page_title: Il mondo della luna (Antal Doráti recording)
section_title: Critical reception
hierarchical_section_title: Il mondo della luna (Antal Doráti recording) / Critical reception
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Ritratto di Goldoni
context_page_description: Il mondo della luna is a 211-minute studio album of Joseph Haydn's opera, performed by Luigi Alva, Arleen Augér, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Edith Mathis, Frederica von Stade, Lucia Valentini Terrani and Domenico Trimarchi with the Chœurs de la Radio Suisse Romande and the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne under the direction of Antal Doráti. It was released on LP in 1978 and on CD in 1992. Its CD version included nine bonus arias of Haydn's, mostly written to be inserted into other composers' works, performed by Mathis and the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne under the direction of Armin Jordan.
context_section_description: Lionel Salter reviewed the album on LP in Gramophone in September 1978. Il mondo della luna was a better drama than some of Haydn's other operas, he thought, in that it did not have a "cat's-cradle [plot] full of confusing intrigue and confused motivation". Its musical excellence was vouchsafed by Haydn's recycling eight excerpts from it in his flute trios, his Symphony No. 63 and the Benedictus of his Mariazell Mass. As for the album itself, it was blessed with a cast that was "an uncommonly strong one, almost without weakness". Domenico Trimarchi, "particularly alert to textual nuances", painted a persuasive portrait of Buonafede, the wealthy old innocent being duped by his daughters' and maidservant's lovers. Luigi Alva was equally enjoyable as Ecclitico, the bogus astronomer - styled an astrologer by a librettist too ignorant to know the difference - who tricked his future father-in-law into believing that he had been miraculously transported to the moon. Anthony Rolfe Johnson, playing the servant Cecco, "[made] the most of his moment of glory as the mock Lunar Emperor". The opera's other male role, Ernesto, originally an alto part sung by a castrato, was undertaken by Lucia Valentini Terrani in the album's least successful performance. Her voice was "at times less than ideally steady", and she seldom sounded convincingly masculine. Doráti's other female soloists sang impeccably. As Clarice, the darling of the star-gazing confidence trickster, Edith Mathis "[negotiated] the fioriture of 'Son fanciulla da marito' with brilliant clarity". As Clarice's sister Flaminia, Ernesto's best beloved, "that admirable stylist Arleen Augér [revelled] in her tremendous bravura aria 'Ragion nell'arma' ... and in the tender 'Se la mia stella'". And as Lisetta, the below-stairs mezzo wooed by Cecco, Frederica von Stade dispatched her helter-skelter comic numbers with apparently effortless virtuosity. In this particular opera, the contribution made by Haydn's orchestra was a more important ingredient than usual: he had responded to its extraterrestrial theme with a sopranino recorder, some unusual violin harmonics and imaginative echo effects. Happily Doráti's band played better for him on Il mondo della luna than on any of the other albums in his Haydn cycle. Philips's production team had done their work well too, although not quite perfectly - a duet seemed to have been edited clumsily, and at one point Trimarchi sounded anomalously far from his microphone. The album's one serious negative lay in Doráti's handling of its recitatives (vital to the opera's narrative coherence). They were far too slow, dragging on ad infinitum.
  Eric Salzman reviewed the album on LP in Stereo Review in January 1979. He took a rather dimmer view of the opera than Salter. Its libretto, he wrote, was one of several "strained and overly sophisticated eighteenth-century comedies about human folly", and it was telling that Haydn had apparently struggled to work up much enthusiasm for composing it. All of his score was "solid stuff", but it was only in its pseudo-lunar Act 2 that his inventiveness truly flourished. At least the album presented the opera satisfactorily. The best of its soloists were Domenico Trimarchi as the credulous old gentleman and Frederica von Stade as a forerunner of the worldly-wise Despina. The runners-up for top honours were Anthony Rolfe Johnson, "modestly effective" in the stock opera buffa role of the comical servant, and Edith Mathis as one of Mr Good-faith's daughters. Luigi Alva's Ecclitico was marred by some less than perfect evenness. The orchestra's playing was nicely Haydnesque, and Doráti's conducting was "sensitive and stylish". A very appealing audio quality was the icing on the cake of a "highly commendable" album. People beginning to explore Haydn's operas would do better to start with the superior Orlando Paladino, but any confirmed Haydn enthusiast should certainly find an evening with Il mondo della luna time well spent.
  J. B. Steane reviewed the album on LP in Gramophone in April 1979, discussing it together with fou
caption: Carlo Goldoni portrayed in 1750
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