setting of The Philosopher’s Stone (music by Mozart and others) in 2001, and the hilarious time-travel of Salieri’s Trofonio’s Cave in 2015.  We’re bound to have fun with Fool Moon – it’s going to be out of this world!

Life on the Moon by Haydn, From (2022/2022), Directed by Jeremy Gray,, Conductor Thomas Blunt, Deanery Garden, Bampton, United Kingdom

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