Search - Salieri, Romagna, Fabio Luisi :: La Locandiera

A sparkling environment is created by Salieri's score...

J. E. ASENCIO-NEGRON | Guaynabo, Puerto Rico USA | 04/28/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In Rimsky-Korsakoff's: MOZART e SALIERI (1898, Moscow), Salieri is sold to us as a composer jealous of the success of Mozart, and who resolves upon poisoning him (based on Alexander Pushkin's play). A similar but less dramatic picture of Salieri (the poisoning was suppressed) is presented in the film AMADEUS (1984, Milos Foreman, director, based of Peter Shaeffers play of the same name). Here we have the unique opportunity to appreciate to Axur, re d'Ormus (Vienna, 1788). Modern revivals (after 1989) of his operas such as Les Danaïdes, La grotta di Trofonio, and Falstaff show Salieri to be a more resourceful and entertaining composer than the reputation we are encouraged into belief by the aforementioned film & opéra. LA LOCANDIERA (Vienna, 1773) was a significantly successful Salieri's opera during the 1770's but declined and disappeared by the end of the 18th century. We have to acknowledge in this opera a composer with a balanced approach between libretto and music, but who uses a simple scoring as compared with a similar age Mozart. The libretto by Carlo Goldoni, has moral overtones denouncing the arrogance of the nobility against the emergence of the bourgeoise class, and the female hipocrisy. I enjoyed the sparkling environment created by this Salieri's score, and the dynamic dialogue blended to produce an effective palette of characters' feelings using the reality milieu as their common contrasting background."