Zingara, La (‘The Gypsy Girl’)
- Stephen C. Fisher
Extract
(‘The Gypsy Girl’)
Intermezzo in two acts by Rinaldo di Capua ; Paris, Opéra, 19 June 1753.
Nisa (soprano), a gypsy girl, with the connivance of her brother Tagliaborsi (tenor), tricks the old miser Calcante (bass) into parting with his purse and finally into marrying her. Tagliaborsi appears in disguise first as a bear and then as a devil. Calcante has a mute servant, Taddeo, and there is a chorus of gypsies in the finale.
Rinaldo’s lively intermezzo played nearly as large a role in the Querelle des Bouffons as Pergolesi’s La serva padrona. It shows a remarkable variety of resources for a comic opera of this date, including both comic and serious arias, accompanied recitatives and a concluding trio with chorus. Its history is complicated. Six of the arias were taken from Rinaldo’s Il cavalier Mignatta (1751), which employs similar stock characters. The first Paris production and a revision given at Pesaro in ...
