This paper paper focuses on an opera forgotten today, but popular in its time: Isabella d’Aspeno, a work by the Ionian composer Paolo Carrer and the unknown Italian librettist hidden behind the initials R.G.S. The opera Isabella d’Aspeno... more
This paper paper focuses on an opera forgotten today, but popular in its time: Isabella d’Aspeno, a work by the Ionian composer Paolo Carrer and the unknown Italian librettist hidden behind the initials R.G.S. The opera Isabella d’Aspeno opened in April 1855 at the Milanese theatre ‘Carcano’ and was considered one of the grands succès of the year, a fact confirmed by the numerous repetitions of the production during that year and the next. The particularity of this work lies is its obvious thematic similarity to the celebrated Italian opera Un Ballo in Maschera by Giuseppe Verdi and Antonio Somma. Both works dramatize the assassination of a sovereign by his political and erotic rival, which takes place during an official masquerade ball.
Taking into consideration that Carrer’s Isabella (composed in 1853 and first presented in Italy in 1855) is anterior to Verdi’s Ballo (1859), it would be reasonable to wonder whether the work of the young composer from Zante was one of the prototypes for one of the major operatic creations of the incontestable king of the Italian opera. Was Verdi or his librettist Somma aware of Isabella d’Aspeno, a big operatic hit at that time in Milano, when they started working on the dramatic plot of Un Ballo in Maschera? This paper attempts to answer this question by offering a comparative examination of the two operas, supplemented by a scrutiny of the other known prototypes of Un Ballo in Maschera, such as the works of Auber (Gustave III ou Le Bal Masquée), Gabussi (Clemenza di Valois) and Mercadante (Il Reggente).
In the summer of 1873, Pavlos Carrer agrees with his friend, poet Conte Giorgio D. Roma, to work together on the libretto of a new opera based on the “episode of the French Revolution concerning Marie Antoinette”. The choice of the... more
In the summer of 1873, Pavlos Carrer agrees with his friend, poet Conte Giorgio D. Roma, to work together on the libretto of a new opera based on the “episode of the French Revolution concerning Marie Antoinette”. The choice of the subject raises questions, since it forms the only exception among the five Greek national operas that Pavlos Carrer composes from 1868 until the end of his life. The composer does not state, his sources, therefore we do not know whether he and Roma studied the history of the French Revolution and, consequently, drew the inspiration for their libretto from it or worked on a literary text. Further below, we will examine that both may be the case.
