Galuppi : L’inimico delle donne. Alessandrini.

   in Early Music Today (Mar, 2012)
Galuppi’s collaborations with Goldoni in 1750s Venice set out the template for comic opera. L’Inimico delle Donne is similar fare, though the librettist is Giovanni Bertati and its 1771 premiere places it nearer the end of the composer’s illustrious career. This 2011 Liège production is the first since Galuppi’s lifetime, and while it’s an amiable piece, it’s no great discovery. The storyline finds Italian maiden Agnesina, who hates men, shipwrecked in China, where she encounters Prince Zon-Zon, who hates women: you can guess the rest, although a drunken banquet and tomfoolery with a talking statue provide mildly amusing diversions before the inevitable lovers’ duet. The music is, in Alessandrini’s words, ‘light …