Mese mariano
Encyclopedia
Mese mariano is an opera
in one act by Umberto Giordano
. Its Italian libretto
by Salvatore Di Giacomo
was adapted from his play O Mese Mariano, which was in turn adapted from his novella
, Senza vederlo (Without Seeing Him). It premiered at the Teatro Massimo
in Palermo
on 17 March 1910. The opera is described as a bozzetto lirico (lyric sketch) and has a running time of only 35 minutes. It tells the story of a woman who visits an orphanage to see her child. Wracked with guilt at having abandoned him, she is unaware that he had died the night before.
on 20 January 1900. Giordano, who had seen the play in Milan
, was deeply touched by it and asked Di Giacomo to adapt it for an opera. Di Giacomo accepted and agreed to make some changes from the original drama. The setting of the opening scene which allowed Giordano to include a children's chorus was changed to the sunny courtyard in the orphanage with views of the Neapolitan landscape in the distance. The roles of the nuns also became more prominent, making the opera largely one of female voices. In this respect and in terms of its plot, Giordano's work pre-figures Puccini's Suor Angelica
which was composed some seven years later.
in Palermo on 17 March 1910 conducted by Leopoldo Mugnone
with Livia Berlendi in the leading role of Carmela. It was warmly received both in Palermo and in Rome where it was performed a month later at the Teatro Costanzi. On that occasion it was conducted by Pietro Mascagni
and presented as a double bill with his Cavalleria rusticana
. Emma Carelli
sang the role of Carmela.
However, when the opera was first performed in Naples (10 April 1911 at the Teatro San Carlo), it was not a critical success, and Giordano and Di Giacomo further revised the work in 1913. Although Mascagni considered it one of Giordano's best operas, Mese Mariano never achieved the same success as Di Giacomo's play or as Giordano's other (longer) operas, Andrea Chénier
and Fedora.
Even in Italy, performances following its initial runs in 1910 and 1911 have been sporadic. Mese Mariano received its first performance in Turin
in 1937 at the Teatro Carignano (in a double bill with Hänsel und Gretel), and in Venice
in 1949 at La Fenice
(in a double bill with Le jongleur de Notre-Dame
). Its US premiere did not come until 1955, when it was presented at Carnegie Hall
in New York. There have been a few late 20th century revivals including those in 1992 at the Teatro del Giglio in Lucca
and the Teatro Pergolesi
in Jesi
and the 1998 performance at the Festival della Valle d'Itria
where it was paired with another now-forgotten opera by Giordano, Il re
. In addition to Livia Berlendi and Emma Carelli, notable sopranos who have sung the role of Carmela include Clara Petrella
, Magda Olivero
and Patrizia Ciofi
.
It is Easter Sunday and the children are playing and singing as they await the arrival of the Contessa, one of the benefactors of the orphanage. When she arrives, they serenade her as she distributes gifts to them. One of the children, Valentina, then reads a sonnet
written in the Contessa's honour by Don Fabbiano. After the Contessa leaves and the children have been led to their rooms, Carmela enters the courtyard bringing a freshly baked Easter cake for her little boy and asks Suor Pazienza if she might see him. Carmela recognizes the nun as her old childhood friend. Overcome with guilt, she tells Suor Pazienza and the Mother Superior how she had been seduced and abandoned as a young girl and left with a son to bring up on her own. She eventually married a worker who refused to have the child of another man in his house and forced her to leave him in the orphanage. Carmela then goes into the chapel to pray. While she is gone some of the nuns arrive to tell the Mother Superior that Carmela's son had died in the night. The Mother Superior decides not to tell her, explaining instead that child cannot see her because he is with the choir practicing for the Mary's Month celebrations. Carmela leaves the orphanage in tears.
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
in one act by Umberto Giordano
Umberto Giordano
Umberto Menotti Maria Giordano was an Italian composer, mainly of operas.He was born in Foggia in Puglia, southern Italy, and studied under Paolo Serrao at the Conservatoire of Naples...
. Its Italian libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
by Salvatore Di Giacomo
Salvatore Di Giacomo
Salvatore Di Giacomo was a Neapolitan poet, songwriter and playwright.Di Giacomo is credited as being one of those responsible for renewing Neapolitan dialect poetry at the beginning of the 20th century...
was adapted from his play O Mese Mariano, which was in turn adapted from his novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
, Senza vederlo (Without Seeing Him). It premiered at the Teatro Massimo
Teatro Massimo
The Teatro Massimo Vittorio Emanuele is an opera house and opera company located on the Piazza Verdi in Palermo, Sicily. It was dedicated to King Victor Emanuel II....
in Palermo
Palermo
Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
on 17 March 1910. The opera is described as a bozzetto lirico (lyric sketch) and has a running time of only 35 minutes. It tells the story of a woman who visits an orphanage to see her child. Wracked with guilt at having abandoned him, she is unaware that he had died the night before.
Composition history
The play which forms the basis for the libretto was immensely popular in its day. Written in Neapolitan dialect, it was first performed at the Teatro San Fernando in NaplesNaples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
on 20 January 1900. Giordano, who had seen the play in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, was deeply touched by it and asked Di Giacomo to adapt it for an opera. Di Giacomo accepted and agreed to make some changes from the original drama. The setting of the opening scene which allowed Giordano to include a children's chorus was changed to the sunny courtyard in the orphanage with views of the Neapolitan landscape in the distance. The roles of the nuns also became more prominent, making the opera largely one of female voices. In this respect and in terms of its plot, Giordano's work pre-figures Puccini's Suor Angelica
Suor Angelica
Suor Angelica is an opera in one act by Giacomo Puccini to an original Italian libretto by Giovacchino Forzano. It is the second opera of the trio of operas known as Il trittico...
which was composed some seven years later.
Performance history
Mese Mariano premiered at the Teatro MassimoTeatro Massimo
The Teatro Massimo Vittorio Emanuele is an opera house and opera company located on the Piazza Verdi in Palermo, Sicily. It was dedicated to King Victor Emanuel II....
in Palermo on 17 March 1910 conducted by Leopoldo Mugnone
Leopoldo Mugnone
Leopoldo Mugnone was an Italian conductor, especially of opera, whose most famous work was done in the period 1890-1920, both in Europe and South America...
with Livia Berlendi in the leading role of Carmela. It was warmly received both in Palermo and in Rome where it was performed a month later at the Teatro Costanzi. On that occasion it was conducted by Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music...
and presented as a double bill with his Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...
. Emma Carelli
Emma Carelli
Emma Carelli was an Italian operatic soprano who was particularly associated with the dramatic soprano roles of the verisimo repertoire and the works of Richard Wagner....
sang the role of Carmela.
However, when the opera was first performed in Naples (10 April 1911 at the Teatro San Carlo), it was not a critical success, and Giordano and Di Giacomo further revised the work in 1913. Although Mascagni considered it one of Giordano's best operas, Mese Mariano never achieved the same success as Di Giacomo's play or as Giordano's other (longer) operas, Andrea Chénier
Andrea Chénier
Andrea Chénier is a verismo opera in four acts by the composer Umberto Giordano, set to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica. It is based loosely on the life of the French poet, André Chénier , who was executed during the French Revolution....
and Fedora.
Even in Italy, performances following its initial runs in 1910 and 1911 have been sporadic. Mese Mariano received its first performance in Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
in 1937 at the Teatro Carignano (in a double bill with Hänsel und Gretel), and in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
in 1949 at La Fenice
La Fenice
Teatro La Fenice is an opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of the most famous theatres in Europe, the site of many famous operatic premieres. Its name reflects its role in permitting an opera company to "rise from the ashes" despite losing the use of two theatres...
(in a double bill with Le jongleur de Notre-Dame
Le jongleur de Notre-Dame
Le jongleur de Notre-Dame is an opera in three acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Maurice Léna. It was first performed in Monte Carlo on 18 February 1902.-History:...
). Its US premiere did not come until 1955, when it was presented at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
in New York. There have been a few late 20th century revivals including those in 1992 at the Teatro del Giglio in Lucca
Lucca
Lucca is a city and comune in Tuscany, central Italy, situated on the river Serchio in a fertile plainnear the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Lucca...
and the Teatro Pergolesi
Teatro Pergolesi
The Teatro Comunale Pergolesi is an opera house in Jesi, Italy. It was originally named the Teatro della Concordia when it was the rival to the original 1732 opera house in the city, the Teatro del Leone...
in Jesi
Jesi
thumb|250px|Teatro Pergolesi.Iesi is a town and comune of the province of Ancona in the Marche, Italy.It is an important industrial and artistic center in the floodplain on the left bank of the Esino river before its mouth on the Adriatic Sea.-History:Iesi was one of the last towns of the Umbri...
and the 1998 performance at the Festival della Valle d'Itria
Festival della Valle d'Itria
The Festival della Valle d’Itria is a summer opera festival held in the south eastern Italian town of Martina Franca in the Apulia region. The Festival was founded in 1975 and performances are given in July and August each summer on a specially constructed stage in the outdoor courtyard of the...
where it was paired with another now-forgotten opera by Giordano, Il re
Il re
Il re is a novella or opera in one act and three scenes by composer Umberto Giordano to an Italian libretto by Giovacchino Forzano. The opera premiered at La Scala in Milan on 12 January 1929.-Performance history:...
. In addition to Livia Berlendi and Emma Carelli, notable sopranos who have sung the role of Carmela include Clara Petrella
Clara Petrella
Clara Petrella was an Italian operatic soprano, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, an outstanding singing-actress nicknamed the "Duse of Singers"....
, Magda Olivero
Magda Olivero
Magda Olivero is a soprano of the verismo-school of singing. She was born in Saluzzo, Italy. Olivero made her operatic debut in 1932 on Turin radio in Cattozzo’s oratorio I misteri dolorosi. She performed widely and increasingly successfully until 1941, when she married and retired from performing...
and Patrizia Ciofi
Patrizia Ciofi
Patrizia Ciofi, born in Casole d'Elsa, Siena, on June 7, 1967, is an Italian operatic soprano. She is married to the conductor Luciano Acocella....
.
Roles
| Role | Voice type | Premiere Cast, 17 March 1910 (Conductor: Leopoldo Mugnone Leopoldo Mugnone Leopoldo Mugnone was an Italian conductor, especially of opera, whose most famous work was done in the period 1890-1920, both in Europe and South America... ) |
|---|---|---|
| Carmela | soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody... |
Livia Berlendi |
| Madre Superiora Abbess An abbess is the female superior, or mother superior, of a community of nuns, often an abbey.... |
mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above... |
Maria De Loris |
| Suor Nun A nun is a woman who has taken vows committing her to live a spiritual life. She may be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live her life in prayer and contemplation in a monastery or convent... Pazienza |
mezzo-soprano | Rosa Garavaglia |
| La Contessa Count A count or countess is an aristocratic nobleman in European countries. The word count came into English from the French comte, itself from Latin comes—in its accusative comitem—meaning "companion", and later "companion of the emperor, delegate of the emperor". The adjective form of the word is... |
mezzo-soprano | Vittoria D'Ornelli |
| Suor Cristina | mezzo-soprano | Maria Slacer |
| Suor Celeste | soprano | |
| Suor Maria | soprano | |
| Suor Agnese | soprano | |
| Don Fabbiano, the Rector | baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or... |
Gennaro Curci |
| Valentina, a child | soprano | |
| Pietro, a sailor | tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2... or baritone |
Arturo Romboli |
| Children, nuns, servants, and street vendors | ||
Synopsis
- Time: 19th century
- Setting: an orphanage in Naples
It is Easter Sunday and the children are playing and singing as they await the arrival of the Contessa, one of the benefactors of the orphanage. When she arrives, they serenade her as she distributes gifts to them. One of the children, Valentina, then reads a sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
written in the Contessa's honour by Don Fabbiano. After the Contessa leaves and the children have been led to their rooms, Carmela enters the courtyard bringing a freshly baked Easter cake for her little boy and asks Suor Pazienza if she might see him. Carmela recognizes the nun as her old childhood friend. Overcome with guilt, she tells Suor Pazienza and the Mother Superior how she had been seduced and abandoned as a young girl and left with a son to bring up on her own. She eventually married a worker who refused to have the child of another man in his house and forced her to leave him in the orphanage. Carmela then goes into the chapel to pray. While she is gone some of the nuns arrive to tell the Mother Superior that Carmela's son had died in the night. The Mother Superior decides not to tell her, explaining instead that child cannot see her because he is with the choir practicing for the Mary's Month celebrations. Carmela leaves the orphanage in tears.
Recordings
- Umberto Giordano: Il re and Mese mariano - Orchestra Internazionale d'Italia and Coro del Teatro Petruzzelli, conducted by Renato Palumbo. Recorded live at the Festival della Valle d'ItriaFestival della Valle d'ItriaThe Festival della Valle d’Itria is a summer opera festival held in the south eastern Italian town of Martina Franca in the Apulia region. The Festival was founded in 1975 and performances are given in July and August each summer on a specially constructed stage in the outdoor courtyard of the...
with Patrizia CiofiPatrizia CiofiPatrizia Ciofi, born in Casole d'Elsa, Siena, on June 7, 1967, is an Italian operatic soprano. She is married to the conductor Luciano Acocella....
as Carmela. Label: DynamicDynamic (record label)Dynamic is an Italian independent record label located in Genoa. Founded in 1978, it specialises in classical music and opera, especially rarely performed works and has produced several world premiere recordings...
CDS-231.