Why perform La Serva Padrona?

---

“A model of singing, unity of melody, dialogue, and taste, which I believe will lack nothing” -Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Lo conosco a quegl'occhietti, a duet from La Serva Padrona

 While La Serva Padrona is a rarely performed piece in modern times, especially in America, it wasn’t always that way. La Serva was one of the first true “hits” of the operatic repertoire. It is the greatest example of an opera that bridged the gap between the Baroque and Classical periods, and it was the catalyst for a culture war among the French aristocracy, making it a piece of enormous historical significance. This historical significance has had the unfortunate consequence of causing most people’s knowledge of this piece to be found in Music History textbooks, and not from performances of the work itself. It is a work that contains truly beautiful, funny, and captivating music along with a hilarious plot.    

An Operatic Hit: While most operas up to this point in history were usually performed only once or twice before being retired, LSP was performed hundreds of times all over Europe in the years immediately following its premiere, mostly in France and Italy. As a comparison, Handel’s Giulio Cesare, considered a massive commercial and artistic success, had only four runs in Handel’s lifetime, the premiere in 1724, then “revivals” in 1725, 1730, and 1732. Interestingly, La Serva Padrona was not originally intended to be a stand-alone work. It was written as an “Intermezzo”, which is a work designed to be performed during the intermissions of “Full-length” Opera Seria. In the case of La Serva, it was performed during the intermissions of Pergolesi’s Il Prigionier Superbo. Il Prigionier was a flop, but La Serva was a hit, and quickly began to be performed as its own stand-alone work, especially by traveling opera troupes, as it can be done with quite small forces. And, very importantly, this meant it reached France quickly. 

 Querelle des Bouffons: Literally translating to “Quarrel of the Jesters”, this was the name of a culture war that took the form of a series of 30 or so pamphlets published in various French newspapers over a two year period. What started this whole affair? A performance of La Serva Padrona given by a traveling opera troupe at the Royal Academy of Music in Paris. Many Parisian aristocrats were shocked with both the lewd subject matter as well as the effect it had on the audience, namely, laughter. In France the dominant operatic genre was Tragedie Lyrique, which focused on serious plots in a serious manner. They felt that melodies and humor got in the way of the “art” of opera, and felt that laughter signified a loss of control and rationality, not something that should be encouraged by fine art. Other Parisians, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, felt differently. Rousseau described French music as “continual barking…without expression”. He even went so far as to say that due to the lack of “sensitivity” in the French language, that “the French have no music and can have none”. All of this occurred in France, and Italy stayed pretty much out of the whole debate. 

 Something New: Pergolosi was born in 1710 and first performed La Serva Padrona in 1733. The Baroque period is generally considered to have ended in 1750 with the death of J.S. Bach. Despite this, La Serva Padrona is a piece very much looking ahead to the coming classical period rather than looking backwards to the works of Bach or Handel. While many similarities remain between La Serva Padrona and other Baroque operas such as the use of Da Capo arias, secco recitative and commedia dell’arte characters, Pergolesi used these old techniques in revolutionary ways.

Secco recitative (dry recit) is a style of singing where multiple characters are engaged in a dialogue with a simple figured bass accompaniment. The singing is not melodic, and the accompanying instrument, typically harpsichord, will only play rolled chords here and there to enforce the tonal center. Handel used secco recits to advance the plot of his operas, and then used arias to help explore the character’s deeper emotional state as it related to the changing circumstances of the plot. Pergolesi doesn’t do this. Instead of simply being vehicles to advance the plot, Pergolesi includes emotional content in the recits as well, so we always know exactly what all the characters are feeling and can see the action play out in real time.  

As was indicated previously, Handel used his arias to explore a character’s deeper emotional state. To do this, often-times all other action had to grind to a halt first. This meant that the arias were constantly resetting the pace of the opera. Pergolesis’ arias don’t do this. Instead of revealing a deeply secretive, personal aspect of the character, they’re in line with everything that came before in the recit. For example if we consider Uberto’s first aria "Sempre in Contrasti", the aria is a rant at Serpina  which is a continuation of the previous recit. This leads directly into the next recit, in which he continues to complain that she doesn’t listen to him. This is a much-more streamlined, albeit superficial approach that we don’t see from other baroque operas, but are much more common in classical-era pieces. This allows opera to be more accessible to audiences as it reduces the amount of information that they need to keep in mind while still providing them with great melodies and beautiful arias; the main reason audiences attend opera in the first place.   

In Conclusion: Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona is a brilliant piece full of beauty and joy, and is a shame it has been neglected so long by modern audiences and performers alike. Our goal is to try and bring this piece out of the textbooks and back into the music halls.