We don’t know much about the life of the Neapolitan composer Rinaldo di Capua, who was born somewhere around 1710 and died, in poverty and obscurity, in 1780. But, briefly, he achieved some fame as a composer of opera, and made one of the key innovations in the transformation of the symphony from a mere suite of vignettes, which could be shuffled or substituted like a deck of cards, to its later form as a coherent whole, the “symphony-sonata” form that makes, say, a Beethoven symphony appear as narrative as a play, and saw it’s ultimate degree of logical development in Sibelius’ Seventh. According to the diary of Charles Burney, a musician traveling in Italy in 1770, di Capua had the same tendency to solidify the opera buffa into something more resembling our idea of a dramatic opera. Burney relates that, after a period of celebrity for many operas (all but one of which are lost), he found him “living, or rather starving in 1770 at Rome, the chief scene of his former glory! This composer, whose productions were, during many years, the delight of all Europe, was reduced at Rome to the utmost indigence. Diogenes the Cynic was never more meanly clad through choice, than Rinaldo through necessity: a patched coat, and stockings that wanted to be patched or darned.” Burney reports that the old man was particularly bitter because he had hoped to provide for his old age by publishing his collected works, only to discover that his son had burned all his manuscipts! Hence, we know little about a fairly important composer of the Rococo period. Toronto Public Library’s huge collection contains nothing by him, though the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library [one of the little-known treasures of the city, by the way], has a libretto of one of his operas, and elsewhere the University has some scraps of sheet music. But one, random example of his operas survives, apparently a minor early work. It is La Zingara, an Intermezo in Two Parts. This was later reworked into something more unified opera, but what survives is in the original opera buffa form. It was performed by the Mainz Chamber Orchestra, with Annelies Mokewitz (soprano), Rodolfo Malacarne (tenor) and Laerte Malaguti (bass). The performance exists on a Turnabout recording which I obtained in a yard sale in my neighborhood, where yard sales can turn up anything. If this one, minor work is any hint, di Capua was a talented man. The melodies are fine, the ritornellos are dramatically effective. I don’t urge anyone to run out and listen, because their chances of finding the piece are remote.
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