il Giardino dell'opera

Francesco Guggiola

Donizetti Galli - Rossini -Ponchielli

il Giardino dell'opera

The album

The flute and Romantlclsm: a crossroads o! lmportant dates, afflnltles, technlcal changes and patents

Starting from 1827. the year of the death of Beethoven, often pointed out as a conventional starting point far musical Romanticism, is a moment of technical innovations and artisanal craft, making the flute, even symbolically, a quintessential romantic protagonist, worthy of a Prometheus (or, forgive the irony, a 'modem Prometheus" like
Doctor Vietar Frankenstein... ).
As it is well known, in less than two decades (1831-1847), Theobald Bè'>hm (or Boehm), the father of the modem flute, experimenter, goldsmith and instrument maker, but also performer and composer, invented a key system that allowed the holes to be positioned rationalizing and optimizing the acoustics of the instrument and replaced the traditional inversely conica l body with a cylindrical one. Although he is the most famous, he is not the only one. lt is a period of widespread technical ferment , paten ts, builder-innovators often also performers called to personally support with their own technical skills the goodness of the new mechanical characteristics of the instruments. A new figure is being consolidated, typically romantic, of a soloist who in the private salons of the aristocrats and of the bourgeois shows off his skills, with virtuoso performances and extraordinary agility, drawing from the operatic repertoire in vague, paraphrasing and varying popular melodies. Just think of two names, Nicolò Paganini and Franz Liszt, capable of taking the operatic paraphrase to the highest levels of perfection.
lf less known will be the names of Raffaele Galli (according to some sources, Raffaello), Davide Carcano and Wilhelm Meves, we must greet with enthusiastic applause the project of recording (in many cases in the first absolute recording, not only in the version far piccolo) an anthologyof nineteenth-century operatic variations that we could define a worthy compendium of that cultura! spiri! that informed ltalian Romanticism. Galli, Carcano, and Meves, on the one hand: on the other, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi , Ponchielli: "like the orientai sovereigns who delighted in dipping their hands in a bag of gemstone", to borrow an effective image from Mario Praz, the listener will be able to immerse himself in listening to the tracks proposed here, appreciating the human and poetic inspiration that Francesco Guggiola is capable of infusing into the sound of the piccolo with the precise accompaniment of Alberto Magagni. Reviewing the gemstone present in our bag, we find two works of inspiration by Donizetti, the Melodie favorite dall'opera Don Pasquale op. 283 and Melodie favorite dall'opera L'Elisir d'amore op. 286, both taken from the Concerti di famiglia collection by Raffaele Galli. A paradigmatic example, Raffaele Galli, of that typically romantic soloist figure of which we have spoken: a musician, virtuoso, composer: bom on February 21, 1824 in today's Scandicci, he was a flutist of the Collegio di S. Gaetano, honorary member of the Regia Accademia, member of the Filarmonica Fiorentina and a technical expert in the Regio Istituto Musicale Fiorentino. Galli is remembered far the Indispensabile metodo pratico per flauto, a collection that stili represents a fundamental didactic text, but he wrote aver 400 pieces, most of them operatically inspired.

From the listening of the pages proposed here, the stylistic signature of the Tuscan composer clearly emerges, always capable of achieving a perfect synthesis between virtuosity and singability: the softness of Ernesto's serenata, Com'è gentil la notte a mezzo aprii, the melodie linearity of Bella siccome un angelo, the sweetnessof the night duet Tornami a dir, the famous romance of Nemorino , Una furtiva lagrima, proposed with acrobatic variations that allow to show all the ability of Francesco Guggiola, alternate with more lively moments, like the closing of the duet between Adina and Dulcamara and the finale of Don Pasquale. The section dedicateci to Galli ends with two more excellent tributes. In the Divertimento per flauto con accompagnamento di pianoforte su Un ballo in maschera di Verdi op.91 we find again Galli's aforementioned ability to seamlessly alternate some of the most poignant pages of the Verdi masterpiece , such as the magnificent Ma se m'è forza perderti , Riccardo's moving ballaci, Di' tu se fedele (unforgettable here the expressiveness of the piccolo of Francesco Guggiola: it really seems to hear "fra' tuoni, le dolci canzoni", "between thunder, the sweet songs"), with flashes of existential restlessness mixed with irony that the Ballo's fans know well, like the quintet È scherzo od è follia and Oscar's song, Saper vorreste (and here the listener will wonder if the piccolo is not the most perfect correspondent of the Oscar's voice). Also the Melodie dall'opera Il pirata di Bellini, fantasia per flauto con accompagnamento di pianoforte op.19 presents the topical moments of the work of the composer from Catania: Tu vedrai la sventurata, the cabaletta that closes the famous madness scene of lmogene (Oh sole, ti vela di tenebre oscure'), the duet Pietosa al padre and Gualtiero's aria Per te di vane lagrime. AII the compositions by Galli proposed here were dedicateci to amateur flutists (to Alessandro Perera the Divertimento on Ballo, to Giulio Giacomelli Elisir) or to nobles (to Countess Caterina Leonetti the Melodies of the opera Il pirata by Bellini and to Count Bartolomeo Battaglia Don Pasquale). Dipping his hands again, the listener will find the only non-operatic gemstone in the bag: Gaetano Donizetti's Sonata in C minor tor flute and piano. The importance of the production of sacred and chamber music by the composer from Bergamo is now known, although with regard to the latter the thought probably first runs to the string quartets. Almost all of the chamber music production, often accompanied by esoteric or goliardie subtitles, dates back to the period spent in Bergamo, between 1817 and 1821, when Donizetti frequented the city salons of passionate amateurs, such as Antonio Ouarenghi and the noble amateur pianist Marianna Pezzoli Grattaroli. The Sonata tor !Iute and piano, composed in 1819 "lor the use of Ms. Mar.
Pezzoli Grattaroli" begins , like many of Donizetti's chamber compositions, with a slow introductory tempo, of great effectiveness and lyricism, followed by an Allegro in C major, reminiscent of a typical cabaletta !rom Donizetti's operas : the piano's attack and the line given to the !Iute (in this case, the piccolo) recali a kind of "scene without words" in which more lyrical moments alternate with coloraturas. Following are two other famous operatic pages, taken from Gioachino Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri and Ponchielli's La Gioconda, two more paradigmatic examples of the love tor opera so widespread in the Romantic period and of the equally widespread desire to listen to the most popular melodies even outside of the theaters, in bourgeois and noble salons.
Very little information has reached us about the life of Davide Carcano (1873-1896), the author of the version of the famous Dance of the Hours presented here. He was the principal flute lor the balle! in La Scala, following the very widespread practice, at that time, ot engaging the most renowned musicians tor operatic performances only, while less well-knownstepped in lor the performances of ballets. The version proposed here of this famous page has been brought back to the originai key, in E major, unlike Carcano's rewrite in D major, in addition to reintroducing the short suppressed episode betore the Hours ot the dawn. The light and gracetul character thai also forcefully emerges in the version proposed here of the Hours of the day contrasts with the aura ot mystery that transpires trom the sounds of the Hours of the night, demonstrating the great expressive potential of the piccolo (or tlute, in the originai version) capable ot recreating all the chromatic complexity ot the originai orchestrai writing. The acrobatic finale joyfully and brightly concludes the Ponchielli's page, as well as allowing both performers to display all their technical and virtuosic arsenal. Only the transcription of the overture from L'Italianain Algeri is performed here (but, as Alberto Savinio used to say, in Rossini sometimes it seems that symphonism surpasses vocalism). The opera opens with the unforgettable pizzicato ot the strings, tollowed by a melody entrusted to the oboe ot rare lightness, as only the genius trom Pesaro could conceive. The well-knownAllegro follows and, to return to Savinio, it really seems to immerse oneself in a dreamlike vision in which on a little train, with the neck of an ostrich covered by a colander, an army of small tat Rossini throw kisses and quips at the crowd. The transcription proposed here is a reworking ot a version tor flute (or violin) by Wilhelm Meves (1808-1871), another composer/performer/teacher, very active in the tield of transcribing pages taken from operas (overtures by Rossini, Bellini, Mozart and Weber). AII the pieces were originally composed tor tlute and piano and, with the exception of Donizetti 's Sonata, these are the first ever recordings, not only in the version tor piccolo. In short, the listener has the (not) arduous judgement (Manzoni's quote): is it nota bag of delicious and rare gemstone, worthy of an orientai sovereign?