A Taste for Melody

Twelve years ago, the very small town of Maiolati in central Italy (a population of some 10,000) got together with the neighboring larger town of Jesi (40,000) to set up a joint Festival. Maiolati is the birth place of Gaspare Spontini, now nearly forgotten even in Italy, but considered a Titan of Imperial Opera in France (during Napoleon's times) and then in Prussia (during Frederic II's Kingdom). In Jesi, Gian Battista Draghi (better known by his nickname Pergolesi) had been born nearly a century before Spontini: a small opera by Pergolesi -- technically an 'intermezzo', La Serva Padrona -- had caused la guerre des bouffons (between French and Italian operatic styles) which tormented Parisian upper class in the last decades before the French Revolution. Jesi has a very elegant nineteenth century opera house and has always had a small 'lyric season'...