This opera has met with great success both in France and elsewhere; it is a favorite of the public, though not free from imitating other musicians, particularly Auber and Rossini. The style of the text is somewhat bombastic, and only calculated for effect. Notwithstanding these defects the opera pleases; it has a brilliant introduction, as well as nice chorus-pieces and cavatinas.
In the first act Camilla, daughter of Count Lugano expects her bridegroom Alfonso di Monza, a Sicilian officer, for the wedding ceremony. Dandolo, her servant, who was to fetch the priest, comes back in a fright and with him the notorious Pirate-captain, Zampa, who has taken her father and her bridegroom captive. He tells Camilla who he is, and forces her to renounce Alfonso and consent to a marriage with himself, threatening to kill the prisoners, if she refuses compliance.—Then the pirates hold a drinking-bout in the Count's house, and Zampa goes so far in his insolence, as to put his bridal-ring on the finger of a marble statue, standing in the room. It represents Alice, formerly Zampa's bride; whose heart was broken by her lover's faithlessness; then the fingers of the statue close over the ring, while the left hand is upraised threateningly. Nevertheless Zampa is resolved to wed Camilla, though Alice appears once more, and even Alfonso, who interferes by revealing Zampa's real name and by imploring his bride to return to him, cannot change the brigand's plans. Zampa and his comrades have received the Viceroy's pardon, purposing to fight against the Turks, and so Camilla dares not provoke the pirate's wrath by retracting her promise. Vainly she implores Zampa to give her father his freedom and to let her enter a convent. Zampa, hoping that she only fears the pirate in him tells her, that he is Count of Monza, and Alfonso, who had already drawn his sword, throws it away, terrified to recognize in the dreaded pirate his own brother, who has by his extravagances once already impoverished him.
Zampa sends Alfonso to prison and orders the statue to be thrown into the sea. Camilla once more begs for mercy, but seeing that it is likely to avail her nothing, she flies to the Madonna's altar, charging him loudly with Alice's death. With scorn and laughter he seizes Camilla, to tear her from the altar, but instead of the living hand of Camilla, he feels the icy hand of Alice, who draws him with her into the waves.
Camilla is saved and united to Alfonso, while her delivered father arrives in a boat, and the statue rises again from the waves, to bless the union.
THE APOTHECARY.
(LO SPEZIALE.)
Comic Opera by JOSEF HAYDN (1768).
After a sleep of 125 years in the dust of Prince Esterhazy's archives at Eisenstadt, Dr. Hirschfeld received permission from Prince Paul Esterhazy of Galantha to copy the original manuscript.
It is Dr. Hirschfeld's merit to have revived and rearranged this charming specimen of the old master's genius. And again it was Ernst Schuch, the highly gifted director of the Dresden opera who had it represented on this stage in 1895, and st the same time introduced it to the Viennese admirers of old Haydn, by some of the best members of his company.
The music is truly Haydn'ish, simple, naïve, fresh and clear as crystal, and it forms an oasis of repose and pure enjoyment to modern ears, accustomed to and tired of the astonishing oddities of modern orchestration.