Ah! perfido Op.65 (1796)

The nearest Beethoven got to Italian opera was the concert aria for soprano and orchestra, Ah! perfido, which he wrote on a visit to Prague in 1796. Although he dedicated it to an amateur musician there, Countess Clary, it is not entirely unlikely that he undertook the work with the encouragement of the thoroughly professional Josepha Duscheck, who enjoyed entertaining musicians at her villa just outside the city - not least Mozart, whom she had coerced into writing Bella mia fiamma for her when he was staying there nine years earlier. Certainly, she gave the first known performance of Ah! perfido, in Leipzig, later in 1796.

As a highly accomplished soprano, Duscheck no doubt made a big effect with Beethoven’s ambitiously operatic scena - not least perhaps in the highly dramatic opening recitative with its vividly expressive orchestration, its restless tempo changes, and a vocal line ranging from rage to malice and, on a melting modulation, tenderness. The aria itself is in two parts, a melodious Adagio (beginning “Per pietà”) touchingly coloured by compassionate woodwind and a spectacular Allegro assai (beginning “Ah crudel!”). The effect of the passionate coloratura of the Allegro assai is not so much diminished as heightened by the intervention of three slower episodes, the pathos of which so effectively offsets the otherwise prevailing anger.