- Date: 1727
- Composer: Leonardo Vinci
- Period: Baroque (1600-1749)
Review
La caduta de' Decemviri sets a popular story taken from Roman history. The source is Livy's History, in which he tells of a plebeian girl murdered by her father to prevent her from being abducted by the Decemvir Appius Claudius. The incident caused a popular uprising among the Romans, who sympathized with the girl and her plight. The original libretto was written by Silvio Stampiglia, and set by Alessandro Scarlatti in 1697. Stampiglia's drama contains two secondary plots, one of which is a romance between Claudia, Appio's sister, and Lucio, Virginia's father. The other is a series of comic scenes between Servilia and Flacco. These buffo characters are turned into active players in the central drama during Act II, playing the prosecution and defense in a monkey trial designed to have Virginia handed over to Appio as a slave. Their comic scenes directly comment on the action of the serious drama. When Virginia makes a miraculous recovery, Servilia comments ironically. When Appio attempts to flee Rome is disguise, haunted by his guilt, a parallel comic scene follows, in which Flacco is dressed as an old woman, and attempts to disguise his voice with stuttering.Stampiglia's tale, an elaborate warning against the abuse of power by tyrannical rulers, was dedicated to the wife of the Viceroy of Naples. At the time, Viceroy Don Luigi de la Cerda was having a disastrous affair with a popular singer, and humiliating his wife by having his mistress and her family given status at court. Instead of heeding Stampiglia's warnings, the Viceroy confiscated the theater where the opera was produced, and exerted control over all future productions.
"Se alimenti i germi" is an example of the mature, periodic style that made Vinci famous. It is in triple meter, with a theme that emphasizes the weak second beat with expanding leaps and trills. An energetic trommelbass is combined with accelerated harmonic rhythm and increased melodic activity toward the cadences.
In the second act, Valeria erupts with anger at Appio. "Se tu sei crudo" is in an emphatic parlante style in minor mode. She spits out her words at him, each syllable enunciated by a separate pitch, with held notes, scalar motion, and leaps adding emphasis to her meaning. In this opera Vinci experimented with expanding the expressive possibilities of da capo form. In four different arias, he tried differentiating the mood of the singer's statements by creating contrasting sections within the first vocal section, much in the manner of a first and second theme in sonata form. To do this, he differentiated between the character of the themes with changes in meter and even tempo. In "Sento amor che piange," Appio has discovered that Virginia has been mocking him behind his back. He wants revenge, he says, but "love weeps." These two opposing emotions are characterized by a cantilena melody filled with dotted rhythms and an allegro triple meter theme over octave pedals. ~ Rita Laurance, Rovi
Albums with Excerpt Performances of the Work
| Title | Date |
| Leonardo Vinci: Arie d'Opera |
| La caduta de' Decemviri, opera | |
| La calle 92, tango |
Copyright © 2012 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.