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The pairing of two
one act or two short operas in one premiere is a frequent practice
at opera houses. It’s usually, in terms of musicology, a very
responsible and delicate task, especially when the titles come from
such different music traditions as our pairing of Italian and
Croatian musical history.
It’s our luck and favorable circumstance that in Croatian musical
history, we have a master such as Josip Hatze, whose musical drama
“The Return” represents a pearl of opera verism in Croatian
musical literature. Staged in 1911, only nineteen years after
“Pagliacci,” it contains the basic elements of verism and Pietro
Mascagni, with whom Hatze was mastering his craft, personally
congratulated the composer after he saw the music score.This
operatic drama, whose libretto is based on Srđan Tucić’s play
and its plot takes place in one slavonian village, uses basic
veristic elements: passion – love – murder.
The combination of top Italian verism and Hatze opens a
special space in musicology, deeper than purely formalistic reasons,
because it’s based on the internal structure of the pieces:
dramaturgic flow, melodiousness, pathetics, which makes the
exceptional “cohabitation” of these two pieces possible.
A leit-motif for our combination could be Toni’s first sentence in
the prologue: “May
I…”. In theatre,
the worse thing is to know in advance what you can expect from a
certain production, but these two pieces together, on the contrary,
bring us “ingenious uncertainty.”
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Premda vrlo često u produkcijama
opernih kuća, spajanje dviju jednočinki ili dviju kraćih opera u
jednu opernu premijeru odgovoran je i osjetljiv posao, osobito ako
naslovi potječu iz različitih glazbenih tradicija: talijanske i
hrvatske glazbene povijesti. Na ''Pagliacci'' Ruggera Leoncavalla ne
treba trošiti riječi, jer je predobro znano da se radi o jednoj od
publici najomiljenijih opera. Ovaj put združena će biti, ne sa
svojim najčešćim glazbenim parom Mascagnijevom Cavalleria
rusticana, nego s Hatzeovom glazbenomm jednočinkom, praizvedenom
1911. godine, i također napisanom posve u duhu verizma. Upravo ju
je Mascagni, Hatzeov učitelj, prvi javno i nedvosmisleno pohvalio,
a Matoš je smatrao najboljom hrvatskom operom. Nepravdu njezina
razmjerno rijetka izvođenja možda je najbolje otkloniti pridružujući
je glazbenom okružju i utjecaju pod čijem je nadahnućem i
nastala.
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