4/5 Galuppi Gallops toward Revival?
  by Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.)
This CD/DVD presentation of the music of Baldassare Galuppi is not very well done. If you are not already a Galuppi fan, and convinced that Galuppi's music should be performed far more often, this performance will be more likely to make you skeptical than enthusiastic. The film quality is barely passable, the staging and costuming are plainly low-budget, but much more dissatisfying is the performance by the modern-instrument orchestra. Not only do they and their conductor lack any sense of baroque style but they don't play terribly well. The oboes in particular are shrill and not quite in control of pitch.

Why four stars? Why bother with the set then? If you are at all interested in Venetian opera and/or theater, you must take every opportunity to see the works of Carlo Goldoni brought to life on stage. Goldoni was the most artful Italian playwright of his era, and a major influence on the theaters of all Europe ever since. It was Goldoni above all who combined the Italian tradition of "commedia dell'arte" with the French innovations of Moliere. Goldoni's librettos for opera were set by composers again and again for two centuries after his death; without Goldoni, even Mozart and Rossini wouldn't have been what they are. Baldassare Galuppi was Goldoni's closest musical collaborator for more than a decade, producing both opera sera and opera buffa. Their works became an international sensation and were staged everywhere from Italy to England. It's safe to say that Galuppi was more acclaimed in the mid-18th Century than Handel and Gluck combined. This rather bumbling production at least allows the modern devotee of musical theater a taste of what baroque audiences enjoyed. The libretto, praise be, is included in Italian and English.

Impressive performances of Galuppi's music are available on CD:

Vivaldi-Galuppi - Gerard Lesne with Il Seminario Musicale (2 CD)
Messa per San Marco - Athestis & Academia de li Musici, Filippo Brassan conducting
Sette Concerti a Quattro - Orchestra da Camera di Venezia
Settecento Veneziano - Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone conducting

Arias by Galuppi are also turning up on more and more recital CDs by the great baroque singers who've been emerging from Italy for the past decade. Bottom line: Give Galuppi a Go!

5/5 A King to Be Heard
  by Joseph L. Ponessa (Glendive MT USA)
The Bongiovanni label releases some outstanding contemporary performances and some visually challenged archival ones. IL RE A LA CACCIA is an interesting combination of both. The case contains three discs, one archival DVD and two audiophile CDs.
Baldassare Galuppi held the position of church organist, from which he composed operas for the Italian stage. Since his forte was the keyboard, his operas have nice harpsichord recitatives (which usually I detest) and the harmonics are contrapuntal. Galuppi as a youth had studied counterpoint under Antonio Lotti, the first organist at St Mark's. Galuppi became cembalist in the great opera houses of Venice, and was involved in the first presentations of Vivaldi's operas there. Galuppi himself wrote at least 111 operas, the best of which are collaborations with the librettist Goldoni. The young Mozart reused some of the librettos that already existed in settings by Galuppi, and the mature Mozart raised to sublime heights the dramma giocoso form which Galuppi practically invented. This release supplies a missing link between Mozart and the opera world before his time.
The 128-minute-long DVD (with optional subtitles in Italian, English or Japanese) captures the first modern revival of Galuppi's 98th opera IL RE ALLA CACCIA of 30 November 1763, at the Teatro Carlo Goldoni in Venice on 8 April 2000. The video transfer is subpar, but the three-camera editing is nice so the program is not difficult to endure. The real value of the package, however, is the 131-minute-long double CD set, recorded in Cittadella and Padua in October 1998 in preparation for the stage revival. The principal forces are the same, but the supernumeraries are different. The quality of the audio recording is superb. So this should be considered a CD set with a bonus DVD, rather than the other way around. As a package they complement each other nicely. Since the work itself is so rare, one should study the DVD first and then enjoy the CDs.