It doesn't take much of a musical detective to see (and hear) the Countess's famous aria, "Porgi, amor" from The Marriage of Figaro in the melody - it's even in the same key:
Now it would take more of a musicological detective than I feel like being to unearth the history of this J.C. Bach piece. As far as I can tell, it's a resetting of a recit/aria by the great Giuseppe Gazzaniga, of whom I know nothing - here one can hear a sampling of Gazzaniga's "Mi scordo a torti miei...Dolci aurette" sung by a self-billed modern Farinelli (!), but that sample doesn't include the recit intro above which is the only place where Mozart's famous tune shows up. (When I was growing up dreaming of being a great baseball player, it never would have occurred to me I'd type that last sentence.) Anyway, it's well-established that JCB was a big influence on WAM, so it's not at all unlikely that this admittedly simple melodic idea could have passed from one to the next.
TOMORROW (or soon): More Recent Tune Theft Discoveries!
1 comment:
The aria jumped out at me when I saw it, but is it for real ? Someone didn't just play a joke appending that intro?
Post a Comment