Józef Elsner and Wojciech Pękalski’s 'The Echo in the Wood': A Late Reverberation to Italian Intermezzi in the Repertoire of Warsaw’s National Theatre?
Jakub Chachulski
Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8972-1490
Abstract
The paper presents Józef Elsner’s one-act opera Echo w lesie [The echo in the wood] to a text by Wojciech Pękalski in the context of the generic term ‘intermezzo’, originally applied by both its authors to this work, similarly as to several other pieces by Elsner, written in 1808–10 and now considered lost. Most of these compositions were written for performance by Jan Nepomucen Szczurowski and Joanna Szczurowska, a married couple of actors-singers. The historical context justifies the interpretation of this term as an intentional reference to late 18th-century Italian intermezzi buffi. I therefore analyse fragments of The Echo, revealing the associations between its textual content and the 18th-century opera buffa, the presence of stylistic qualities and composition techniques characteristic of that repertoire, as well as of elements of musical allusion, parody, and other intertextual references which are typical of the opera buffa. Furthermore, I discuss the existing sources and their problems, such as the major discrepancies between the libretto manuscript of 1808 and the surviving copy of the score, made after 1835. These differences, along with conclusions from my analysis, suggest that the version of the work now known to us is the original (and the only) one, though in the current state of knowledge the opposite hypothesis might also be true.
Keywords:
Józef Elsner, Wojciech Pękalski, Jan Nepomucen Szczurowski, opera, intermezzoReferences
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Authors
Jakub ChachulskiInstitute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8972-1490
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