Saturday, November 3, 2012

HAYDN : LA VERA COSTANZA

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 4th of November 2012 at 3.03 - 5.15 pm

HAYDN: La vera costanza, an opera in three acts
Count Enrico............... Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani
Rosina.......................... Federica Carnevale
Baroness Irene............. Andrea Puja
Lisetta.......................... Arianna Donadelli
Marquis Ernesto........... Cosimo Panozzo
Masino......................... Elier Munoz
Villotto........................ Gianluca Margheri
Wallonie Royal Opera Orch/Jesús López-Cobos
(recorded in the Palais Opéra, Liege by Belgium Radio)

INTRODUCTION 
COMPOSER
PREVIEW
PREVIEW (Pictures)
RECORD (Audio)

La Vera Costanza (True Constancy, or Faithful Fidelity if you want to be different) is rarely heard (and hardly ever seen), like all of Haydn's operas.
   At the moment (Nov 2012) the recording of this piece (on 2 compact audio discs) is priced at $299.99 new, $26 used, at the amazing (wink wink) website (no advertising permitted here); this is certainly a rare opera, but that looks like a misprint, though it is being offered elsewhere at more than $300. My copy is in a box with a big libretto on three big black discs, and the price tag says $30.
    It so happens that I have been playing it this year. After seeing the marvelous documentary on Papa Haydn at the cinema, I came home determined to put the diamond stylus in the grooves of  all my Haydn recordings (the majority of them are on vinyl); I have been working through the symphonies (I own most of the 104), the string quartets (not all 80 of them), the piano and string trios, some piano sonatas, and three of the 13 operas (all part of the set of six that Antal Dorati made with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, after completing all the symphonies, with the Philarmonia Hungarica, made up of Hungarian refugees). Jessye Norman, Helen Donath, and Anthony Rolfe Johnson are familiar names in the cast of the 1976 recording, but only the conductor (Jesus by name) is known to me in this Belgian performance.

The story has a similarity to the Bartered Bride, but in this case the bride is already married (to a count). A synopsis is available in the INTRODUCTION (Wikipedia). By the way, the Count is Errico rather than Enrico.

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