Wolf-Ferrari: Il segreto di Susanna

Day 314

Wolf-Ferrari: Il segreto Di Susanna

Judith Howarth

Àngel Òdena

Oviedo Philharmonia

Friedrich Haider

I though that this was delightful

I knew the overture, along with a few other overtures and intermezzi by Wolf-Ferrai, but I had never heard any of the operas in full. This is a short opera (45 mins) for two singers (and a silent character) - a man and his wife. The plot is wafer thin. The husband comes home and smells cigarette smoke, assumes that his wife is having an affair and storms out. He comes back in surreptitiously to catch her with her lover and sees that she is smoking a cigarette. They make up and enjoy a final smoke together.

Wolf-Ferrari clearly had great fun writing this score. It dates from 1909 and the spirit of Verdi's Falstaff , which was only 15 or so years old at the time of writing, is clear to see. In fact this is almost certainly the most successful post Verdi comic opera , with perhaps the exception of Gianni Schicchi, which followed Wolf-Ferrari's score a decade of so late. I particularly enjoyed the very sensuous music - almost Straussian in its luxuriance - for the scene in which the heroine smokes her cigarette. There is surely a nod to Tristan und Isolde here.  The whole thing is fast paced and dramatic, thought there are moments of reflection and some very attractive melodies. It was a real find.