Armida

Performance history

The opera was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 26 December 1779 to open the theater's operatic carnival season of 1780 as one of the earliest operas ever performed there. It was a spectacular failure that necessitated the substitution of many of the arias for works of Giuseppe Sarti and Francesco Bianchi. The first performance of the opera since its first run in Milan took place in Lisbon on 22 May 2015 in the form of a semi scenic version sponsored by the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa.

There is no reason to believe that an anonymous production of Armida staged in Lucca in 1778 made use of any of Mysliveček's music, in spite of multiple claims in the musicological literature that it constituted the original version of the Milan opera of 1780.

Connection with Mozart

The aria “Il caro mio bene” from Armida is the basis of Mozart's arrangement (or transcription) “Ridente la calma”, K. Anh.A 36 (formerly K. 152 and 210a), a work for voice and piano that is often referred to as a canzonetta. The circumstances surrounding the preparation of Mozart’s arrangement have long been complicated and mysterious, but recent research has yielded important new clues. No autograph manuscript for Mozart’s “Ridente la calma” survives. The earliest mention of it in the Mozart documentation is a letter of Constanze Mozart written to the Leipzig publisher Breitkopf & Härtel on 25 February 1799. In this letter, Constanze offered Breitkopf & Härtel 21 miscellaneous compositions by her late husband for sale, among them “Ridente la calma.” Breitkopf & Härtel published the piece the same year in a volume of Lieder for voice and piano.

In the original thematic catalogue of Mozart’s compositions published by Ludwig Köchel, it was numbered 152 with a suggested composition date of 1772. The basis for this early date was likely the simplicity of the musical materials and its archaic dal segno aria format. In the early 20th century, there was a feeling among certain Mozart scholars that the piece might have been from a slightly later period, perhaps 1772-76, and in the third edition of the Köchel catalog edited by Alfred Einstein, the number assigned to it was 210a, a higher number to reflect a later chronological framework. Sensibly, “Ridente la calma” was removed from the main body of the Köchel catalogue in its latest edition and placed in Anhang (Appendix) A among arrangements of works by other composers.

In 1929, Georges de Saint-Foix published an article that demonstrated “Ridente la calma” to be an arrangement of the aria “Il caro mio bene” by Mysliveček, which he discovered in a portfolio of arias found in the music collection of the Conservatoire de Paris. The manuscript included no dating of the aria nor any indication of an opera that it might have been used in. Collations of Mysliveček’s vocal music prepared in the 1980s and 1990s by Stanislav Bohadlo and Daniel E. Freeman revealed that “Il caro mio bene” is associated with the opera Armida without any evidence that it was composed earlier than the première of the work for carnival 1780 at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

The stylistic profile of “Il caro mio bene” is attributable to Mysliveček’s close personal connections with the renowned castrato soprano Luigi Marchesi (who appeared in Mysliveček’s opera Ezio and oratorio Isacco, figura del redentore in Munich in 1777, then was brought to Naples for the 1778-79 operatic season to appear in Mysliveček’s La Calliroe and L’Olimpiade in roles that established him permanently as a great operatic figure in Italy and led to singing engagements all over Europe. Before arriving in Milan at the end of 1779 to sing the role of Rinaldo in Armida, Marchesi had appeared both in Mysliveček’s opera La Circe in Venice in May of the same year and Francesco Biachi’s opera Castore e Polluce in Florence in the autumn. It is known that Marchesi brought the aria “Se piangi, se peni” from Castore e Polluce with him to Milan, because it was mentioned in a press report from the 1784 as being used to replace one of the unsuccessful arias in Mysliveček’s Armida after the opera had failed and Mysliveček himself had left Milan to supervise a production of his next opera, Medonte, in Rome during the same carnival operatic season of 1780. Marchesi achieved notable success in Milan with Bianchi’s “Se piangi, se peni.” It was clearly favored greatly by Marchesi, who had already had it inserted in November 1779 into Giuseppe Sarti’s Achille in Sciro, the second opera of the autumn season in Florence that year.

Vocal set pieces

(taken from the score in the Ajuda Palace in Lisbon,

the only complete score of the opera)

Act I, scene 1 - Aria of Fenicia, "Perche d'affano oppressa"

Act I, scene 2 - Aria of Sidonia, "Vuoi che turbi"

Act I, scene 3 - Aria of Armida, "So che amor lusinga"

Act I, scene 4 - Aria of Idraote, "Molto soffrir condanna"

Act I, scene 6 - Chorus with Fenicia, "L'orme seguiam d'Armida"

Act I, scene 7 - Duet for Armida and Idraote, "Ah, del fellon nel sangue"

Act I, scene 8 - Aria of Rinaldo, "Dal mio core amor"

Act I, scene 8 - Accompanied recitative for Idraote, "Qui si dimori"

Act I, scene 9 - Accompanied recitative for Rinaldo, "Più queste spiaggie"

Act I, scene 9 - Aria of Rinaldo, "Più non vi sento in seno"

Act I, scene 10 - Aria of Artemidoro, "Se amica vuoi la sorte"

Act I, scene 10 - Chorus with naiad and shepherdess, "Nel più felice tempo"

Act I, scene 11 - Accompanied recitative for Armida, "Qual turbame"

Act I, scene 11 - Aria of Armida, "Cedo l'armi il cor"