Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Act 1. Prelude & Choral Introduction. Divini carmi!
2. Act 1. Che avvenne
3. Act 1. Di sua voce
4. Act 1. Faon vienne
5. Act 1. Perchè Faon dal circo
6. Act 1. Qual io t'aborro
7. Act 2. Al crin le cingete
8. Act 2. Ah! Con lui mi fu rapita
9. Act 2. Uno stranier!
10. Act 2. Corri all'altar
11. Act 2. Le cetre, le tibie
12. Act 2. Ai mortali
13. Act 2. Saffo! Qui siamo in Leucade!

Disc 2:

1. Act 3. Voci del ciel
2. Act 3. Signor di Leucade
3. Act 3. Oh, padre mio!... Figlia!
4. Act 3. Alcandro, il rito
5. Act 3. Fra queste orrende tenebre... Qual frutto acerbo
6. Act 3. Ite ad Alcandro
7. Act 3. S'ella paventa
8. Act 3. Premio d'amor
9. Act 3. Mi lasciate

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #239145 in Music
• Released on: 2006-04-11
• Number of discs: 2

Album Description
If it had not been for Bellini, and Donizetti, and Verdi…and maybe even Cimarosa and Paisiello… Pacini would be famous today. But as he himself sadly admitted, he was not in their class: except for one opera, Saffo, into which he poured all his talent and a little more. Saffo was immediately recognized as Pacinin’s masterpiece, and has continued to be the only Pacini opera to be widely revived. It is believed that Saffo influenced Verdi, particularly in his ensembles.

Customer Reviews

Unexpectedly good opera with a fine performance from Gencer
SOURCE: Live performance from the San Carlo Opera, Naples, April 7, 1967.

SOUND: The sound on this recording is rather thick, with a continuing, low-level rumble. It certainly is not up to the broadcast standard for the period. If the recording did originate in a broadcast, then I would imagine this to be a second or third generation dupe. While the sound does not approach current digital standards, it is still good enough to allow a well-disposed listener to take some pleasure from it. The solo voices come across well enough. The orchestra and chorus are less happily recorded, but I've certainly heard worse.

CAST: Saffo - Leyla Gencer (soprano); Faone - Tito del Bianco (tenor); Alcandro - Louis Quilico (bass-baritone); Climene - Franca Mattiucci (mezzo-soprano); Ippia - Mario Guggia; Lisimaco - Mauriszio Piacentre; Dirce, Climene's servant - Vittoria Maniachi. CONDUCTOR: Franco Capuana with the Orchestra and Chorus of the San Carlo Opera.

DOCUMENTATION: No libretto. Short biographical sketch of Giovanni Pacini (1796-1867) and the history of the opera. Brief summary of the plot, by act. Track list that identifies the main singers on each track and provides timings. For once in the history of Opera d'Oro, the cover image actually bears some relationship to the opera contained within. Standing grimly on the Leukadian cliff top, contemplating her fate with her lyre drooping by her side, is Sappho in Charles-Auguste Mengin's (1853-1933) 1877 painting, a very skillfully done example of 19th Century respectably salacious pin-up art that now hangs in the Manchester Art Gallery in England.

COMPOSER Giovanni Pacini was the son of buffo baritone Luigi Pacini, a singer who would appear in the premier performances of many of his son's operas. Pacini was one of the prime creators of the bel canto style. His name can be firmly attached to some 74 operas, and probably to several more. (At one time, the estimate ran as high as ninety.) He was both popular and financially successful throughout the 1820s and 30s. By sheer volume of output, he was a greater rival to Rossini than Donizetti and Bellini combined.

Pacini's career can be broken into two parts with a five-year break, 1835-1840, in the middle. In the first part, by his own reckoning (for he wrote a book about it), he was a cheerful, commercial hack, the go-to guy for singers and impresarios who wanted something popular on short order. He was making money but he felt himself to be artistically outshone by Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Mercadante. During his five-year sabbatical, he thought it all through, wrote his book and, for the first time in his career, got his hands on what he considered to be a first-class libretto. In 1840, he burst back into the Italian opera world with "Saffo," a huge hit with both public and the critics. He must have thought his time had come, for Bellini had gone too-young to his grave, Rossini was living the high- but strangely unproductive life in France and Donizetti had abandoned Italy in a huff for Paris. In fact, his only visible competition was an ill-taught and unremarkable hayseed from Busetto who had had a small success with his first opera during the previous year: one G. Verdi. For the remaining 28 years of his life, Pacini was prolific, widely produced and financially successful, but he did not succeed in becoming the leading Italian opera composer, as he might have hoped to be.

STORY: During the Poetic Games at the 42nd Olympiad (about 608 BC) a woman poet named Saffo sings so effectively against the practice of tossing felons and undesirables from a cliff on the Island of Leucadia in the hope that Apollo will catch them before they drown in the sea (the Leucadian Leap) that the god's high priest, Alcandro, is driven away in contempt. He vows to get revenge. The priest come upon Faone, a suitor of Saffo given to jealousy. At Alcandro's prompting, Faone denounces Saffo for preferring the poet Alceo to himself.

Sometime later, Saffo being on the outs with Apollo, cultivates a friendship with Climene, the daughter of Alcandro, in order to seek the priest's intercession with the god. Saffo agrees to sing at Climene's wedding, but when she finds that the husband-to-be is Faone, the poetess completely loses self-control, tries to break up the wedding, vandalizes Apollo's altar and is driven away.

Saffo turns up on the clifftop at Leucadia, convinced that her continuing love for Faone is a curse from Apollo. She intends to throw herself off the cliff in the hope that the god will catch her and remove the painful love. As required by custom, she identifies herself to Ippias, the curator of the Leap. He gives her the go-ahead to jump but an old geezer idling nearby has heard everything. He recognizes Saffo as Alcandro's long-lost daughter and therefore Climene's sister. Alcandro, Climene and Faone turn up. There is a happy reunion until Ippias points out that Saffo has made a deal with Apollo and there's no backing out. Saffo accepts her fate. bids farewell to everybody and takes a header. Climene faints. Faone has to be restrained from jumping, too. Apollo, alas, is still in a snit, so Saffo drowns.

PERFORMANCE Not bad, overall. Leyla Gencer was always and impressive performer. A couple of times, she sounds a little hooty, but she is absolutely and deservedly the star of this performance. Tito del Bianco is one of those tenors not blessed with a beautiful voice, nor does he soar up to some of the truly high notes associated with Faone, but he makes a manful effort and I am willing to cut him quite a lot of slack. Louis Quilico turns in a respectable effort and the rest of the cast is sound without being particularly memorable.

The music of the opera is pretty good, better in fact than I had expected. Pacini had done some research and he attempted to put in authenticity and color by using ancient musical modes and rhythms in short passages, but they don't amount to much for the casual listener. Oddly enough for a founder of bel canto, there are only three formal arias. Pacini attempted to scale high art by using long musical scenes, something that the young G. Verdi seems to have taken note of. For those, like me, who are unfamiliar with the works of Pacini, "Saffo" seems posed about midway between "Norma" and "Nabucco"--and it does so without disgrace to itself.

Five unexpected stars. Give it a try, you might like it.

A treat.
In parts of this admirable and satisfying 19th century piece you might easily believe you'd uncovered a parallel universe Bellini, so "Norma"-like are the melodies and ensembles. Not all, but most of this "Saffo" is a treat, made the more so by
sumptuous vocalism from Louis Quilico, Tito del Bianco, and the ever impressive "Queen of the Pirates":Leyla Gencer.
The sound is fair enough.

Maybe this unknown opera deserves its anonymity.
It's always a pleasure to come across an L.E.Cantrell review, His (I'm assuming L.E. is a male) reviews are probably the most thoughtful and reliable anywhere on Borders/Amazon. He gives recordings considerable latitude and is, to coin a phrase, sometimes generous to a fault. I was particularly looking forward to his review of this very slight opera to see if he could find some depth or merit here that flew right past me -- sure enough, in his scholarly way, he's found a worthwhile piece of music where I could hear only dross. And I honestly congratulate him for this.

We all know that the world of opera-lovers has bred some pretty nasty and ungenerous people. But, as a mass, it's also provided a fairly reliable reading of what's good and what's bad in opera -- and the bad usually disappears with little trace. Now we have recorded opera and can listen to things that haven't seen the light of day for years. It's certainly instructive to do this, from time to time, and give a listen to those bedraggled puppies left to languish in obscurity. Thus, I gave SAFFO a try six months ago when Od'O issued this -- simply out of curiosity. I could find almost nothing to recommend here -- it just drones along for a couple of hours, using up most of the notes and styles then available. Od'O and Gala have provided many of these pups and they've also provided a public service. How else cold we ever hear some of those obscure Donizetti operas that were apparently written via some prehistoric computer -- and discover that the man who could write LUCIA could also turn out operas like grinding out sausages. But LUCIA is worth all those 2nd-rank Donizetti operas, many of which have their own special highlights and moments of beauty. I'm afraid that Pacini just doesn't stack up. Opera lovers have placed his work where it belongs, not on the world's opera stages.

But Mr. Cantrell is right when he says give it a try -- you just might like it. It's very inexpensive and Gencer sounds good. But see how many times you come back to it -- that's the true test for me. And I'll keep on looking for Mr. Cantrell's reviews -- they are always worth reading.