page_title: Mala Pasqua!
section_title: Performance history
hierarchical_section_title: Mala Pasqua! / Performance history
caption_attribution_description: English: Engraved portrait of opera singer Elena Teodorini (1854-1926)
context_page_description: Mala Pasqua! is an opera in three acts composed by Stanislao Gastaldon to a libretto by Giovanni Domenico Bartocci-Fontana. The libretto is based on Giovanni Verga's play, Cavalleria rusticana which Verga had adapted from his short story of the same name. Mala Pasqua! premiered on 9 April 1890 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, six weeks before Pietro Mascagni's opera Cavalleria rusticana which was also based on Verga's play. Bartocci-Fontana's libretto adds some elements that were not in Verga's original and expands on others. The name of the Santuzza character was also changed to Carmela, but the basic plot and setting remain the same. Its title refers to the curse which Carmela places on Turiddu, the lover who had spurned her: "Mala Pasqua a te!". Following its Rome premiere Mala Pasqua! had a few more performances in Perugia and Lisbon, but it was completely eclipsed by the phenomenal success of Mascagni's opera. After the 1891 Lisbon run it was not heard again until 2010 when it was given a semi-staged performance in Agrigento, Sicily.
context_section_description: Mala Pasqua! premiered on April 9, 1890 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome with Elena Theodorini and Giuseppe Russitano as Carmela and Turiddu. The opera ran for a total of four performances. Proceeds of the first three were to go to the patronesses' committee of the Tiro a Segno Nazionale (Italy's national association for target shooting) who also financed the production. Amongst the audience at the premiere were the Princess Odescalchi, Lina Crispi (wife of the Prime Minister Francesco Crispi) and several prominent politicians including Paolo Boselli, Federico Seismit-Doda, and Luigi Miceli.  Although the critics were dismissive of the work, they did note that it found favour with the opening night audience with loud cheers and requests for Gastaldon to come before the curtain for an ovation even before the performance was finished. The Catholic journal, La Civiltà Cattolica, did not review the performance but recorded its outrage at the opera's depiction of a religious procession with a priest carrying the Eucharist during a tale of "sordid affairs and adultery" and called it a "sacrilege and vile insult". According to the journal, the devout Catholics walked out at this point, leaving an audience that consisted largely of "freemasons, riflemen, and an assortment of vulgar people."
  In the meantime, Mascagni's opera Cavalleria rusticana won the Sonzogno competition. It premiered six weeks after Mala Pasqua! at the same theatre. Mascagni's work was a phenomenal success and completely eclipsed Gastaldon's. (By the time of Mascagni's death in 1945, his opera had been performed more than 14,000 times in Italy alone.) There were a few further performances of Mala Pasqua! at the Teatro Morlacchi in Perugia in September 1890 and at the Teatro São Carlos in Lisbon in February 1891, with Theodorini as Carmela on both occasions. After that it sank into oblivion, so much so that some late 20th century reference books claimed that the score was lost. In fact, it was published by Ricordi in 1890 and is held in several libraries in the United States and Europe. On June 22, 2010, Mala Pasqua! received its first performance in 120 years at the Regional Archeology Museum in Agrigento. It was performed in a semi-staged concert format to piano accompaniment as part of a one-day conference entitled "Mala Pasqua! La Cavalleria dimenticata" ("Mala Pasqua! The forgotten Cavalleria"). The production was organized by the Teatro Pirandello in Agrigento and directed by Paolo Panizza. Elena Candia and Piero Lupino Mercuri sang the roles of Carmela and Turiddu with Claudio Onofrio Gallina at the piano and Loredana Russo conducting the Stesicoro Choir.
caption: Elena Theodorini (1854-1926) who sang the role of Carmela in the premiere of Mala Pasqua!
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2011:05:16 15:40:32", "Image ExifOffset": "172", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "310", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8625", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "480", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "582"}