The World Backwards

By Baldassare Galuppi
Italian Swiss Radio (Lugano) Vanitas Ensemble
Diego Fasolis, director
Performers listed below

Ever heard of Galuppi? No, it’s not a song from The Music Man -- that’s, “Shipoopi.” We’re talking about a composer. Galuppi? Anyone?

Well, if you’ve never heard of him, you’re certainly not alone. But 250 years ago, anyone interested in opera would have known all about Baldasarre Galuppi. He was one of the 18th century’s most popular opera composers -- and one of its most prolific. Galuppi wrote an average of two operas each year -- for about fifty years! -- coming up with 101 operas altogether. This week on World of Opera we'll hear one of them -- and it’s a provocative piece, even today. You didn’t think an opera from 1750 could still be provocative? Think again.

Baldassare Galuppi was born near Venice in 1706, and died in 1785. Let’s put that in musical perspective: in the middle of Galuppi’s career, J. S. Bach was reaching the end of his; Handel was still going strong, writing Italian operas in London; and Mozart had not yet been born -- though by the time Galuppi died Mozart was a world-famous 29-year-old, with only six more years to live.

And speaking of world famous, Galuppi surely fit that bill as well. He traveled to London, where Handel didn’t much like Galuppi’s operas. Galuppi went to Spain, where one of his works was presented at a royal wedding. And he went to Russia, where his operas were performed at the court of Catherine II -- one of the most powerful people in the world, along with Maria Theresa of Austria.

In fact, those two powerful women probably had something to do with this week's opera. It’s Galuppi's Il Mondo alla Roversa. That means The World Backwards, or “The World in Reverse,” or "upside down." But it’s the opera's subtitle that’s more to the point: “Women in Command.” And that’s exactly what the opera is about -- women in command. The text was written by the great librettist Carlo Goldoni, and the whole thing may have been, in part, a reaction to the power of Catherine and Maria Theresa.

As the story begins, in a mythical island state, the women are in charge of everything. The men are in chains, literally, and treated as more or less as slaves -- "love-slaves," as well as domestic servants. By the end of the opera, things have turned around. Men are back in control, and it's the women who vow obedience. All agree that the world has been put back in its proper order. Seems like an awfully primitive, chauvinistic story, right? And, who knows? Maybe that's all it is.

But there might also be a bit of satire going on. When the opera starts, the women are behaving badly. Outrageously, even. But the composer and librettist have plainly tried to put words into the mouths of these "outrageous" women which would have seemed far more "reasonable" -- even benign -- if spoken by men, especially in 1750. A savvy opera audience surely would have "gotten" that almost immediately. So, the opera may be more enlightened than it appears. It could be telling the men in its audience -- in the world of Catherine the Great and Empress Maria Theresa - that instead of being outraged at finding women in charge, maybe they should look in the mirror; they might have brought it on themselves. In any case, this rarely-heard opera gives plenty of food for thought.

That's NPR World of Opera with Steve Curwood, this week presenting Baldassare Galuppi's The World Backwards, from Italian Swiss Radio in Lugano.



Performers:
Marinella Pennicchi (Tulia); Rosa Dominguez (Aurora); Mya Fracassini (Cinzia); Fulvio Bettini (Giacinto); Furio Zanasi (Graziosino); Lia Serafini (Rinaldino); Davide Livermore (Ferramonte)


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