Pietro Mascagni is really remembered for only one opera; the one act Cavalleria Rusticana, which was sufficiently successful for its composer to be considered for a while a probable successor to Puccini as the next “great Italian opera composer”.  That didn’t happen of course and the only other of his works to get even occasional stagings are L’amico Fritz. and Iris though he wrote a total of fifteen.  Now there’s a recording of his one act opera Zanetto which was made at a live, semi-staged performance in Berlin in June 2022.

It’s rather unusual.  It’s only 42 minutes long and has only two characters; Zanetto – a young itinerant musician sung by a mezzo-soprano, and Silvia – a slightly older wealthy woman sung by a soprano.  It’s a very gentle tale of unrequited young love; Silvia really thinks Zanetto is too young for her despite being attracted, and there’s none of the drama one might expect of the verismo era.  In effect it’s a pastoral.  It’s tuneful and pleasant enough though with a couple of “songs” for Zanetto where he’s accompanied by harp standing in for his lute.  Silvia, the more complex character, gets somewhat more chromatic music expressing her struggles with the morality of the situation but there’s nothing remotely dissonant.

The performance is pretty good with Chinese mezzo Yagie Zhang as Zanetto and the Armenian lyric soprano Narine Yeghiyan singing Silvia.  The orchestra and chorus are supplied by the Berliner Operngruppe and their founder/conductor Felix Krieger.  Basically they exist to do semi-staged versions of neglected works so this is well in their wheelhouse.

The recording is clean and well balanced with no audience noises.  There’s not much sense of a 3D sound stage though.  It’s scheduled for digital release on 20th February 2026 with 96kHz/24bit (used for the review) and 44.1kHz/16bit lossless versions plus MP3 available.  There’s a booklet with a synopsis, track listing and notes but no libretto.  The story is so straightforward I didn’t really miss not having it.

Catalogue information: Oehms Classics OC993