Alessandro Melani L’impio punito (“The Punished Wicked”) opera to libretto by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni. Directed 2019 by Cesare Scarton at the Teatro di Villa Torlonia, Rome as part of the Reate Festival. Stars Alessandro Ravasio (Atrace); Michela Guarrera (Ipomene); Carlotta Colombo (Cloridoro); Sabrina Cortese (Atamira); Mauro Borgioni (Acrimante); Giacomo Nanni (Bibi); Alessio Tosi (Delfa); Riccardo Pisani (Tidemo); Luca Cervoni (Corimbo); Maria Elena Pepi (Proserpina); Guglielmo Buonsanti (Demonio); Maria Elena Pepi and Luca Cervoni (Due Pastorelle); Luca Cervoni, Riccardo Pisani, and Guglielmo Buonsanti (Coro di Stallieri e Diavoli); as well as Gaetano Carbone, Alessandro Gaglio, Valerio Leoni, and Guido Targetti (Actors). Alessandro Quarta conducts the Reate Festival Baroque Ensemble. Set design by Michele Della Cioppa; costume design by Anna Biagiotti; lighting design by Andrea Tocchio. Directed for TV by Maxim Derevianko; sound recording by Giacomo De Caterini. Sung in Italian. Released 2020, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA
This was the first opera about Don Juan, composed by Melani in 1669. (The official title of Mozart’s opera on this theme is “ll dissoluto punito, ossia Il Don Giovanni”.) This appears to be the only video of L’impio punito. David Vickers, writing in the January 2021 Gramophone (page 85), gives this about the worst opera review I’ve ever seen in print. He says the Reate Festival version is cut down to the point where it does not handle core aspects of the plot faithfully. He complains the conversion of the villain Acrimante from an alto (originally a castrato) to a bass “wrecks the internal harmonic balance of the music and radically alters characterization.” Finally, he attacks the sound recording for “shoddy engineering .”
Here’s a trailer from Dynamic:
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