THE KNIGHT ERRANT –

HEROIC DRAMA PER MUSICA –
Vocal Score/reduction for voice and piano –
Edited by: Vito Clemente and Roberto Duarte –
Copyright @ 2015 Idea Press Musical Edition USA –

All rights reserved: Tan Opera Festival –
Published by: Idea Press USA –

The Hedge Knight, Dramma eroicomico (1778) belongs to the last creative period of Tommaso Traetta: here he firstly developed the amiable side of his talent to the originality and acquired lightness in musical expression. The work is essentially a fairy tale: a Spanish Prince kidnaps the Lady which fell, it borders on an enchanted island, and there, with spells of a magician, tries to convince her to marry him. The Queen, however, is in love with the knight errant who, with the help of a good and faithful servant, unable to undo magic spells, free love and to marry her.

The score is filled with parodies, recitatives and Arias for virtuoso all characters and presents some topoi used by his successors, from Mozart to Rossini.

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ENGLISH TRANSLATION

"Il Cavaliere Errante" vocal score by Tommaso Traetta gets published for the first time in USA.

Il Cavaliere Errante (The Errant Knight), a comic-heroic drama, belongs to the last creative period of Tommaso Traetta: here he first developed the amiable side of his talent arriving to originality and acquired lightness in his musical expression. The opera is essentially a fairy tale: a Spanish prince makes his men abduct the lady whom he is in love with, he holds her prisoner in an enchanted island, and there, with the aid of the spells of a magician, tries to convince her to marry him. The lady, however, is in love with the Errant Knight who, with the help of a good witch and with his faithful servant, is able to dissolve the incantations, free his beloved and marry her.

The score is full of parodies, recitatives and virtuosic arias for all the characters and presents some topoi used by his successors, from Mozart to Rossini.

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TOMMASO TRAETTA, a famous composer of the Neapolitan school, 30 March 1727 was born in Bitonto, in what was then the Kingdom of Naples. At the age of eleven he was admitted to the Conservatory of Santa Maria di Loreto in Naples, under the guidance of Nicola Porpora, and subsequently he became a pupil of Francesco Durante. After ten years of study, Traetta, education in all parts of the music, was complete. Released from the Conservatory, in 1748, he devoted himself to the teaching of singing and composed for churches and convents in Naples, masses, Vespers, litanies, motets, and most of which are still in manuscript.

In 1750 his opera seria Il Farnace, the libretto by Antonio Maria Lucchini, premiered at the teatro San Carlo with Gaetano Majorano getting a success so amazing that the other six works are asked for the same scene which succeeded one another without interruption, one after the other. Called to Rome in 1754, gave Theater Aliberti, Ezio, rightly considered as one of his finest works. Since then, his reputation spread throughout Italy; Florence, Venice, Milan, Turin and were applauded his achievements, but of great suggestions made to him by the Duke of Parma, Felipe, arrested the wander why he accepted the post of maestro di cappella at this Prince and was appointed to teach the art of singing to the princesses of the ducal family. Felipe had married the eldest daughter of Louis XV, introducing the Court of Parma, in music and in culture generally, French tastes.

The French influence pushes the work of Tan to move on different tracks than the Italian music scene of the time, anticipating with Antigona, staged in St Petersburg 1772, reform ideals associated with Gluck, but in fact already warned by other composers. According to Laborde, there is no trace of this change in the scores of Armida nor in that of Iphigeneia composed around the same time (1760). The first opera composed in Parma by Traetta was Ippolito Ed Aricia, represented in 1759 and revived in 1763 for the marriage of the infanta of Parma with the Prince of Asturias. So great was his success that the King of Spain granted a pension to the composer, as evidence of his appreciation. In the same year Tan was called to Vienna to write the Iphigenia in Tauris, one of his finest works. Back to Parma we gave Sofonisba. An anecdote related to this work would seem to be the source of what brings about transformation Laborde of the composer's style during his stay in Parma. In a dramatic situation in which the emphasis of a character had to be excruciating, Tan believed he could not do better than write below note the words a scream French.

After Harris returned to London to compose the Armida. This work and Iphigenia were represented in almost all Italy and enthusiastically received. After the death of the infante Don Philip, Duke of Parma, in December 1763, Tan was summoned to Venice to take the direction of the Conservatory called the ospedaletto but not kept this place two years, having agreed to succeed Galuppi as composer at the Court of Catherine II, Empress of Russia. He left at the beginning of 1768 to St. Petersburg and Sacchini to succeeded ospedaletto. Most biographers report that after the representation of Didone Abbandonata, Empress sent to Tan a golden snuffbox, decorated with his portrait, with a note from her hand when she said that Dido had him this gift. However, confused, in this anecdote, Tan and Galuppi who had written some years earlier, an opera on the same subject represented in Petersburg and received this message from the Empress.

After seven years of residence at the Court of Catherine II, this celebrated artist, feeling his health weakened from the rigors of the climate, asked permission to dismiss that did not achieve that with great effort. Moved away from Russia towards the end of 1775 to travel to London, where his reputation had preceded him, but whether the subject of the work commissioned has not inspired, whether his poor state of health had not left her talent all its force, its drama, performed in teatro Germondo of King, did not seem worthy of its high reputation. The cold reception given to this work and a collection of Italian duets he did publish in London, led him to leave the city to return to Italy, where he hoped to regain his vein. But by this time his health was always precarious. He wrote a few works in Naples and Venice, but without being the focus of its ancient productions. On 6 April 1779 died in Venice at the age of fifty-two years. His son Filippo Traetta, born in 1777, was a composer. Emigrated to the United States in 1799, he spent an entire career, by relying on conservative Boston (1801) and Philadelphia (1828).

With the higher degree of dramatic genius, full of vigor in the expression of passionate feelings, bold in modulations and more inclined Italian musicians of his time to make use of chromatic harmony of the German school, Traetta seems to have conceived the theatre music from the point of view from which Gluck has set a few years later, apart from diversity in melodic tendencies that are most evident in the works of Italian composer. In the pathetic, Traetta sometimes reaches the sublime, as can be seen in the air of Semiramide which was included in the Methode de chant du conservatoire de Paris. Sometimes forgot that taste of his compatriots rejected then these energetic accents, and that they preferred the pure melody to divide their attention between the melody and harmony, but when he perceived in his audience the effort of this attention, during the first stage, in which sat at the harpsichord, he used to turn viewers saying: “Gentlemen, take heed to this step”, and the audience applauded almost always this naïve expression of pride by the artist.

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