Scena di Berenice Hob.XXIVa:10 (1795)

“She song very scanty.” Haydn’s English, as is clear from his notebook remarks on his benefit concert in the Haymarket Theatre on 4 May 1795, was also very scanty. It is clear, however, that he was disappointed by the famed Brigida Banti’s singing in the Scena di Berenice, which he had written specially for her to perform on that occasion. The consolations for the composer were that he netted the apparently magnificent sum of 4000 Gulden from the event and that, whatever the vocal failings, the work made a generally good impression. It is, after all, an uncommonly inspired treatment of a familiar operatic situation – a brave heroine abandoned by her lover – taken from the much-set Antigono by the master librettist of opera seria Pietro Metastasio.

Basically, Scena di Berenice conforms to the conventional recitative-and-–aria structure. The recitative is so long, however, and so dramatic, as Berenice is driven to distraction by her grief, that Haydn’s treatment is anything but conventional. He unifies it by frequent references back to the peremptory phrase uttered in octaves on the piano just before the entry of the voice.    He reflects its changing emotions by some extraordinary modulations, like the one preceding her question “Dove sono?” which is so extreme that we feel a similar disorientation. There are pauses and abrupt changes of tempo, like the brief Adagio beginning “Misera me” and another Adagio before “Aspetta, anima bela” which is in such a lyrical C major that it seems the aria must have begun.

In fact, the aria which is itself in two main parts, begins with a Largo “Non partir” in E major. A vocal cadenza and a few more bars of recitative effect a change of tempo to Allegro and a change of key to F minor for the devastatingly effective and brilliantly sustained closing section, “Perchè se tanti siete”,    which includes both the top and bottom notes of Brigida Banti’s range and reaches a climax with another cadenza on the painful last two words.       

“She song very scanty.” Haydn’s English, as is clear from the remarks he made in his notebook on his benefit concert in the Haymarket Theatre on 4 May 1795, was also very scanty. It is clear, however, that he was disappointed by the famed Brigida Banti’s singing in the Scena di Berenice, which he had written specially for her to perform on that occasion. The consolations for the composer were that he netted the apparently magnificent sum of 4000 Gulden from the event and that, whatever the vocal failings, the work made a generally good impression. It is, after all, an uncommonly inspired treatment of a familiar operatic situation – a brave heroine abandoned by her lover – taken from the much-set Antigono by the master librettist of opera seria Pietro Metastasio.

Basically, Scena di Berenice conforms to the conventional recitative-and-aria structure. The recitative is so long, however, and so dramatic, as Berenice is driven to distraction by her grief, that Haydn’s treatment is anything but conventional. He unifies it by frequent references back to the peremptory phrase uttered in octaves on the piano just before the entry of the voice. At the same time he reflects its changing emotions by some extraordinary modulations, like the one preceding Berenice’s question “Dove sono?” which is so extreme that we feel a similar disorientation. There are pauses and abrupt changes of tempo, like the brief Adagio beginning “Misera me” and another Adagio before “Aspetta, anima bela” which is in such a lyrical C major that it seems the aria must have begun.

In fact, the aria which is itself in two main parts, begins with a Largo “Non partir” in E major. A vocal cadenza and a few more bars of recitative effect a change of tempo to Allegro and a change of key to F minor for the devastatingly effective and brilliantly sustained closing section, “Perchè se tanti siete” –    which includes both the top and bottom notes of Brigida Banti’s range and reaches a climax with another short cadenza on the painful last two words.