La fedeltà premiata
Royal Academy of Music
Jenùfa
English National Opera
Everyone agrees that Haydn’s operas are a disappointment, given what is now widely regarded as his supreme musical stature, but it’s hard to say just why. In the case of La fedeltà premiata (Fidelity rewarded), which the Royal Academy of Music staged brilliantly — my efforts to persuade soi-disant opera lovers to go to these productions of the music schools are, it seems, a total failure — one reason could be the insanely complicated plot, which I abandoned any attempt to follow. Richard Wigmore, in his Faber Guide to Haydn, quite rightly points out that the finale to Act I is as extended as any Mozart finale, and gathers an impressive momentum. The big difference is that we don’t give a damn about Haydn’s characters, especially not when they are parts of a send-up of the pastoral mode.
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