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Discovered treasure: Opera Southwest takes on rare performance of 'Matilde'
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Opera Southwest is launching its 52nd season with a relatively unknown piece by an equally unknown composer.
Carlo Coccia’s “Matilde” will open on Friday, Sept. 13, at the Albuquerque Museum Amphitheater. The show will continue on Saturday, Sept. 14, and Sunday, Sept. 15.
Discovered treasure: Opera Southwest takes on rare performance of 'Matilde'
Five apprentice singers will perform the opera: Joshua Hughes, Alexandra Wiebe, Wil Kellerman, Eric Botto and Kim Stanish. Selected through competitive national auditions, the young artists gain a rare opportunity to perform on stage in a fully-produced opera with a live orchestra.
It all started during the pandemic, when artistic director and conductor Anthony Barrese was researching Rossini, his favorite composer.
“During COVID, we had a lot of time,” he said. “As I was doing more research, I started looking at composers who were contemporaries of Rossini. There were new operas being done all the time.”
He was first drawn to “Matilde” because it was his grandmother’s name.
“I started researching it and I found the music so charming and so delightful,” he added.
“Coccia was on the verge of being a very famous composer before Rossini came in and obliterated everybody.”
The opera tells the passionate love story of Federico and Matilde, complete with mistaken identities and a fraudulent letter.
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“It has to do with a deception,” Barrese said. “A letter is read accusing someone of adultery. At the end, it’s redeemed.”
The opera opened in 1811 at Venice’s Teator San Moisè. It drew popularity in at least five cities outside Venice — Macerata, Naples, Padua, Rome and Milan, Barrese said.
“There’s a beautiful lyricism in the solo arias,” he said. “There’s a quartet that is just phenomenal. It’s an interlayering of drama and music.”
The singers will don late 18th-19th century period costumes.
“No one in New York has ever heard this,” Barrese said. “I’m never going to conduct a ‘Bohème’ here where nobody knows it. With this, we can discover it together.”
