The She-Devil, composed in 1755 to a libretto by Carlo Goldoni, is mercifully free of commedia dell’arte characters and offers a plot that in fact is relatively interesting and unusual for the genre. Two couples are staying at Falco’s hotel. One is a Count and Countess who eventually receive an invitation to stay with a local wealthy man, Don Poppone, much to the pleasure of the Countess, who is trying to get the Count away from the woman he’s been flirting with. The other couple, Dorina and Giannino, are about to break up because Giannino is out of money; he’s waiting for his father to die in order to acquire some more. They go to Don Poppone because he has some treasure in his basement, and they plan to trick him out of it, pretending to be “treasure experts”. When the two couples arrive, Poppone thinks the Count and Countess are tricksters and that the other couple are aristocrats; to make matters worse, Dorina is the woman the Count has had his eye on. Then Poppone falls for Dorina too. It turns out there is no treasure and Poppone’s maid, Ghiandina (who winds up marrying Poppone!), clears things up just as Falco, who has acted as go-between throughout, arrives to announce the death of Giannino’s father. There are lively discussions about the role of women, class distinctions, and various other topics. All ends well.
About half of the opera is recitative, and the arias, duets, and ensembles are brief and tuneful–and although somewhat “slight”, in a dramatic sense they’re accurately aimed. Keep in mind that entertainment rather than depth is the object of the undertaking. The playing of the small Lautten Compagney Berlin (21 strong, with a well-emphasized lute that underpins many of the arias) is poised, clear, and crisp, and conductor Wolfgang Katschner manages to find the playful beat in the music at all times. The music is charming, and he keeps it and the recits moving at a natural, conversational pace.
As Dorina, the class-conscious, gold-digging object of the men’s affections (presumably the “she-devil” of the title), Kremena Dilcheva has a nice, darkish sound that she can color alluringly and emphatically; her husband, sung by Matthias Vieweg, displays a lightish, youthful baritone. Tom Allen’s Falco is characterful and Egbert Junghanns gets the most out of Poppone without buffo mugging. Bettina Pahn and Johnny Maldonado make a fine Count and Countess. He, with his soprano-ish counter-tenor, has the most florid music in the opera. And Doerthe Maria Sandmann as the wise Ghiandina is animated but solid. There isn’t a superb voice, per se, in the lineup, but all are involved and more than respectable. They all embellish their vocal lines effectively. To sum up, this is a charming performance of a witty work–but bear in mind that more than an hour is recitative, albeit perkily delivered recitative.
