IL PIGMALIONE

by Gaetano Donizetti (1797 - 1848).

Il Pigmalione, is the first theatrical attempt of the teenager Donizetti, who over the next thirty-one years would compose some seventy operas. It was started - as Donizetti himself wrote on the score - on September 15th and completed on October 1st, 1816. The libretto, by an unnamed librettist, is an adaptation of Sograffi's Il Pigmalione, which in turn was a translation of Pygmalion by J. J. Rousseau, drawn from the Metamorphosis by Ovid. The story tells the myth of Pigmalione.

Synopsis

Venus, enraged because the women of her own cult-place of Cyprus denied her divinity, caused them to be the first women to prostitute themselves. The sculptor Pigmalione would have nothing to do with these licentious women.

The one act opera begins when Pygmalion, King of Cyprus, has renounced women and turned to sculpture in order to create his ideal of feminine beauty. He has become so enamored of his statue of Galathea that he can no longer raise his chisel to it for fear of hurting it. In torment, he prays to Venus, through whose intercession Galathea is brought to life and reciprocates Pygmalion's love.

Background

This libretto seems to be a very strange choice, since it is the only mythologic subject Donizetti ever set to music. Perhaps he had a good reason for choosing it because it was free. Il Pigmalione is an ambitious opera even though it is rather short and with limited stage demands involving just two voices. It is largely a monologue and the main risk Donizetti had to avoid was that of static action since only towards the end the statue of Galathea becomes alive. Pigmalione can only speak to himself, the statue and Venus who never replies.

No Record of a performance of Il Pigmalione during Donizetti's lifetime survives. The little opera apparently lay fallow until 1960, when the peripatetic 'Teatro Della Novità', performed the work at the Teatro Donizetti on a triple bill with two modern operas. The work was well received even though most of the attention was given to the other two operas.