Motezuma
Encyclopedia
Motezuma is an opera
in three acts by Antonio Vivaldi
with an Italian libretto
by Girolamo Giusti
. The first performance was given in the Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venice on 14 November 1733. (In earlier reference books the opera is referred to as Montezuma, but since the reappearance of the original manuscript this has been corrected to Motezuma.)
The music was supposed to be have been lost, but it was discovered in 2002 in the archive of the music library of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin
, an independent old choral association with a rich musical tradition. After World War II
, their library was captured by the Red Army
, and taken to the Soviet Union. Eventually it ended up in Kiev, now in Ukraine. Following the restitution of the collection to Germany, the fragmentary score (the beginning of the first act and large parts of third are missing) was identified by the musicologist Steffen Voss. Musicologists began working on reconstructing a version suitable for performance.
A concert version of the opera, apparently the first performance since the 18th century, was performed on 11 June 2005 in the Concert Hall De Doelen
in Rotterdam conducted by Federico Maria Sardelli
.
On July 18 2005, a version of Motezuma was supposed to have been performed by the Opera Barga Festival in Barga, Italy, also conducted by Sardelli. It did not happen due to a copyright dispute, as noted below. The staged modern world premiere was held on 21 September 2005 in Düsseldorf, Germany, as part of the altstadtherbst kulturfestival, in a production by Uwe Schmitz-Gielsdorf, designed by Paolo Atzori, with l’Orchestra Modo Antiquo conducted again by Sardelli. The American premiere was held on March 28, 2009, in Long Beach, California, staged and performed by the Long Beach Opera
with musical accompaniment by Musica Angelica directed by David Schweizer and conducted by Andreas Mitisek.
There is also a Deutsche Grammophon
recording available, by Il Complesso Barocco, conducted by Alan Curtis
, which is based on a reconstruction of the complete opera by the Italian baroque violinist and composer Alessandro Ciccolini.
, Ukraine returned all the books from the Sing-Akademie to their rightful owners. The archive decided to organize their collection, apparently also restricting access, and supposedly having plans to publish their manuscript
s.
The Sing-Akademie asserted that they had full copyright
, including derivative rights such as performance rights, to the opera. While common sense would lead one to believe that a work presented in 1733 would not have copyright protection (and, even if so, that only Vivaldi's heirs would have these rights) the judicial case was not clear.
The Rotterdam performance went ahead only after a substantial payment to the Sing-Akademie, and the Barga performance was halted by an injunction, with a potential €250,000 penalty for non-compliance. The reason given was that German law offers copyright protection to entities that publish previously inaccessible works. The injunction was issued one week before the date of the performance, so a "pastiche
" was performed: the Motezuma libretto recitative
s were spoken, and other Vivaldi arias sung between them.
As of mid-September 2005, the injunction was lifted which allowed the Düsseldorf premiere to take place.
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
in three acts by Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi , nicknamed because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist, born in Venice. Vivaldi is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe...
with an Italian libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
by Girolamo Giusti
Girolamo Giusti
Girolamo Alvise Giusti was an Italian libretto writer.Luigi Giusti was born in Venice some time in 1709...
. The first performance was given in the Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venice on 14 November 1733. (In earlier reference books the opera is referred to as Montezuma, but since the reappearance of the original manuscript this has been corrected to Motezuma.)
The music was supposed to be have been lost, but it was discovered in 2002 in the archive of the music library of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin
Berlin Singakademie
The Sing-Akademie zu Berlin is a musical society founded in Berlin in 1791 by Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch, harpsichordist to the court of Prussia, on the model of the 18th century London Academy of Ancient Music.-Early history:...
, an independent old choral association with a rich musical tradition. After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, their library was captured by the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
, and taken to the Soviet Union. Eventually it ended up in Kiev, now in Ukraine. Following the restitution of the collection to Germany, the fragmentary score (the beginning of the first act and large parts of third are missing) was identified by the musicologist Steffen Voss. Musicologists began working on reconstructing a version suitable for performance.
A concert version of the opera, apparently the first performance since the 18th century, was performed on 11 June 2005 in the Concert Hall De Doelen
De Doelen
270px|thumb|De DoelenDe Doelen is a concert venue and convention centre in Rotterdam, Netherlands. It was originally built in 1934 but then destroyed in 1940 during the German bombardment of Rotterdam in May 1940 at the outset of World War II...
in Rotterdam conducted by Federico Maria Sardelli
Federico Maria Sardelli
Federico Maria Sardelli is an Italian conductor, composer, musicologist and flautist. He is the founder of the baroque orchestra Modo Antiquo and has made more than forty recordings as soloist and conductor, some of them in co-production with the German broadcast company Westdeutscher Rundfunk.A...
.
On July 18 2005, a version of Motezuma was supposed to have been performed by the Opera Barga Festival in Barga, Italy, also conducted by Sardelli. It did not happen due to a copyright dispute, as noted below. The staged modern world premiere was held on 21 September 2005 in Düsseldorf, Germany, as part of the altstadtherbst kulturfestival, in a production by Uwe Schmitz-Gielsdorf, designed by Paolo Atzori, with l’Orchestra Modo Antiquo conducted again by Sardelli. The American premiere was held on March 28, 2009, in Long Beach, California, staged and performed by the Long Beach Opera
Long Beach Opera
Long Beach Opera is a Southern California opera company serving the greater Los Angeles and Orange County metroplex. Founded in 1979, it is the oldest established professional opera company in the L.A. area...
with musical accompaniment by Musica Angelica directed by David Schweizer and conducted by Andreas Mitisek.
There is also a Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label...
recording available, by Il Complesso Barocco, conducted by Alan Curtis
Alan Curtis (harpsichordist)
Alan Curtis is a noted American harpsichordist, musicologist, and conductor of baroque opera. After graduate studies at the University of Illinois , where he wrote his dissertation on the keyboard music of Sweelinck, he studied in Amsterdam with Gustav Leonhardt, with whom he subsequently recorded...
, which is based on a reconstruction of the complete opera by the Italian baroque violinist and composer Alessandro Ciccolini.
Copyright dispute
Perhaps as part of their bid to become acceptable to the European UnionEuropean Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
, Ukraine returned all the books from the Sing-Akademie to their rightful owners. The archive decided to organize their collection, apparently also restricting access, and supposedly having plans to publish their manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
s.
The Sing-Akademie asserted that they had full copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
, including derivative rights such as performance rights, to the opera. While common sense would lead one to believe that a work presented in 1733 would not have copyright protection (and, even if so, that only Vivaldi's heirs would have these rights) the judicial case was not clear.
The Rotterdam performance went ahead only after a substantial payment to the Sing-Akademie, and the Barga performance was halted by an injunction, with a potential €250,000 penalty for non-compliance. The reason given was that German law offers copyright protection to entities that publish previously inaccessible works. The injunction was issued one week before the date of the performance, so a "pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
" was performed: the Motezuma libretto recitative
Recitative
Recitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...
s were spoken, and other Vivaldi arias sung between them.
As of mid-September 2005, the injunction was lifted which allowed the Düsseldorf premiere to take place.
Roles
| Role | Voice type Voice type A voice type is a particular kind of human singing voice perceived as having certain identifying qualities or characteristics. Voice classification is the process by which human voices are evaluated and are thereby designated into voice types... |
Premiere cast, 14 November 1733 (Conductor Conducting Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble... : – ) |
|---|---|---|
| Motezuma Moctezuma II Moctezuma , also known by a number of variant spellings including Montezuma, Moteuczoma, Motecuhzoma and referred to in full by early Nahuatl texts as Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, was the ninth tlatoani or ruler of Tenochtitlan, reigning from 1502 to 1520... , Emperor of Mexico |
bass-baritone Bass-baritone A bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing three Wagnerian roles: the Dutchman in Der fliegende... |
Massimiliano Miler |
| Mitrena, his wife | contralto Contralto Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above... |
Anna Girò |
| Teutile, his daughter | soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody... |
Gioseffa Pircker |
| Fernando Hernán Cortés Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century... , General of the Spanish armies |
soprano castrato Castrato A castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's... |
Francesco Bilanzoni |
| Ramiro, his younger brother | mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above... en travesti En travesti Travesti is a theatrical term referring to the portrayal of a character in an opera, play, or ballet by a performer of the opposite sex. Some sources regard 'travesti' as an Italian term, some as French. Depending on sources, the term may be given as travesty, travesti, or en travesti... |
Angiola Zanuchi |
| Asprano, General of the Mexicas | soprano castrato | Marianino Nicolini |
Sources
- Gabriel PareyonGabriel PareyonGabriel Pareyon is a polymathic Mexican composer and musicologist, who has published literature on topics of philosophy and linguistics....
(in Spanish), "Estreno mundial del Motezuma de Vivaldi", 15 June 2005 (originally published by Pauta, vol. 23, no. 95, Mexico, DF : 50–59). - Alan Riding, Motezuma's Revenge – A Long-Lost Vivaldi Opera Gets Its Modern Premiere, International Herald Tribune/New York Times, 15 June 2005
- Vivaldi's Motezuma Has Dusseldorf Premiere After Court Win, Bloomberg News, 23 September 2005.
- Planned Stagings of Vivaldi's Long-Lost Opera Motezuma Derailed by Copyright Claim and Court Injunction Agence France-Presse, 12 July 2005.