Faraone Sommerso - Bando PERIFERIE di TARANTO

SPREAD FESTIVAL NICOLA FAGO
SUBMERGED PHARAOH
oratory for four voices by Nicola Fago
libretto by Anonymous
THE CONFRATERNITY OF MUSICI, baroque ensemble
COSIMO PRONTERA, harpsichord director
GIUSEPPE NAVIGLIO Pharaoh, JOAN FRANCESC FOLQUÈ Moses
VINCENZO FRANCHINI Aaron, VALERIA LA GROTTA Messenger

Although the contribution of Apulia to the history of music between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, especially to the so-called "Neapolitan school," is now well known, too often "minor" musicians are spoken of, who, although they have received the due attention of recent musicological research, remain little more than unknown and await to be correctly evaluated in their actual historical and artistic contribution.

This fate has also befallen Nicola Fago, known as Il Tarantino (Taranto, 1676 - Naples 1745), still remembered mainly because he was the teacher of Leonardo Leo.

It is Nicola Fago whom the Forum of the Neapolitan Music School wanted to dedicate this year's Spread Festival to, a series of initiatives dedicated to a composer who does not have his own festival but who is remembered in shows and festivals dedicated to composers of the school.

Nicola Fago, as well as a distinguished teacher, was a prolific composer of sacred liturgical music (masses, litanies and psalms, canticles, hymns, motets and responsories) but, like his more illustrious colleagues, he also did not neglect to dedicate himself to dramatic music, composing cantatas and encomiastic serenades, some melodramas, and at least three oratories including "The Submerged Pharaoh" (1709) of which two handwritten scores have been found, contemporary copies, one kept at the library of the Florence Conservatory and the other belonging to an English collection kept at Tenbury College. We completely ignore the author of the text, inspired by the biblical story of the liberation of the Jewish people from Egyptian slavery, through the miraculous passage of the Red Sea. It could be an anonymous reworking of one of the many librettos of 'sacred dramas' dedicated to the episode and traceable throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, under titles that sometimes emphasize the figure of Pharaoh more often than that of Moses.

The composition was intended for skilled performers, endowed with a certain vocal agility and good expressive abilities, and four are the characters that animate the contrasting biblical story: Pharaoh (bass), a fierce and obstinate negative symbol of evil, Moses (baritone tenor) and Aaron (soprano), opposed expressions of God and his people, and the Messenger (alto), who vaguely resembles, in the role of witness and narrator of the story, the "Text" of previous oratorical forms. The poetic text distributes recitatives and arias very evenly among the four characters in perfect accordance with the rationalistic conventions of serious opera of the early eighteenth century. The recitatives contain narrative and dramatic elements, while the arias respond to the stylization of an affection or a state of mind, and are predominantly lyrical.

The musical style that pervades the entire composition is strongly anchored in late Baroque: short thematic ideas based on rhythmic patterns, abundant imitative processes between voice and bass, as well as madrigalisms and programmatic imitations, both in the orchestral and vocal parts.

Ticket price: €10
Web: amicidellamusicataranto.it/...