Programs · Episode

BELLINI: Il Pirata

Program: At the Opera
Aired: Saturday, May 19, 2018 @ 6:00 pm
Hosted by Lisa Simeone

Regarded by many as the first truly Romantic Italian opera, Il Pirata was also Bellini's first indisputable hit, beginning a career that soon saw him threatening Rossini as Italy's most popular opera composer. At The Opera explores the drama in a 1994 recording starring soprano Lucia Aliberti and tenor Stuart Neill, and a 1970 release with Montserrat Caballé and Bernabé Marti.

FEATURED RECORDINGS:

Marcello Viotti, conductor
Chorus and Orchestra of the German Opera, Berlin
CAST: Lucia Aliberti (Imogene); Roberto Frontali (Ernesto); Stuart Neill (Gualtiero); José Guadalupe Reyes (Itulbo); Kelly Anderson (Goffredo); Hermine May (Adele) (Berlin Classics 0011152BC) )

Gianandrea Gavazzeni, conductor
RAI Orchestra and Chorus
CAST: Montserrat Caballé (Imogene); Piero Cappuccilli (Ernesto); Bernabé Martí (Gualtiero); Giuseppe Baratti (Itulbo); Ruggero Raimondi (Goffredo); Flora Rafanelli (Adele)

MORE ABOUT THE OPERA:

Pirates have been around for as long as there have been ships and sailors, and while real life pirates may not have been notably upstanding characters, the pirates of legend have always made for great storytelling.

Stories of those legendary pirates can be heard in traditional music, in a sometimes bawdy sort of seafaring folk song called the pirate ballad. And that tradition has been carried forward, in recent years, at the movies. )

The successful franchise of Pirates of the Carribean movies spawned a modern-day collection of pirate songs, including a 21st-century take on a tune with the familiar lyrics, "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!" )

There have also been plenty of other popular pirate movies. One of the most famous of them all is the 1940 classic The Sea Hawk, starring Erroll Flynn, which also boasts a tremendous musical score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. )

So, considering the colorful legends of swashbuckling pirates, and the music those tales have spawned, you might expect to see lots of pirates at the opera. But there really aren't all that many, and of the pirate operas you will find — including Verdi's The Corsair — there haven't been many true success stories. )

There could be any number of reasons for that. For one thing, the royals and aristocrats who were long the primary patrons of opera tended to frown on stories idealizing criminal behavior. There are also purely practical reasons. Adventures at sea may be easy enough to present using movie-era special effects, but putting realistic pirate ships on stage in the opera house is a difficult and expensive proposition. )

Yet there is at least one pirate opera that proved a big hit, though its brooding story is hardly the tale of a carefree, seagoing adventurer. It's the opera featured here, Vicenzo Bellini's Il Pirata –The Pirate.)

It was premiered at La Scala, in Milan, in 1827, when the composer was in his mid-twenties. It was only Bellini's third opera, and just his second to receive a full-scale production. But it was such a big hit that it almost instantly made him an international star. )

Il Pirata is also regarded as the first, truly Romantic Italian opera. Together with Weber's Der Freischuetz and Meyerbeer's Robert le diable, it helped usher in opera's Romantic era all across Europe. )

On World of Opera, host Lisa Simeone takes us throughIl Pirata with extended highlights from a pair of recordings. For Act One, it's a 1994 recording made in Berlin, led by conductor Marcello Viotti and starring soprano Lucia Aliberti, tenor Stuart Neill and baritone Roberto Frontali. For the final act, we'll hear a 1970 recording from Rome, with conductor Gianandrea Gavazzeni and a cast featuring Montserrat Caballe, Barnabé Martí and Piero Cappuccilli. )

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