United Kingdom New Chamber Opera – Salieri, La scuola de’ gelosi: Soloists, The Band of Instruments / Steven Devine (conductor). New College, Oxford, 2.7.2025. (CR)
Production:
Director – Michael Burden
Cast:
Blasio – Arshak Kuzikyan
Ernestina – Kate Semmens
Count Bandiero – Will Anderson
Countess Bandiera – Áine Smith
Carlotta – Stephanie Franklin
Lumaca – Ben Gilchrist
Lieutenant – Lawrence Thackeray
In certain ways Antonio Salieri’s La scuola de’ gelosi (here as The School of Jealousy, 1778) pre-empts Mozart’s Così fan tutte, premiered some twelve years later, not least in the alternative and somewhat ironic title of the latter opera, ‘the school for lovers’. In the context of its time, therefore, it is notable as being less sentimental and generic than most other examples of opera buffa. Salieri’s librettist Caterino Mazzolà was an acquaintance of Lorenzo Da Ponte, and the opera was performed in Vienna in 1783, so he and Mozart would surely have known it.
The lovers are less innocent in Salieri’s scenario to start with, however, and their jealousy is more consciously provoked. The merchant Blasio is already suspicious about his wife Ernestina, rather inciting her in exasperation to entertain Count Bandiero’s opportunistic overtures to her. The Count himself foreshadows Don Giovanni, in the cynical, philandering tactics he recounts in his first aria here (not least in his willingness to stoop to lower classes than his own for his amorous adventures) while the sorrow expressed by his outraged wife prefigures Countess Almaviva’s two great arias in The Marriage of Figaro. Salieri’s Lieutenant is not dissimilar to the Don Alfonso of Così, in offering advice to the protagonists and even, to a certain extent, goading them on – for instance, he suggests to Blasio that he pretend to have a love interest of his own in order to enrage Ernestina. He even, also, has a similar quip, delivered in a slow portentous melody like a chorale (which the servant Lumaca later repeats) just as Don Alfonso offers the ‘Così fan tutte’ motto.
This open-air production in the round, as it were – the vocalists performing in the grassy aisle between the two banks of audience seats – affords much intimate action, which they often exploit with an almost improvisatory freedom that engages the audience, rather as singers might have done in the smaller theatres of the eighteenth century. The proximity of the audience along the boundaries of the performance area perhaps also creates an aptly claustrophobic space for the lovers’ jealous anxieties and nagging thoughts to play out.
Despite Blasio’s endemic jealousy, Arshak Kuzikyan is almost laconic in his coolly reflective delivery of the character’s ruminations while, as Ernestina, Kate Semmens offers discreet, considered coquetry. As the aristocratic couple, Will Anderson and Áine Smith rightly provide more flair: he with a certain levity and nonchalance, rather than cynicism or force, she with impressive, bold control of the Countess’s stratospheric vocal lines which Salieri must have written for a particular singer in mind with a fine technique – not unlike the tailor-made coloratura arias (K294, K316 etc.) that Mozart composed at around the same time for Aloysia Weber.
Ben Gilchrist is a winningly charismatic Lumaca, well able to charm the audience with his extra-theatrical approaches to them – certainly a Figaro (for either Mozart or Rossini) in the making as he virtuosically combines artful delivery of comic patter numbers with lively choreography. Lawrence Thackeray is a personable, well-meaning Lieutenant here, evincing warmth and authority in his advice, with a slight twinkle of humour in his eye. Stephanie Franklin complements the roguish Lumaca as a more settled Carlotta, his counterpart as the female servant.
The translation of the libretto (originally prepared by Gilly French and Jeremy Gray for Bampton Classical Opera) in a witty and idiomatic updated English further provides a sense of comic immediacy that Salieri’s audiences would have experienced. The eight-person ensemble of The Band of Instruments under Steven Divine’s direction from the harpsichord underline the opera’s brisk wit – skittish strings supply the basic mood, while oboes variously stir in a note of biting satire or melancholy. Much fun is to be had along the way.
Curtis Rogers