This is a fascinating CD, the fruit of much scholarly endeavour
and – fortunately – of abundant musicianship too. Pedantic minds
such as mine may wish to quibble about the album’s somewhat misleading
title: ‘Venetian Composers in Guatemala and Bolivia’. Galuppi
travelled quite extensively – indeed from 1765 to 1768 he was
maestro di capella to Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg. Giacomo
Facco spent most of his working life in the Iberian peninsula,
first in Portugal and then, for many years, in Madrid. But neither
of them ever visited Latin America. Nor, so far as I know, did
Antonio Gaetano Pampani ever make the arduous journey to Guatemala
or Bolivia. Indeed, he appears never to have worked further afield
than northern and central Italy.
Contrary to initial
appearances, this is not, in short, one of the increasing number
of albums devoted to the work of Italian composers who made
their living in the New World – figures such as Roque Ceruti
or Domenico Zipoli. Every bit as interestingly, this album focuses
on what happened, in the New World, to works by Venetian composers,
works which were appropriated and put to uses quite different
from those envisaged by the composer.
Working from manuscript
sources in the Archivo Musical de la Catedral de Guatemala,
the Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia (in Sucre) and
the Biblioteca de Catalunya (in Barcelona), Anibal Cetrangelo
and Demetrio Pala have identified music prepared for use in
the churches of Guatemala and Bolivia which is actually comprised
of extracts from operas by established Venetian composers, with
the secular Italian words removed and new, sacred texts, in
Spanish, substituted. Thus they have identified the aria “Oy
gustoso el corazón” as a version (with radically different text)
of the aria “Viverò se tu lo vuoi cara parte del mio core”,
from the opera Artaserse by Pampani, first performed
at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice in 1750. Here
this sacred parody, as it might reasonably be described (although
its original audience would presumably have no idea of its secular
original) gets a lovely performance from Roberta Pozzer with
beautiful playing by (particularly) the strings and continuo
of Albalonga. Elsewhere, slightly better known works by Galuppi
and Facco come in for similar treatment. Sometimes the contrasts
– emotionally and otherwise – between original and ‘replacement’
texts are startling. So, for example, Galuppi’s Olimpiade
(using the often-set libretto by Metastasio) contains the aria
“Son qual per mar turbato”, the words of which are full of tragic
sentiments and possibilities. Yet someone took Galuppi’s music
for the aria and fitted to it Spanish words (“Giro volando la
sacra esfera”) about the birth of Christ! Amazingly, it works,
and is here sung very persuasively by Sylva Pozzer.
There are intriguing
issues here, which it wouldn’t be appropriate to try to discuss
in a review - even if I felt confident that I had the necessary
learning to do so. For the moment it is perhaps sufficient to
register thanks and praise for the scholarship which underlies
this issue, and for the excellent performances which make that
scholarship ‘speak’ to listeners. Albalonga, under the direction,
of Aníbal Cetrangolo plays with great vivacity and, where necessary,
with great tenderness. The colours and harmonies and the buoyant
continuo playing are alike excellent – the full ensemble is
made up of two flutes, two oboes, trumpet, two horns, two violins,
cello, violone and harpsichord. All three singers acquit themselves
with considerable credit. I particularly liked the sensitivity
and intelligence of Vincenzo Di Donato’s work in Facco’s Cantada
humana de dos arias con violón.
Any reader with an
interest in the music of Venice, or in the Italian baroque more
generally, can be sure of enjoyable and thought-provoking listening
here. This is the second CD produced under the auspices of the
Istituto per lo studio della musica latinoamericana, directed
by Cetrangolo. I look forward to further CDs.
Glyn Pursglove
Robert Pozzer
(soprano)1, Sylva Pozzer (soprano)2, Vincenzo
Di Donato (tenor)3; Albalonga/Aníbal E. Cetrangolo 
[76:00]
