Senor's Festival (Bortnyansky Opera)

"Senor's Festival" is a comedy with arias and ballet by Russian composer Dmitry Bortnyansky in one act. In this opera, musical numbers alternate with spoken scenes.

The first production: Pavlovsk, Palace Theater, late June 1786. At that time, Dmitry Bortnyansky served as bandmaster of the Small Court of the Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich.

In 1786, "the Grand Duchess wanted to give his wife a surprise and inadvertently present him with a theatrical spectacle in Gatchina... They prepared a small opera with arias and verses in honor of the hero of the celebration to the Grand Duke. The opera ended with ballet "- this is how Prince I.M.Dolgorukiy wrote about D.S. Bortnyansky's opera" The Feast of the Lord. "His words contain the essence of this surprise," trinkets, "but behind the creation of a small court cabbage was the painstaking, masterful work of Bortnyansky, who came from Italy. The composer was to please the tastes of the grand-ducal couple and their young aristocratic environment. Musically educated maids of honor Maria Fedorovna and associates of Pavel Petrovich were performers of vocal parts.

Libretto

The French libretto is probably by Count G. Chernyshev, Count A. Mussin-Pushkin and A. F. Violier based on the play by K. S. Favard "Annette and Luben."

Only the text of the vocal numbers has been preserved from the libretto, and the course of action can be restored only in general terms. The composer deploys a kind of pastoral in which the marriage of lovers Luke and Babetta, Luben and Annette is hindered by de la Jeannotiere, a trusted senor. Everything, however, ends well. Situations are close to the conflict typical of a comic opera - the struggle of lovers with hostile circumstances.

Records

The first part of the synphony "Senor Festival" also exists in arrangement for the clavier. Using this arrangement and not having access to the score, the Baroque ensemble tried to restore the Symphony and recorded its reconstruction on the record "Russian Music of the 18th Century" ("Melody" C 04695-6, 1974). The recording interested Pavel Serbin, artistic director of the Pratum Integrum orchestra, who got the idea to perform the Symphony based on Bortnyansky's original score.

In this performance, the Pratum Integrum recording of 2020 included three orchestral pieces from the "Senor Festival." The opera opens with a three-part Italian overture (author's designation is Sinfonia; it is essentially a full-fledged orchestral symphony). The composer based its first part on the theme of a similar sinfonia to the Italian opera Quintus Fabius (1779), but in a significantly revised form. Bortnyansky composed the second and third parts again. The first movement, full of irrepressible movement, gives way to a pastoral rondo, and the finale of the symphony again returns the listener to the images of the stage confusion of the Italian buffa opera or the French opera-comique.

One can only wonder with what skill, inspiration and grace Bortnyansky writes in typical Italian forms, wrote musician and researcher Pavel Serbin. Allegro, Andantino and Presto exactly follow the canons of the genre, dozens of opera symphonies are written according to a similar scheme. But at the same time, there is not a single stencil theme here: each of them conquers, first of all, "faces in plain terms." The Andantino melody is especially good, which could decorate the score of any Italian contemporary of Bortnyansky.

The next fragment is dance vaudeville (Vaudeville) - a treatment of a French song; in opera, a final dance divertissement was built on its repeated repetitions. Another dance, which is a rondo with a mischievous introduction, sounded in the scene of a folk holiday in the first action of the opera.