CHANDOS ON LOCATION
August 2003

The BBC Philharmonic and Vernon Handley continue recording their Bax cycle in Manchester. The cycle will be released in October, still hot from the editing suite! I Fagiolini will record a DVD (video). Read on below for more details of this extraordinary project.

Over recent years, alongside its various recording projects for Chandos, I Fagiolini have developed a programme for live audiences which brings to life various Renaissance music theatre works. In a new venture they are to make a DVD for Chandos of one of the most famous such works, L'Amfiparnaso (1597) by the Modenese composer Orazio Vecchi - the classic of all Renaissance madrigal comedies. Meet mean-spirited old Pantalone, the verbose and confused Dottore, the Capitano (a Major Bloodnock medallion man of their time) and an array of effete lovers: the stuff of soap opera to Italian Renaissance audiences both high and low.

The 'commedie harmoniche', or madrigal comedy, to give it its modern name was a curious genre that flourished at the end of the 16th century. Vecchi's piece was so successful because of how he juxtaposed the slapstick of commedia with the searingly beautiful Gesualdo-esque madrigals for the lovers' episodes. This explains why L'Amfiparnaso, of all madrigal comedies, has stood the test of time and has been recorded several times.

I Fagiolini's production is staged by West End director Peter Wilson MBE and inspired by contemporary descriptions. Already a hit at the Lucerne Festival and Innbsruck Early Music Festival, the piece is to be recorded live at the Dartington International Summer School on August 5th.

One feature of the original is the amazing wordplay of the spoken introductions. As 16th century Venetian is hard work, I Fagiolini commissioned writer Timothy Knapman to update these and they'll be read by Simon Callow. As he says, 'don't despair - they do sing prettily, / Just shut your eyes and think of Italy.'

Further notes
The plot is lightly sketched. It's like a Christmas edition of a comedy show with each character delivering his catchphrase and leaving before his part in the plot is developed very far - but here's an outline. Old Pantalone (himself enamoured of the courtesan Hortensia), offers his daughter in marriage to the Dottore. A pair of lovers appears (an excuse for an exquisite madrigal). We then meet the beautiful Isabella, being pursued in love by the unwelcome Spanish Captain. Lucio (Isabella's real lover) is distraught by this and decides to kill himself (even more exquisite suicide madrigal). Isabella is distraught to hear of his death (even more exquisite… etc) but Lucio turns up alive and their friends offer them an unusual array of wedding gifts. Just before the end, the Dottore reappears and, in serenading Pantalone's daughter, ruins a famous madrigal of the day by Da Rore, completely changing the meaning by getting the words slightly wrong. The whole is punctuated by the goings on of the cheeky servants, the Zanni, including a dubious (and by any modern standards politically very incorrect) visit to a Jewish pawnbroker.

Vecchi's music, especially in the love scenes, is as good as the very best of his contemporaries and such sophistication was of course not for the town squares and street fairs where the real commedia dell'arte shows took place but for the pleasure of the indoor connoisseur. She or he knew the characters and would enjoy a reminder of their antics without the inconvenience of mixing with the lower classes in the street. But whereas some madrigal comedies were intended for staging, Vecchi actually warns against this in the prologue, saying that his comedy is for hearing and not watching. Yet that was for his audience, already familiar with the phenomenon. We have lost touch with these everymen and women and also have to negotiate the language barrier; how many even Italian audiences speak 16th century Venetian dialect? So Peter Wilson has staged the piece for us the way Vecchi's contemporaries advised for similar works, with singers out of the way and masked characters portraying the action in front of a simple Venetian backdrop.

Robert Hollingworth