Wallace Maritana
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: (William) Vincent Wallace
Genre:
Opera
Label: Marco Polo
Magazine Review Date: 8/1997
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 109
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 8 223406/7
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Maritana |
(William) Vincent Wallace, Composer
(William) Vincent Wallace, Composer Damien Smith, Captain, Baritone Ian Caddy, Don José, Baritone Lynda Lee, Lazarello, Mezzo soprano Majella Cullagh, Maritana, Soprano Paul Charles Clarke, Don Caesar, Tenor Prionnsías O'Duinn, Conductor Quentin Hayes, King of Spain, Bass RTE Concert Orchestra RTE Philharmonic Choir |
Author: Patrick O'Connor
All the histories and encyclopaedias tell us that there were no ‘successful’ operas composed in Britain between Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Britten’s Peter Grimes. We have become so used to hearing this that it gets repeated without question. But London, Dublin and later Manchester all knew a vigorous operatic life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As John Allen points out in his excellent introduction to this recording of William Vincent Wallace’s Maritana, there existed a “now largely forgotten school of Romantic English opera”.
Wallace was born in the Pyrenees in 1812, of Irish parents. His career took him from Dublin, where he was a violinist in the Theatre Royal Orchestra, to Australia, New Zealand and South America. He conducted an opera season in Mexico. Coming to London in 1845, he composed Maritana for Drury Lane, where it was an immediate success, following Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl (1843). It was some 17 years before they were succeeded by Benedict’s The Lily of Killarney, the three operas eventually being nicknamed “the Celtic Ring”. Wallace’s music is clearly influenced by the operas of Rossini and Donizetti. One wonders whether people would find it so ridiculous were it translated into Italian. The plot is based on D’Ennery’s and Dumanoir’s play Don Cesar de Bazan, which itself derives from Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas, or at least characters in it. The same play was later used for Massenet’s Don Cesar de Bazan, and the broad outline – condemned man marries a girl he has never met on the eve of his execution – was parodied by Gilbert in The Yeomen of the Guard.
In a way, Maritana is one of the first musicals. Although Wallace takes the style of Donizetti as his starting-point, he departs from it sharply at key moments to insert popular ballads. “In happy moments”, “’Tis the harp in the air”, “Let me like a soldier fall” and above all “Scenes that are brightest” were relentlessly plugged up and down the land in hundreds of arrangements.
This is the follow-up to Richard Bonynge’s recording of The Bohemian Girl on Argo (8/92), also with the RTE Philharmonic Choir. Prionnsias O’Duinn leads a vigorous performance, suggesting a bit more than a concert reading, even if the disparity of styles, half-Italian, half-Victorian drawing-room, doesn’t quite come off all the time. When a lengthy (six-disc) selection was made by Columbia in the early-1930s, Herman Klein welcomed it unreservedly, and described Wallace as “A British musician ... of whom this country still has every reason to feel proud”. Well, I’ll drink to that, and feel all the wiser for having at last been given the opportunity to hear a modern performance of this very important work. It’s part of the missing link in our knowledge of British music theatre. Majella Cullagh in the title-role, Lynda Lee as the put-upon apprentice lad Lazarello, Paul Charles Clarke as Don Caesar and Ian Caddy as the evil Don Jose all sing with total dedication and conviction. It isn’t at all difficult to understand Maritana’s popularity, nor with the ensuing snobbery of the twentieth century, why it fell out of favour.'
Wallace was born in the Pyrenees in 1812, of Irish parents. His career took him from Dublin, where he was a violinist in the Theatre Royal Orchestra, to Australia, New Zealand and South America. He conducted an opera season in Mexico. Coming to London in 1845, he composed Maritana for Drury Lane, where it was an immediate success, following Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl (1843). It was some 17 years before they were succeeded by Benedict’s The Lily of Killarney, the three operas eventually being nicknamed “the Celtic Ring”. Wallace’s music is clearly influenced by the operas of Rossini and Donizetti. One wonders whether people would find it so ridiculous were it translated into Italian. The plot is based on D’Ennery’s and Dumanoir’s play Don Cesar de Bazan, which itself derives from Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas, or at least characters in it. The same play was later used for Massenet’s Don Cesar de Bazan, and the broad outline – condemned man marries a girl he has never met on the eve of his execution – was parodied by Gilbert in The Yeomen of the Guard.
In a way, Maritana is one of the first musicals. Although Wallace takes the style of Donizetti as his starting-point, he departs from it sharply at key moments to insert popular ballads. “In happy moments”, “’Tis the harp in the air”, “Let me like a soldier fall” and above all “Scenes that are brightest” were relentlessly plugged up and down the land in hundreds of arrangements.
This is the follow-up to Richard Bonynge’s recording of The Bohemian Girl on Argo (8/92), also with the RTE Philharmonic Choir. Prionnsias O’Duinn leads a vigorous performance, suggesting a bit more than a concert reading, even if the disparity of styles, half-Italian, half-Victorian drawing-room, doesn’t quite come off all the time. When a lengthy (six-disc) selection was made by Columbia in the early-1930s, Herman Klein welcomed it unreservedly, and described Wallace as “A British musician ... of whom this country still has every reason to feel proud”. Well, I’ll drink to that, and feel all the wiser for having at last been given the opportunity to hear a modern performance of this very important work. It’s part of the missing link in our knowledge of British music theatre. Majella Cullagh in the title-role, Lynda Lee as the put-upon apprentice lad Lazarello, Paul Charles Clarke as Don Caesar and Ian Caddy as the evil Don Jose all sing with total dedication and conviction. It isn’t at all difficult to understand Maritana’s popularity, nor with the ensuing snobbery of the twentieth century, why it fell out of favour.'
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