Serenata

five songs for baritone from Canzoniere italiano Op.17

Si dà principio a questa serenata

Alze le trecce biondo e non dormire

O tu che dormi, e riposata stai

Il letto ti sia fatto di viole

Commiato: E giacchè vedo qui l’alba apparire

Wolf-Ferrari wrote few songs. In fact, in terms of the lirico da camera, the Italian art-song equivalent of the German Lied or the French mélodie, he wrote none at all. But while he avoided literary texts of the kind set by Italian contemporaries like Respighi and Malipiero, he twice indulged his taste for Tuscan folk poetry – first in 1902 when he wrote the two sets of Rispetti Op.11 and Op.12 and then 34 years later when he completed his Canzoniere italiano (Italian Song Book) Op.17. Significantly perhaps the Rispetti were written before he definitively settled in Germany and the Canzoniere when his operas were at last being handled by a major Italian publisher and being first-performed in Italian opera houses, not least La Scala Milan.

The Canzoniere italiano is a collection of no fewer than 44 songs with piano accompaniment published in two parts which are divided unequally into groups allocated to soprano, tenor or baritone. Although the soprano songs have proved to be the most popular, thanks not least to a now rare recording by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, the baritone group of five songs at the end of Part One is particularly interesting. Headed Serenata (Serenade), it amounts almost to a miniature song cycle. In “Si dà principio” the serenader introduces himself in a declamatory style which takes on a more intimate tone in the last few lines, the accompaniment being little more than punctuation. In “Alza la trecce bionde”, however, the piano introduces the seductive melody which the singer is to adopt in making his four urgent statements. After pleading    piteously with his beloved to wake up in “O tu che dormi”, he applies much charm in the delicately articulated “Il letto” and, as morning bells are heard in the piano part, he takes his fond farewell in “Commiato”.