Word: gherardo
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Metropolitan. They are: Richard Strauss' Die Aegyptische Helena to be given Nov. 6 with Maria Jeritza as Helen; Ottorino Respighi's La Campana Sommersa to be given late in November, with Elizabeth Rethberg and Giovanni Martinelli; Ernst Krenek's Jonny Spielt Auf in January; Hdebrando Pizzetti's Fra Gherardo in March. Three operas return to the repertoire: Massenet's Manon in December with Lucrezia Bori and Beniamino Gigli; Verdi's Ernani with Rosa Ponselle and Weber's Der Freischiilz later...
...pronouncement made by its Giulio Gatti-Casazza. Last week he announced plans for the coming year. There would be several premieres including: Strauss's already famous Die Aegyptische Helena, in German, with presumably Rethberg or Jeritza, both of whom have sung the role in Europe, singing Helen; Fra Gherardo, Ildebrando Pizzetti's new opera which was sung for the first time a month ago in Milan; and Jonny Spielt Auf, by Ernst Krenek, which is called a "jazz" opera, by Europeans who use the word to describe anything peculiarly modern or bizarre, rather than to indicate with idiomatic...
...Gherardo, the poor Parman is a religious rebel who gives all his money to the poor and dares combat with the Church of Rome. He is not, however, entirely a saint. His lusts lead him to betray a sympathetic virgin who later returns to help him conduct his holy reforms. Gherardo, veering like a mediaeval Elmer Gantry between his passion for this girl and his passion for reform, is led at last to betray his followers in an effort to secure her release from jail. In this effort he fails. He watches her being strangled and is then carried...
Such is the tragic tale which Pizzetti has adorned with perhaps the most splendid music of his career. The opera was undoubtedly too long and it seemed to contain a superfluity of dialogue, of inactive interludes that were only vaguely melodic. Lyrical passages were few. Fra Gherardo was original mainly for its orchestration and for the thunderous, muttering chorus which reached its climax in a mob scene at the end of the third act. These choruses were unlike anything that Milanese operagoers had ever seen before. There was something terrible and true in that imitation of the angry shouted songs...
...almost ratlike retirement. His wife, a descendant of Stradivarius, is dead. He likes quiet and hates traveling; he was made sorrowful before the War when his enemies, on account of his "revolutionary" music, made him the object of belligerent slander. His most famed work previous to Fra Gherardo was Debora e Jaele, an opera about a Hebrew prophetess in which, as in the more recent work, Pizzetti made frequent use of a crowded stage and made his score the incentive for action rather than its purpose...