It seems I will make my operatic stage debut in Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona next spring with Gretna Music. Details to come, but for now, mark Saturday, February 10th down in your calendars.Here's a little more about the opera: (from here)
La serva padrona (The Servant as Mistress) played an important part in the operatic quarrels in Paris between supporters of the traditional French opera of Lully and Rameau and those who supported the simpler more modern art of Italy, exemplified in Pergolesi's opera, when it was staged in Paris, not for the first time, in 1752.
The disagreement, the so-called Querelle des Bouffons (Quarrel of the Actors) continued for the next two years, with Rousseau a keen supporter of the Italian against the French. Pergolesi's opera is modest in its proportions, both vocally and instrumentally. As an intermezzo its two parts were intended for performance between the acts of a more serious work. It makes use of three of the stock characters of the Italian commedia dell'arte.Guess which of the three characters I am going to be:
1) Uberto, an elderly gentleman, Bass voice
2) Serpina, his servant, soprano voice
3) Vespone, another servant, silent role
If you guessed #3 Vespone, give yourself a pat on the back and 10 points!
Maybe this will lead to me appearing in a future production of Strauss' Die Fledermaus as the jailer Frosch in Act Three!!!
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