The heightened intensity of the ‘Sturm und Drang’ style also made it vulnerable to being lampooned in comic opera, and Joseph Haydn, the greatest exponent of the style, was not averse to using it in this context. La canterina dates from 1766, and is the earliest of Haydn’s operas for which an almost complete score has survived (a very short section of the Act Two finale is missing). It is set firmly within the commedia dell’arte tradition, similar in both character and subject matter to Pergolesi’s pioneering La serva padrona of 1733, and is divided into two short parts—each containing two arias and a final quartet.

The plot revolves around the confidence trickster Gasparina, who along with her friend Apollonia—masquerading as her mother—persuades two gullible noblemen, Don Pelagio and Don Ettore, to part with their wealth and possessions. In the second part of the work, Don Pelagio, having unwittingly discovered their manipulative deception, instructs a bailiff to evict the two women, but Gasparina pleads for mercy and bursts into mock tears. The melodramatic aria that follows, intended to move the heart of her infuriated lover, burlesques the pathos of opera seria, and the comedy is heightened by her apparent sincerity. Haydn incorporates exactly the same colours and devices—the use of a minor key, insistent tremolos in the strings, wide leaps and sobbing sighs in the vocal line—that he employs in his genuine ‘Sturm und Drang’ works, and only the presence of quacking cors anglais in the orchestra betrays the aria’s comic essence.

from notes by Ian Page © 2020