Spitting at one another like cats – “Meatball!” “Sardine!” – two duetting sopranos nearly stole the show at the Royal College of Music’s Britten theatre last week in a work that was more than two centuries old but new to most of us. Giuseppe Gazzaniga (1743-1818), an Italian composer associated with Naples, wrote 51 operas. Best known, for obvious reasons, is Don Giovanni Tenorio (1787), based on the morality tale also used by Mozart a few months later. In both works, the dissolute antihero is visited by a stone guest and gets his comeuppance. Taking a bold step, the RCM Opera Studio, the postgraduate training course for singers on the threshold of professional careers, chose Gazzaniga’s opera buffa for its winter term production.
Their success was a timely reminder – one of two examples last week – of the importance of our national conservatoires. University music departments have been in the headlines. Not helped by a minefield of uncertainty over what should be on the syllabus, they are being snipped, if not axed entirely (Oxford Brookes is the latest victim; others are under threat). Nothing is safe for ever, but conservatoires, some protected by royal charter, are at least clear in purpose: to give vocational training in music to a standard of excellence. They attract international staff and students. Problems of their own concerning one-to-one teaching practice notwithstanding, we should cherish these institutions.
