Gilbert Blin and Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière directed Telemann’ s Pimpinone & Ino, for the Chamber Opera Series of the Boston Early Music Festival. Inspired by the Italian comic intermezzi, Pimpinone is about social class differences and humanity as the narcissistic Pimpinone is stung by the beauty and barbs of his charming chambermaid, Vespetta. The cantata Ino is drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The two pieces are staged as was customary at the time, drama with a comedy serving as an intermezzo.
Photo’s Kathy Wittman
The plots and characteristic situations of the intermezzi make any production a continuous variation on the same theme. The intrigues are built mainly around stereotypes regarding women: their cunning nature, their obvious inconstancy, their congenital duplicity.
What amuses us—or leaves us perplexed and irritates us in these scenes—was different for an audience in the eighteenth century, when these works were a great success. Humor based on sexism (misogyny, homophobia, transphobia), with hints of xenophobia, ageism, etc., is always in the background, if not center stage. What amused people then may be exasperating today, but not always, not necessarily.
The real difficulty is to distinguish which comic effects remain enduring, tenacious, inextinguishable, and which ones are faded, or have completely expired. The humor may be hidden in a detail or need explanation because of an unfamiliar historical context. Amusement may also depend on whether one enjoys the mockery and identifies with the satirist or sympathizes with the mocked. It is these layers of meaning that the dramaturgy must untie to prepare the new building which is the performance.
For Pimpinone, it seemed necessary to conduct a global reflection. This critical approach is what I am attempting here, based on a reading of the libretto. This attempt to “understand” the texts by constantly keeping in mind what the original intentions were, is also to determine whether those intentions are still dynamic today: generating comedy and carrying meaning.
Read the entire essay of Gilbert Blin in the program book at issuu.com
Premiere November 27, 2021
Revival June 14, 2025
June 27 & 28, 2025
June 29, 2025
Paul O’Dette & Stephen Stubbs, Musical Directors
Gilbert Blin & Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière, Stage Directors
Robert Mealy, Concertmaster
Melinda Sullivan, Dance Director
Gilbert Blin & Meriem Bahri, Costume Designers
Kelly Martin , Lighting Designer
© 2024 Gilbert Blin, All rights reserved