Amilcare Ponchielli
La Gioconda

Leaving aside that clever fox Puccini, the fate of all major Italian opera composers after Verdi has been more or less the same: one work has entered the repertoire permanently, and all the rest have been more or less shelved, if not completely forgotten. Cilea, Leoncavallo, Zandonai, unfortunately, even Giordano and, worse still, Mascagni: entire treatises could be written on the reasons, which partly vary from case to case, but the first "one opera wonder" after Verdi comes before the verismo, before the "young school" to which the previously mentioned composers belong: Amilcare Ponchielli, in fact, a composer from Cremona who, within a few years, went from being second in line to becoming the new number one of Italian opera, only to almost instantly plummet back into anonymity, leaving behind only... well, leaving behind only one of the most vivid, passionate, sumptuous, and beautiful operas in the Italian repertoire of the second half of the 19th century.

La Gioconda has almost all the hallmarks of the so-called Grand Opera, a stylistic exaggeration predominantly of French origin, which had its greatest exponent in the great Giacomo Meyerbeer, very fashionable in the central decades of the 19th century, and of which Verdi's Don Carlos is probably the most famous Italian example: historical setting, very "grandiose", political and religious elements incorporated into the drama, XL-sized orchestras and choirs, rigorously closed forms, grand arias, great scenography, ballets and other special effects, often lasting well over three hours; as can already be deduced from the name, therefore, everything is thought and realized on a large scale. In La Gioconda there is all this except the duration, which is limited to about two hours and forty minutes, which obviously represents an advantage in terms of clarity and effectiveness in the development of the story. And, speaking of the story, with Arrigo Boito as librettist you always play it safe: as in Otello and Falstaff, here too a clear, direct vocabulary, devoid of any pomposity ("And I love him as the lion loves blood", if you catch my drift) and a great ability to write complex, multidimensional, and colorful characters, especially in the case of the protagonist and Barnaba, a very verbose antagonist, sly, with a perfectly sketched out and believable motive and modus operandi, his lyrical peak is the aria "O Monumento", where he expresses all his malevolence and rancor in a still elegant and very melodic form, in line with the rest of the opera.

La Gioconda is an opera completely immersed in its historical setting, the opulent Renaissance Venice, which is not just a backdrop but effectively a seventh main character, that lives and participates in the drama through choruses and dances, just think of the Furlana in the first act, incisive and lively, a popular dance that contrasts with the aristocratic and elegant Dance of the Hours, on which it seems entirely superfluous to add any comment or consideration. Anyway, speaking of melodies, I have yet to come across such a shamelessly pop "serious" opera, in the best sense of the word; I mentioned before "O Monumento", let alone all the other arias: the duet "Anatema ... L'amo come", a divinely passionate and thrilling moment, the romance "Cielo e Mar", with that suave finale in crescendo, unsurpassed in the version by Carlo Bergonzi, even the same "Suicidio!", all melodies imitated and reprised ad nauseam in Italian light music, at least until the '60s of the 20th century, perhaps in that field only Puccini managed to create equally enduring archetypes.

I think that, for a spinto or dramatic soprano, La Gioconda, such a passionate and proud character to the extreme consequences, is one of the most beautiful and challenging roles to interpret: it requires a decisive, full, direct vocality, false-sensibility interpreters with their artificial, nasal, and whispering voices should abstain, in "Suicidio!", with that dramatic finale, which pushes to the lower limit of the soprano register they would make a very poor figure. Not that they would be better in the rest of the role, or in any other role for that matter, but let's stay on topic: in its artistic and historical context, the Italian melodrama of the mid-late '800, perhaps the only comparable opera in terms of "general feeling" and melodic and dramatic richness is Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, which, however, does not have such realistic and multifaceted characters, at least not at Boito's writing levels, said this, said everything. And if there were other works by Ponchielli that even come close to the levels of La Gioconda, then we would be facing another great composer who achieved less than he deserved, I will investigate this in the future.