Revisiting the complete Act IV of
Pietro Mascagni’s
Parisina:
Parisina has nothing to do with the crude verismo of
Cavalleria rusticana, the pastoral atmosphere of
L’amico Fritz or the florid orientalism of
Iris (just to mention the composer’s best known operas). This is an ambitious (over-ambitious?) and overlong medieval tragedy by
Gabriele d’Annunzio (a companion to the poet’s
Francesca da Rimini, set to music by
Riccardo Zandonai).
Mascagni apparently said he’d set “even the commas” of
d’Annunzio’s text to music, and the result is a work that lasted 3 hours and forty minutes. On the second performance in 1913, the composer decided to suppress the fourth act completely, but still the opera has had very little circulation since then.
It is a very interesting piece, and the composer tries to adopt a much more refined musical language, with a superb orchestration. The opera’s tone is one of almost incessant exaltation (in line with text), and accomplished as it is, this is also a weakness IMHO. Still, I think this is a noble effort, worth exploring, and represents
Mascagni at the top of his craft (which one could argue isn’t saying much).
Gianadrea Gavazzeni, who was an ardent defender of the opera in print and in the pit in post-WWII Italy, leads a impassioned performance of this fourth act, with his wife
Denia Mazzola in the title role. She went on to record the whole opera (shorn of this fourth act, and apparently with assorted cuts here and there) in Montpellier for Actes Sud, and is in better form there than in this concert from the Maggio Musicale. There’s also a recording of the four act opera under
Gavazzeni, in an abridged edition of his own, live from Rome in 1978 on Bongiovanni (which I’m tempted to seek out).
