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2There’a an antique joke set at the old Metropolitan Opera House—the scruffy venue just below Times Square—in which a couple of horn players are honking their lungs out in the overheated, cramped orchestra pit, lumbering through the fifth hour of Richard Wagner’s immense masterwork Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. At a momentary pause, one yells to the other over the orchestral din, “Tell me, did Wagner write any other comic operas?” I have to admit that’s what I was thinking just before the performance started Sunday afternoon of Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra at The Performing Arts Center of Purchase College. Word spread through the lobby that the opera, a presentation by Teatro Nuovo, would last almost four hours including a single intermission. Wait, four hours? For a trifling comedy about a servant girl who is arrested for pilfering a silver spoon? (And she’s not even guilty: the flatware was in fact stolen by a bird, the “thieving magpie” of the title.) But, in fact, the afternoon flew by; the hour and 45 minutes first act seemed downright short. And at the end of the marathon, the disappointingly sparse audience stood and cheered.
A Riveting Revival of a Rare Rossini Opera On the evening of Thursday, July 18, 2019, opera lovers excitedly took to their seats for a semi-staged production of Rossini’s rarely performed “La Gazza Ladra” (“The Thieving Magpie”) at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater. The opera was presented by Teatro Nuovo, a fairly new organization which aims to produce “exciting revivals of neglected Bel Canto masterworks alongside freshly re-studied interpretations of familiar ones.” “La Gazza Ladra,” which fits into the transitional genre of opera semiseria, tells the nearly-tragic story of young servant Ninetta, mistakenly convicted on the charge of domestic theft of her employers’ silver cutlery and sentenced to public execution. Her saving grace was the last-minute discovery of the real culprit, the family’s Magpie, eager to decorate his nest with pilfered shiny objects. The Program Note describes the score as “one of Rossini’s richest,” and mentions that the opera “was one of his most popular.” In fact, it is said to be the favorite opera of composer Frédéric Chopin, repeatedly mentioned in his letters and referenced in his music.
