Pergolesi’s Friendship

In Jesi, in the theatre that bears his name, Pergolesi returns each time the way one returns to a house one has never truly lived in: one is born there, one leaves almost at once, and one bequeaths it to whoever will come looking for it long afterwards, often without quite knowing what to look for. The Olimpiade that Giulio Prandi and the Orchestra Ghislieri recorded live on 21 and 23 November 2025, as part of the 58th Stagione Lirica di Tradizione, has no need of this rhetoric of the return to justify itself: listening is enough. But it is worth recalling where it comes from, before saying where it arrives.

An opera born of a political mishap

The context is political before it is musical. In the mid-1730s, with the arrival of the Bourbons in Naples and the expulsion of the Austrians who had governed there for decades, a large part of the aristocracy tied to Vienna preferred to withdraw to Rome to await events. With those patrons went Pergolesi too, long in their service, summoned to the capital to direct sacred music for one of the city’s great celebrations. The new dynasty, according to tradition, regarded the composer with suspicion from then on, on account of his links with circles of the dissolved Austrian viceroyalty — a suspicion which, combined it seems with the lukewarm box-office showing obtained shortly before in Naples by Adriano in Siria, contributed to leaving him without official commissions in the city. Free of Neapolitan engagements, Pergolesi then accepted the commission offered him by a Roman theatre of fragile finances for the opening opera of the 1735 carnival.

The libretto is once again by Metastasio, and it is not a virgin text: it had already been set, in the two preceding years, first by Caldara and then by Vivaldi, and over the span of a century it would be set to music, all told, dozens of times by different composers. With little time at his disposal Pergolesi drew on his own catalogue — arias taken up or reworked from Adriano in Siria, still unknown in Rome, and pages recovered from an earlier sacred drama of his own — and eliminated the choral parts: not out of dramaturgical choice, but because the theatre could not afford a chorus, so much so that Metastasio himself had cause to complain of it. He also rewrote the scene of the farewell between the condemned Licida and Megacle, compressing into a tight sequence what the librettist had laid out in more expansive form, with a notably heightened pathos.

The premiere, at the beginning of the 1735 carnival, was far from a triumph. An account of an outright fiasco has long circulated concerning its outcome, but the source that hands it down is late and indirect — it dates from the end of the eighteenth century — and it is therefore best treated as tradition rather than as verified chronicle. What is certain is that the production started at a disadvantage: a theatre of precarious finances, a company of singers of modest reputation, and, on top of that, a court mourning that in the midst of the performances imposed the temporary closure of the Roman theatres. A few weeks after the opening, the opera had already given way to the season’s second title.

And yet, according to critical tradition, this was — among the more than fifty musical settings of Metastasio’s text — probably the most admired, and the one that remained longest in the repertoire before Galuppi’s version, at mid-century: not thanks to stage performances, rare throughout the eighteenth century, but to the dense manuscript circulation of the score and of separate numbers, which collectors and musicians procured for study or private performance. Two numbers in particular gained European fame as models of writing: Megacle’s aria “Se cerca, se dice” and the duet with Aristea “Ne’ giorni tuoi felici”, the latter chosen by Rousseau, in his Dictionnaire de musique, as an example of the dramatic theatrical duo. There is no need to elevate Pergolesi to a martyr of his own age to recognise that here, at twenty-five, he had already found a path that European musical theatre would take only decades later: no longer the succession of static tableaux of the contemporary opera seria, but a mobile dynamic of the affections, capable of transforming arias and duets into scenes whose outcome is never a foregone conclusion from the outset.

It is worth spending a few lines on the edition used, because it is not a detail for specialists but the foundation on which everything else rests: the critical revision is by Francesco Degrada and Claudio Toscani for the Edizione Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini, the same signature — that of Toscani — which in the booklet recounts the genesis of the opera with the rigour of one who has directed the Centro Studi Pergolesi for years and oversees the Edizione Nazionale of his complete works. It is not a matter of indifference: an approximate Olimpiade, built on uncertain sources or on a nineteenth-century vulgate, would have produced quite another recording. Here the philology is not seen, but it is heard — in the cleanness with which certain passages, especially in the recitatives, proceed without the padding that a less vigilant performing tradition might have left behind.

This is not the only recording of Pergolesi’s Olimpiade in circulation: there exists, from 2011, the version conducted by Alessandro De Marchi with the Academia Montis Regalis — the first complete recording of the opera ever made, on period instruments — which renders the score over a far more expansive span — the four hours that the complete writing, with the recitatives uncut, actually requires. The two undertakings are not comparable except up to a point, because they answer to different needs: De Marchi’s is a document of integral conservation, Prandi’s is the photograph of a production conceived for a theatre audience, with all the dramaturgical choices that this entails. There is no need to establish which of the two is “more correct” — it would be a false problem — but it is useful, for anyone approaching this recording, to know that the integral alternative exists, for those who might want an Olimpiade less domesticated to the length of an evening’s performance.

Ceresa’s cuts: to prune, not to correct

The staging by Fabio Ceresa, of which this recording preserves the sonic trace, starts from a principle clearly declared in the notes that accompany the disc: Metastasio’s libretto is “a clear and finished machine”, and the cuts do not intervene to correct it but to reveal its skeleton — the metaphor, a little overused but here pertinent, is that of the tree that must be pruned to better withstand the passage of time. In practice: out goes Argene’s recitative-aria “Più non si trovano fra mille amanti” (I, 7), out goes Aristea’s “Grandi, è ver, son le sue pene” (II, 3), out goes Argene’s aria “Fiamma ignota nell’alma mi scende” (III); and then a series of arias reduced to the first section alone — the duet “Ne’ giorni tuoi felici”, Alcandro’s aria “L’infelice in questo stato”, Aminta’s “Son qual per mare ignoto”, Licida’s “Nella fatal mia sorte”. The declared aim is to bring into relief “the heart of the conflict: friendship as absolute moral tension”.

On listening, without the support of the stage, the operation is judged by what it produces in terms of dramaturgical cohesion, and here the result convinces more than so decisive an intervention might lead one to expect on paper. The suppressed arias were, in effect, the moments in which the action slowed to make room for an affection already expressed elsewhere; their absence leaves no gaps, if anything it restores to the listening a continuity that in the integral Olimpiade — nearly four hours in the most expansive version — risks dispersing. The arias cut in half are a different matter, and a more delicate one: they lose the B section, the one in which the Metastasian text typically reaffirms or complicates the affection stated in the first part. Something is lost, without doubt — but what remains arrives with a concentration which, combined with the stage time reduced to two and a half hours, keeps the parabola of the four lovers (or five, counting Alcandro as the voice of reason of state) always taut towards the denouement.

A recording does not allow one to see a staging, but the production photographs that accompany the booklet let one glimpse a choice that merits at least a mention, because it helps to understand certain inflections that are caught in the listening alone: Ceresa has shifted the action into an unspecified twentieth century, made of gym clothes, cardboard suitcases, bedside tables with lampshades, and a poster of the Olympic Games that alludes, without labouring the point, to an age of totalitarianisms and sporting nationalisms. It is a declared anachronism, not a concealed one, and it serves — to judge by the way the sonic dramaturgy seconds that choice — to strip the story of its mythological patina and restore it as a story of persons: two friends, two women in love, a king who discovers late that he has a son. It is no accident that the strongest tension of the recording is concentrated precisely in the moments in which the plot turns most intimate — Aristea’s fainting, the farewell between Licida and Megacle, Clistene’s confession to himself — rather than in the more openly ceremonial ones, such as the march or the concluding chorus, which do work, but with an effectiveness of a different order, ritual rather than psychological.

An orchestra that does not betray the hall

What strikes one from the instrumental Introduzione onwards is the cleanness of the sound: for a live recording, the disc has a clarity that borders on that of a studio, yet without losing the vitality of a living hall. It is a rare balance, and it is to be ascribed as much to the sound engineering as to the cohesion of the Orchestra Ghislieri, which at its debut in the operatic repertoire — as noted elsewhere — shows a sonic unity surprising for an ensemble unaccustomed to musical theatre. The strings in particular impose themselves through their brilliance and compactness throughout the disc, and Prandi’s direction moves with a balance not to be taken for granted between passion and craft: one senses the analytical care of one who knows the score in detail, but also the urgency of one who is making it live in real time, before an audience.

The live dimension, far from constituting a limitation, becomes here an added value. The voices betray, inevitably, the presence of the hall — and it is not a defect: with an adequate listening system, that same presence restores a sense of spatiality that a studio recording, however perfect, can hardly offer. The applause, when it comes, does not break the tension any more than one must expect from a document that is, before it is a recording, the testimony of two evenings of real theatre: it is to be reckoned with, not judged.

The voices: a cast with no soft underbelly

The first thing that strikes one, listening to the cast as a whole, is the absence of a real weak point — a rarity, in an opera that entrusts to seven voices a dense weave of exchanges, disguises and recognitions.

Theodora Raftis, to whom the casting assigns Megacle, offers perhaps the most convincing characterisation of the entire disc: a clean and fresh voice, capable in “Se cerca, se dice” of an emotional vibration that never lapses into pathos, and in “Torbido in volto e nero” of combining grace and incisiveness in a balance that does justice to the ambiguity of the character, suspended between loyalty to his friend and passion for Aristea.

Carlotta Colombo, Aristea, has on her side a knowing modulation that never yields to the generic: most pleasing in timbre, she finds her highest moment in “Tu me da me dividi”, most intense in rendering the wrench of the rejection of Licida, and confirms her cohesion in “Caro, son tua così”, where the articulation of the voice marks out every inflection of the text without losing legato or expression — a merit not to be taken for granted in an aria that easily risks sentimental genericness.

Silvia Frigato, Argene, is perhaps the voice that in the disc grows most visibly act by act: softness and strength coexist in her phrasing, and the duet “Ne’ giorni tuoi felici” — one of the most admired numbers of the entire score, the one that Rousseau deemed “exemplary” — benefits precisely from this balance, in dialogue with a Colombo equally at ease in writing for two voices.

Josè Maria Lo Monaco, Licida, has a voice of undeniable nobility, which finds its peak in “Nella fatal mia sorte”: though deprived, by the staging choice, of the concluding section, the aria remains the singer’s most convincing showing in the disc, capable of rendering the desperation of a character who is, for much of the opera, the least amiable and the most human — a prince who errs out of weakness, not out of wickedness.

Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani, Clistene, has a vigorous emission that suits well the regal authority of the character without lapsing into the monolithic: “So ch’è fanciullo amore” is well executed, but it is “Non so donde viene” — the aria in which the king confesses to himself an affection for Licida whose origin he does not understand, and which the listener already knows to be paternal affection — that represents his finest showing, the one in which the voice bends to a doubt that the character cannot yet name to himself.

Matteo Straffi, Aminta, remains in a more retiring register — as the part, of confidant and not of protagonist, requires — but his showing is pleasing at every moment, and finds in “Siam navi all’onde algenti” a successful episode, capable of rendering with measure the somewhat bitter disenchantment of a character who observes more than he acts.

And then there is Francesca Ascioti, Alcandro: a comprimario part, of reduced extent compared with the others, but one which in her interpretation finds a specific weight greater than the score alone would suggest. She has presence — in the full sense of the term: body and authority in a voice which, in the guise of the royal minister, must sustain the thankless task of announcing victories and calamities without ever becoming protagonist of the action. “Apportator son io” is well sung, with a control of phrasing that does justice to the text of the aria — the one in which Alcandro laments being always driven away though he brings good news, a small moment of bitter irony in the economy of the opera. But it is in “L’infelice in questo stato”, surviving only in its first part owing to Ceresa’s staging choice, that Ascioti’s showing reaches its highest point: an almost perfect modulation, capable of rendering in a few bars the pity mixed with unease with which Alcandro observes the fall of Licida — a character who, it must be said for anyone who does not know the plot, is anything but a mere messenger: it is he who guards for years the secret of the true identity of Licida-Filinto, and it is he who, in the end, unravels it. A brief part, then, but anything but marginal in the cohesion of the plot, and Ascioti’s voice inhabits it with an authority that makes itself noticed without ever asking to be noticed.

The dramaturgical arc: from the second act onwards, the recording changes gear

If the first act has the task, no easy one, of positioning the pieces — the double exchange of identity, the amorous triangle (in reality a quadrilateral), the arrival of Argene disguised as a shepherdess — it is from the second act that the recording finds its highest register. The sonic compactness and the cohesion of the orchestral direction reach here a level that the first act, solid though it was, had not yet touched in full: it is as if cast and orchestra, aided probably by the second of the two evenings of recording, had found at this point of the opera a superior rapport. It is no accident that some of the most successful moments of the disc are concentrated here — the duet “Ne’ giorni tuoi felici” that closes the first act acts as a hinge, but it is in the second that the tension among the four lovers reaches its maximum dynamic concentration.

The third act, with its acceleration towards the denouement — the false news of Megacle’s death, the condemnation of Licida, the final recognition — confirms this cohesion. The march that introduces the scene of the sacrifice is a small example of that same sonic unity and capacity for cohesion that Prandi has demonstrated throughout the disc, and from there on one senses, listening after listening, the accumulation of a cathartic climax that Pergolesi’s writing builds with an increasing tightening of events — the revelation of the necklace, the recognition of Filinto, the popular vote that saves Licida from capital punishment.

The final chorus, “Viva il figlio delinquente”, lasts barely forty-six seconds. No more are needed: the fusion of all the voices in this very brief seal dissolves in an instant the tension accumulated over three acts, with an almost physical evidence — it does not argue it, it produces it. It is the ending that an opera so dense with misunderstandings and recognitions deserved: swift, clean, without rhetorical lingering.

There is, moreover, an aspect that a single listening risks pushing into the background, and which is worth recalling: the cohesion of this disc is not measured only in the individual numbers, remarkable though they are — it is measured in the capacity to withstand a complete re-listening without the attention flagging. It is a severe test, for an opera seria of this era, whose succession of recitatives and arias can easily slide, in less sure hands, into a predictable sequence of states of mind stated and then commented upon. Here it does not happen: the merit, in different measure, of Ceresa’s cuts that keep the narrative arc taut, of Prandi’s direction that never lets the rhythmic tension fall even in the most expansive recitatives, and of a cast which — as has been seen voice by voice — never offers a merely correct execution, but one always inhabited by a recognisable dramatic intention.

Three things remain, at the end of the listening. An orchestra that managed to make its debut in musical theatre without betraying its inexperience. A cast with no soft underbelly, and which in at least three of its voices — Raftis, Colombo, Ascioti — reaches levels that go well beyond the merely creditable. And an opera which, once the rhetoric of the forgotten masterpiece is set aside, proves simply to be what it already was in 1735, before the misfortune of its premiere buried it beneath the chronicles of a fiasco never fully verified: the proof that at twenty-five one can already know, better than many older masters, how to write for the theatre.