Livietta e Tracollo (La Contadina Astuta) - Intermezzi Music by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Libretto by Tomaso Marinari

Pergolesi's scintillating Livietta e Tracollo was, with his La Serva Padrona, among the most popular intermezzi of eighteenth-century Europe. It received its premiere at the Teatro di San Bartolomeo in Naples on October 25, 1734, with Adriano in Siria. It was later performed in a series of different pasticcio versions, and was known under a number of different while each of the versions retained some portion of the original 1734 Neapolitan music and text, new material was added along the way. Prof Lazarevich's study of the four first-generation scripts and their differences and discrepancies shed much light on the pasticcio custom and other 18th-century performance practices. This edition will not only be of major importance in engendering future performances of Livietta e Tracollo but will add much to our understanding of the intermezzo as an operatic form.