Wexford has long been the home of lost operatic causes that speedily become winners. Giovanni Pacini’s Saffo is a good example. Widely acclaimed in its time (establishing itself as a favourite in North as well as South America), the opera gradually disappeared from view, as did the composer himself. Yet he wrote over 80 operas, and Saffo is generally considered his masterpiece: the first fully ripened fruit of a period, nearly five years long, of retirement from composition, during which he studied, thought and prepared. It appeared in 1840, the year of Donizetti’s La fille du regiment and La favorite, both of them written for the opera in Paris. With Bellini dead and Rossini retired, Pacini may well have felt that the way was open before him; a young fellow called Verdi, whose first opera had enjoyed a modest success in Milan the previous year, would scarcely have caused him sleepless nights.
What we now think of the opera, for the first time on a commercial recording, must depend partly on our ability or willingness to hear it as within its period. Without this adjustment it will certainly sound naive at first, its eventual achievement appearing largely to be of a magpie nature, drawing most obviously on Bellini’s Norma. Put into context, it offers considerably more. Like the best of its kind, it represents the art-form of Italian opera at its height. Before ‘progress’ had nibbled away in the interests of dramatic realism, it sought and found its own scope for creativity within the evolved form in which the art became most distinctively and uncompromisingly itself. So, cabaletta duly follows aria or cavatina, ensemble follows solo or duet, but all is skilfully managed; the characters become real through their music, and the emotional climaxes gain force from the fine surge of singing-voices in ensemble, unique to opera among all art-forms.
Another of its merits is the workmanship of the orchestral score; but essentially it calls for real singing. At Wexford, the outstanding success was that of the Climene, Mariana Pentcheva, while Francesca Pedaci’s Saffo was rated as rather tame by comparison. On record, a strong preference is less likely to suggest itself: if the Bulgarian mezzo has the more opulent voice, Pedaci’s has refreshing purity and a clean focus. With both, I would say, there is a slight consciousness of role and voice not quite matching, Pentcheva’s tone a trifle too grand and noble (Stignani-like) for the maiden, and Pedaci’s too much of the young lyric soprano for a part which, of its kind, is rather low-lying, written for Francilla Pixis, who is usually described as a contralto. The tenor part is hardly a sympathetic one, and Carlo Ventre does little to make it more so, though he sings out sturdily enough. Of Alcandro, whose vindictive pursuit of Saffo takes on a different aspect when he learns she is his daughter, it is probable that more could be made than is evident in Roberto de Candia’s singing, conscientious as it is.
Recorded from the stage, the performance sometimes has the singers less than ideally placed, and the orchestral sound is somewhat boxed. Still, the catalogue-debut is a worthy one, and worthy of note too. Congratulations are due to the record company as well as the Festival, and to scholar-advocates such as Philip Gossett and Tom Kaufman as well as the more-than-able conductor, Maurizio Benini.'