The return of Zanetto: lesser-known Mascagni
Once upon a time, Cavalleria rusticana was Mascagni's one known opera, and the most imagination we got was to decouple it from Leoncvallo's Pag and tether it to another verismo one-cater. Times are different now: I remember with fondness a performance of Zanetto at Opera Holland Park in 2012, where it appeared with Puccuu's Gianni Schicchi (Patricia Orr was Zanetto; Janice Watson, Silvia).
Zanetto is Mascagni's sixth opera, and premiered in Pesaro in 1896. This performance was live and in concert, at Berlin's Konzerthaus on June 13, 2022, on which occasion its bedfellow was Wolf-Ferrari's Il segreto di Susanna. The Berlin Opera Group seem aligned with outfits such as Opera Holland Park, Opera Rara and so on in their reanimation of lesser-known operas.
For Zanetto, We are in Renaissance Florence for all of 43 minutes: Zanetto is searching of idealised love (Silvia); when he meets her, he misses that he has indeed met what we would these days call, “the one”. Silvia dismisses him, as she cannot live up to the dream.
An off-stage chorus opens; obviously live in Kensington this was highly effective; it still is here, the “Intorduzione” nicely setting up the verismo palette:
It is Silvia who opens the opera vocally, with “Maledetto l'amor!,” the opening strings beautifully phrased and elucidated by conductor Felix Krieger; Narine Yeghiyan (soprano) herself phrases beautifully, enjoying the characteristic swell of Puccini's lines.
The role of Zanettto is actually a mezzo role, a travesti nod back to earlier operatic times, and Yajie Zhang's first aria, "Cuore, come una fiore" is accompanied by "guitar" (harp, but there's an inside front cover of Zhang miming with a guitarra morisca): this is a lovely aria, beautifully despatched by Zhang:
Thenceforth, most of the opera is in duet, a splendid parade of Puccini tropes. Puccini's score flows beautifully and easily. The contrast between characters is stark, what with Zanetto's impulsiveness against Silvia's maturity.
The scoring is transparent and chamber-like (no wonder OHP went for this one!). But when the music crests, the effect is most effective, as are Puccini's harmonic workings - sudden darkenings in response to the text. This section, from "Firenze è la tua meta?" contains both, rather neatly:
Although in my review of the OHP performance I was disparaging about the arias, Krieger, Zhang and Yeghihan make a better case. Krieger has a fine sense of the music's directionality, which means the trajectory to the final moments feels entirely natural, and climactic. Zanetto;'s song which opens (and closes) the opera, is an enclosed song within an opera, and works well therefore to bring a nice sense of symmetry: except, of course, that we hear it very differently, fragile, at the end a valediction, thrown into relief by a dismissive orchestral gesture immediately prior.
This is a fantastic opportunity to appreciate "other" Mascagni, as well as to put Cav into proper context.
This disc is available at Amazon here.
