Search - Mascagni - Zanetto / Denia Mazzola Gavazzeni, Romina Basso, Bruno Aprea, Savona Opera on DVD

Great surprise

Francesco Alvarez | 03/02/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a completely unknown Mascagni's opera, even for the conductor, singers and stage director who admit, backstage, that before staging Zanetto they did not have absolutely any knowledge about it. The mini opera lasts only 40 minutes, it features two singers on stage, both of them female voices, the orchestra is a reduced one and there are not great arias to be remembered in the voices of great divas or divos, just a single melodic line with its dramatic ups and downs. There is not a clear plot either, looks like a psychological drama in which Zanetto is not a real character but rather the unattainable love dream of an old prostitute named Silvia. In spite of all these apparent setbacks the music is complex, beautiful, intense and it catches your interest from the very beginning to the climaxic end. The two singers deliver a remarkable performance, the set is simple but works well. However the most important bottom line here is that this small masterpiece demonstrates how absurd are those silly rumors that Mascagni did not compose Cavalleria Rusticana, based on the fact that that opera was his first and probably the only really successful one. Mascagni was a great composer yet highly underrated. It is a pity the scarcity of CDs or DVDs of other masterpieces (apart from those of Il Amico Fritz) by this composer (i.e. Iris, Isabeau, Silvano etc). It is also a pity that major opera houses around the world go for the safest bet of staging his most popular Cavalleria. Bravo and many thanks to the corageous Savona people who put their bets on this great little Zanetto."