Time 19:00
YouTube channel of the Polish Royal Opera
Retransmission on the YouTube channel of the Polish Royal Opera. The recording will be available until 19:00 on Tuesday, the 24th of November 2020.
Even though Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, a famous representative of the Italian Baroque, lived only 26 years, the works he left granted him a permanent place in the history of music. The brightest star in his artistic legacy is the seemingly simple intermezzo La serva padrona (The Servant Turned Mistress). This short work, written when Pergolesi was only 23, is still performed to this day in Europe, both in the original language version and in numerous translations.
The libretto written by Gennaro Antonio Federico is centred around a simple intrigue originating from the commedia dell’arte tradition. Here we have a wealthy old bachelor looking for a wife and his cunning servant who successfully presents herself as the best candidate. Pergolesi finds the perfect musical measures to describe the characters, and the words they sing are reflected in the charming recitatives and arias. All this has been wonderfully outlined by Piotr Kamiński in his lexicon Tysiąc i jedna opera (“1001 Operas”), where he compared young Pergolesi’s talent to the skills of one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time:
Perhaps only Mozart himself would be able to draw such an abundance of cheerful theatrical thought from the twelve tones of the chromatic scale, one hand clinging to the text, the other creating the endless music spells, and from them in accurate, efficient manner, vivid characters that have no secrets to us.
Marta Dziewanowska-Pachowska
MUSIC DIRECTOR KRZYSZTOF GARSTKA
DIRECTOR JITKA STOKALSKA
SET DESIGNER MARLENA SKONECZKO
LIGHTING DIRECTOR KAROLINA GĘBSKA
STAGE MOVEMENT ALISA MAKARENKO
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR AGNIESZKA KOZŁOWSKA
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR II SŁAWOMIR JURCZAK
PROJECTIONS MAREK ZAMOJSKI
LIGHTING PIOTR RUDZKI
STAGE DIRECTOR DOROTA LACHOWICZ, TATIANA HEMPEL-GIERLACH
CAST
SERPINA ALEKSANDRA KLIMCZAK
UBERTO PAWEŁ MICHALCZUK
VESPONE I RAFAŁ KARNICKI
VESPONE II JERZY KLONOWSKI
VESPONE III MACIEJ JAN KRAŚNIEWSKI
THE PERIOD INSTRUMENTS ENSEMBLE OF THE POLISH ROYAL OPERA CAPELLA REGIA POLONA
CONDUCTOR KRZYSZTOF GARSTKA
