On the program

The Pirates, a comic opera in 3 acts by Stephen Storace and J.Cobb is considered as Storace’s masterpiece. First staged on 21 November 1792, The Pirates “created quite a furore” being performed 23 times during the season 1792-93 and mounted for King George III in 1794.

The plot revolves around a Spanish Don Altador who is in love and would like to marry a Spanish lady, Dona Aurora, an orphan, who is also in love with him. But she has a guardian, the Italian pirate Don Gasparo, who has other plans for her: he brings her to Naples to marry her to his nephew, Guillermo, the commander of a pirate ship. With the help of  his servant Blazio and Aurora's maid Fabulina, Altador hopes to rescue the Spanish lady  from this unkind fate. 

The composer, Stephen Storace (1762-1796) , was born in England of a British mother and Italian father, the double-bassist Stephano Storace. Stephen was sent at age 12 to receive a musical training in Naples, at the famous Conservatorio di San Onofrio. This stay would have a significant impact on the composer's life, and not by chance he would choose the city as the scenery for The Pirates. Storace was also a talented painter, and “the picturesque scenery [of The Pirates] was from designs made at Naples by the composer himself”.  

During the years  1785 -1787 Storace lived in Vienna, where he met Mozart and had his first two operas successfully performed. He returned to London and enjoyed growing fame as a composer for the King's and Drury Lane theatres. The most popular of his 15 English operas were "The Haunted Tower" (1789), "No Song, No Supper" (1790), "The Siege of Belgrade" (1791), "The Pirates" (1792), "The Cherokee" (1794), and "The Iron Chest" (1796). 

Considered Storace's finest work for the stage, "The Pirates" is credited with introducing the "grand finale" to English opera. It stood out also for the excellence of the writing for voices, "indebted to the vocalization of Stephen's sister, the famed singer Anna/Nancy Storace", who created the role of Susanna in Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" and appeared in a number of her brother's operas.

Another innovation, this time in the visual concept of the opera, was the use of the inventive 18th century technology of the lanterna magica (an early type of image projector that dazzled audiences), with some characters disguised as travelling lanternists (named Savoyards for coming supposedly from the Savoy region in France). 

Soloists of the Israeli Opera’s Meitar Opera Studio: Efrat HaCohen - Liat Lidor - Nika Brook - Pnini Grubner - Shaked Stroll - Tom Ben Ishai - Yuli Rorman

Ensemble PHOENIX on early instruments: Ya'akov Rubinstein & Lia Raikhlin (violins), Daniel Tanchelson (viola), Lucia D'Anna (cello), Ron Veprik (double bass), Genevieve Blanchard (classical flute), Gili Rinot (classical clarinets), Alexander Fine (classical bassoon), Evgeny Karasik (early tympani).

Transcribing & editing of the Storace original score: Uri Dror & Edition Prima Vista

Conductor: Myrna Herzog

Reviews

"The Jerusalem audience delighted in dedicated, polished performance on the part of the Meitar Studio members - Efrat HaCohen Bram, Liat Lidor, Veronika Brook, Pnini Leon Grubner, Shaked Stroll, Tom Ben Ishai, Yuli Rorman - their splendid voices and natural musicality reflecting understanding of 18th century voice production and offering much to enjoy from the arias, duets and choruses. Neither did the PHOENIX Ensemble players (concertmaster: Yaakov Rubinstein), conducted on stage by Herzog, disappoint the audience, as they presented us with suave, informed and carefully balanced ensemble playing of genuine beauty and lushness. So, the hero of the evening was indeed Storace’s music - graceful and melodious - inviting the listener to indulge in its refinement and allure.."  Pamela Hickman

 Read the full review here.

the Meitar Opera Studio

The Young Artists Program of the Israeli Opera

The Meitar Opera Studio is a practical study and performance program for young Israeli opera singers who graduated from any given music academy and who are on the verge of embarking on an operatic career. The major goal of the Meitar Opera Studio is to nurture operatic talent in Israel and to help young opera singers to work in their profession. The Meitar Opera Studio program is aimed at young Israeli opera singers who are willing to hone their craft, further their studies on an ongoing basis and gain stage experience, thus getting ready for a full-fledged operatic career. 

The actual curriculum of the Meitar Opera Studio is aimed at enlarging the experience of the participating singers and enabling them to gain musical and dramatic knowledge on a personal level and even more so as part of ensemble work. At the end of first 17 years of the Opera Studio program, the 70 singers who were part of the program have between themselves performed around 140 roles in various Israeli Opera productions, side by side with participating in numerous concerts and performances in which they performed a very wide repertoire.

Singers who have graduated from the Opera Studio program continue to perform in Israeli Opera productions on a regular basis as well as perform with orchestras all over Israel. All Opera Studio members performed most successfully in the Israeli Opera production of La traviata both in Tel Aviv (October 2001) and on a most successful tour to Wiesbaden, Germany (May 2003). In the fall of 2005, all members of the Opera Studio participated in a production of Dido & Aeneas which was performed in Tel Aviv and in Stuttgart. In the summer of 2010, all Opera Studio singers participated in the world premiere of Alice in Wonderland (David Sebba). Opera Studio singers also performed in concerts in Switzerland, Great Britain, Australia and South Korea. Notable Opera Studio productions include Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart) with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, IBA as well as with the Israel Sinfonietta Beersheva and as La boheme (Puccini), Werther (Massenet), Die Fledermaus (J. Strauss), Don Pasquale (Donizetti), Dido and Aeneas (Purcell), Suor angelica (Puccini), The Telephone and The Medium (Menotti), Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte (Mozart), I Capuleti ed i Montecchi (Bellini) and others. 

Soloists of the Israeli Opera’s Meitar Opera Studio: Efrat HaCohen - Liat Lidor - Nika Brook - Pnini Grubner - Shaked Stroll - Tom Ben Ishai - Yuli Rorman

Opera Studio alumni Hila Baggio, Ira Bertman, Hila Fahima, Noa Danon, Dana Marbach, Ana Virovlanski, Shiri Hershkovitz, Rachel Frenkel, Na'ama Goldman, Anat Czarny, David Bizic, Oded Reich, Daniela Skorka, Tal Ganor and others perform regularly leading roles with the Israeli Opera as well as in major opera houses around the world.

The Music Director of the Opera Studio is David Sebba.

Il Conservatorio di S. Onofrio

Naples, the music capital of Europe

During the baroque period, Naples was considered the music capital of Europe: as Blazio, a character in Storace's The Pirates says, "sir, the people here are all born musicians. The little children cry in tune!".

This was thanks to the huge number of talented musicians born in the city - and thanks to its four excellent music conservatories which gave them an outstanding musical education. It is for this reason that in 1774 Stephano Storace sent  his 12 year old English son Stephen all the way from from London to study at Sant'Onofrio a Porta Capuana, one of those four conservatories.

Sant' Onofrio dates from 1578, and among the composers who learned or worked there, we find Don (Nicolò) Francesco (de) Rossi (Bari 1627 - ca 1699) and Cristofaro Caresana (c.1640-1709) who at some point were also its directors;  Pietro Andrea Ziani (1616-1684),  Niccoló Jommelli, Giovanni Paisiello, Niccolò Piccinni,  Antonio Sacchini (four of the great names in the 18th century Neapolitan music) andof course Stephen Storace (1762-1796).  

 The original building still stands, very near to Porta Capuana, just across the street on the north side of the old Vicaria, the tribunale, the Naples Hall of Justice. It is presently occupied by the Police, which does not allow visitation.

Charles Burney (1726-1814) described a day in S. Onofrio, Wednesday, 31 October 1770:

"...This morning I went with young Oliver to his Conservatorio of St. Onofrio, and visited all the rooms where the boys practise, sleep, and eat. On the first flight of stairs was a trumpeter, screaming upon his instrument till he was ready to burst; on the second was a french-horn, bellowing in the same manner. In the common practising room there was a Dutch concert, consisting of seven or eight harpsichords, more than as many violins, and several voices, all performing different things, and in different keys: other boys were writing in the same room; but it being holiday time, many were absent who usually study and practise there together.

The beds, which are in the same room, serve as seats for the harpsichords and other instruments. Out of thirty or forty boys who were practising, I could discover but two that were playing the same piece: some of those who were practising on the violin seemed to have a great deal of hand. The violin-cellos practise in another room: and the flutes, hautbois, and other wind instruments, in a third, except the trumpets and horns, which are obliged to fag, either on the stairs, or on the top of the house.

The only vacation in these schools, in the whole year, is in autumn, and that for a few days only: during the winter, the boys rise two hours before it is light, from which time they continue their exercise, an hour and a half at dinner excepted, till eight o’clock at night; and this constant perseverance, for a number of years, with good teaching, must produce great musicians."