Organization

Boston Early Music Festival

Chorus master

Robert Mealy

Singer

Ryan Began

Faccenda

Baritone

Jesse Blumberg

Tracollo

Caroline Copeland

Fulvia

Soprano

Erica Schuller

Livietta

Stage director

Gilbert Blin

Conductor

Paul O'Dette

Stephen Stubbs

Lighting designer

Lenore Doxsee

Costume designer

Anna Watkins

Choreographer

Melinda Sullivan

Concertmaster

Silent

Carlos Fittante

Vespone

Amanda Forsythe

Serpina

Bass

Douglas Williams

Uberto

Others

Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble

Boston Early Music Festival Vocal Ensemble

Ballet

Boston Early Music Festival Dance Company

italiera

La serva padrona & Livietta e Tracollo

Boston

United States

NEC Jordan Hall

La Serva Padrona & Livietta e Tracollo: Livietta e Tracollo Pergolesi (+1 More)

Public

The Maid Turned Mistress

"Livietta and Tracollo"

ingelesa

Approved

La serva padrona & Livietta e Tracollo: La serva padrona Pergolesi (+1 More)

Amanda Forsythe (Serpina) with Douglas Williams (Uberto) and Carlos Fittante (Vespone). Paul O'Dette & Stephen Stubbs, Musical Directors; Gilbert Blin, Stage Director; Anna Watkins, Costume Designer; Lenore Doxsee, Lighting Designer; Melinda Sullivan, Movement Coordinator; Robert Mealy, Concertmaster.

Video by Kathy Wittman | Ball Square Films

"Ah, Serpina" from Pergolesi La serva padrona (REUPLOAD)

Pergolesi’s comic operas sound remarkably modern—which is to say, like Mozart. Recognizably human characters go through recognizable experiences, singing out their feelings very directly, which the music embodies in fluidly changing tempos and moods, stretching of harmony, changes of key and orchestral color. Much is accomplished through musically creative recitative—a half-spoken way of proceeding—as well as through song proper and duets (there are only two singers in each of these operas, though also some designated silent performers, to which this production added a few dancers). It is like Mozart, but sets the procedure for opera ever since, even Verdi’s with their heroic figures, Wagner’s with their gods and goddesses, Berg or Britten with their neurotics. Characters live, feel, and think—and sing—and the music moves quickly and supply and thinks, as it were, with them.

La serva padrona, premiered in Naples in 1733, became a classic and a cause célèbre of mid-century Europe, widely performed, stimulating interest in human comedy in opera, championed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other forward-thinking intellectuals, disturbing to traditionalists who favored the old style of serious, ritualistic opera based on mythology and ancient history. Here a modern, well-off, middle-class man, Uberto, mayor of his town, spars with his bright servant girl, Serpina, whom he has brought up, and who in the course of the opera cons him into marrying her, which is his deep desire, in fact, which he has to be brought to acknowledge. Light-voiced soprano Amanda Forsythe sang Serpina with great focus and fine articulation, a sparkle always in her eyes. She radiated both conniving intelligence and true warmth of feeling. Bass-baritone Douglas Williams is a tall, handsome figure with a splendid voice—very strong low notes and an even, attractive sound all the way up the scale. He played Uberto projecting his frustrations, dismay, and longings very believably. He was costumed with an unbecoming potbelly, but could have used some additional aging makeup—greying hair or lines in the face. He seemed hardly older than Serpina, and there is a delicious father-daughter incestuous dynamic at play in this work, as well as master-servant issue. —For the most part the costuming for both operas, by Anna Watkins, was appropriate, colorful, inventive—a pleasure to see and enjoy.

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