Il CD Live recording, 1976 VAI Audio - Fort Lee, NJ U.S.A.
Original tape courtesy of BJR
Mastered for Compact Disc by Charles Johnson
Cover photo courtesy of the Sony Music Photo Library
Sacred opera in three acts
Music by Licinio Refice
Text by Emidio Mucci
1 Prologue (The annunciation); Per amor di Gesù porgete i cori... (Angel of God)
2 Act I (Finale); Cecilia, non ebbi dianzi possa d'esprimere... (Valerian, Cecilia, Chorus)
Act II
3 O, il tetro mormorio di quella folla! (Valerian, Cecilia, Chorus)
4 Finale: Un'alba gloriosa mi sbianca... (Valerian, Cecilia, Chorus)
5 Act III (Almachius, Valerian, Cecilia, Chorus)
Angel of God / Cecilia, Renata Scotto
Valerian, Harry Theyand
Almachis. George Fourié
Angelo Campori, Conductor
The Legend of Saint Cecilia. Deacended from a noble Roman family, Cecilia was given in marriage against her will to Valerian, a pagan youth. On her wedding day, alone with her husband, she informed him than an angel of God was guarding her and that he would experience God’s punishment if he attempted to consummate the marriage; but if he allowed her to preserve her virginity intact, he would be rewarded by divine grace.
Condemned to death for their faith by the prefect Almachius, the brothers converted the soldier on guard, his family, and the executioner — who were all baptized at night by priests brought by Cecilia. The next day they were all beheaded. After arresting Cecilia, Almachìus ordered her to be taken to her house in the Trastevere (traditionally the site of the Church of St. Cecilia) and burned in the calidarium of the baths. When the attempt failed, he sent soldier to behead her. Three blows failed to decapitate Cecilia but left her mortally wounded. At her prayer, her death was delayed for three days in order to give her time to have her house consecrated as a church.
***
With the retirement in the 1920s of Lorenzo Perosi as the foremost Italian composer of sacred music, the mantle passed to another priest, Licinio Refice (Patrica 1885- Rio 1954). An honor graduate of the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia, Refice successively held the posts of professor of composition at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music and music director of the Liberian chapel of Santa Maria Maggiore. Prior to Cecilia he had composed a considerable body of liturgical music in various forms and had attracted attention, even outside Italy, with his oratorios based on the life of Mary Magdalene and on the martyrdom of Saint Agnes. In these works he revealed the impassioned dramatic temperament that was to carry him irresistibly toward the stage. Margherita da Cortona, his only other opera, was first staged at La Scala in 1938. A third stage work, The Magician, adopted from a atory by Calderon de la Barca, was never completed.
The announcement of an opera based on the life of Saint Cecilia initially aroused certain misgivings in ecclesiastical circles, and the Italian press carried a local debate on the propriety of such a representation. Refice himself explained the matter aimply. For purposes of religious education, he wished to revive the ancient sacra rappresentazione, or mystery play,as the sacred form best suited to move a lay audience; and in the legend of Saint Cecilia he had found a most suitable and striking subject. More important, the legend of the Roman martyr, with its rich human and dramatic content, particularly excited his creative gifts.
In the plot ot his libretto, Emilio Mucci followed substantially the legenct ot Sain Cecilia as handed down in the Acts of the Martyrs and the Liber pontificalis, enriching it with the mystical symbolism so dear to the poets of the 1920s and ‘30s. As in the old mysteries, the action is preceded behind the curtain by a prologue, "The Annunciation." Act I, set in the palace of the Valerians in Rome, depicts the wedding ceremony of Cecilia and Valerian, their first postnuptial love dialogue, and the appearance of the angel in defense of Cecilia’s chastity. In Act II, the murky Catacombs of Praetextatus reveal the Christians at prayer, the miraculous restoration of the Old Blind Woman’s sight, the apparition of Saint Paul, Valerian’s conversion, and his baptism by Bishop Urban. Act III brings us, in the first scene, to Cecilia’s trial by the Roman prefect Almachius and, in the second scene, to her torture in the calidarium of her palace, the miracle of the rose petals, her dying bequest, and beheading. Again, as in the old mystery plays, a choreographic epilogue reveals her apotheosis in Paradise among the blessed.
Refice’s lifelong training in the ancient music of the Roman Church provided an invaluable thematic source and stimulus to his skill br choral elaboration. Certain material is partly of his own invention . -Cecilia’s three-note motive, for example, as well as those of the martyrdom and the beatitudes. A considerable portion of the score, however, is either directly quoted or derived from plainsong. Examples include the motive associated with Christ and the Christians (an antiphon from the Corpus Christi liturgy) and Valerian’s theme, derived from an antiphon from the vesper service for Saint Cecilia’s Day (November 22). The opera opens with the fourth psalm tone and Act II begins with the melody of the gradual of the requiem mass, Requiem Aeternam and the haunting melody heard throughout Act II — most conspicuously just before Cecilia’s death — is the antiphon from the burial service In Paradisum. Bishop Urban’s arrivail in Act II is underscored by the chant melody Ecce sacerdos magnus, while Valerian’s baptism is rendered on the Gregorian recitative of pontifical blessings. The melody sung by the boy’s choir following Cecilia’s death is the Resurrectional Hallelujah from the Holy Saturday liturgy.
Composed to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia, the work was first performed at the Teatro Reale dell’Opera in Rome on February 15, 1934. Edoardo Vitale conducted a cast that featured Claudia Muzio in the title role and the American tenor Giuseppe Bantonelli sa Valerian. Local observers were unprepared for the hearty applause that followed the prologue and for the twenty-five curtain calls that the work elicited. Revived after World War II, Cecilia became well-known in Italy particularly through the performances by Renata Tebaldi.