An opera for a “rhapsodic poet”. “Il disertore” by Tarchi and Marchesi

Luigi Marchesi worked for the first time with Angelo Tarchi in Il conte di Saldagna, created in 1787 at La Scala, one of the operas involved in breaking down the century-long opera seria conventions, with no simple recitative, a murder and prolonged death scenes on stage. The following year they were both in London, where Marchesi created the role of Gualtieri in Il disertore francese by Angelo Tarchi; in that period the composer was music director at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket (December 1787 - June 1788 and January - June 1789). The opera confirms Tarchi’s interest in new solutions for musical theater and for French dramas. Few years later, he would work for the Opéra-Comique in Paris. Marchesi also had much appreciated this opera, despite he proved himself the perfect performer for extremely virtuosistic and heroic roles. The singer, indeed, proposed Il disertore in the Italian theatres at least in Siena in 1791, Vicenza in 1794, and Genoa in 1799. My paper studies how the voice of Marchesi has been reconfigured into an opera that, deriving from a opéra-comique, requires a strong pantomimic ability.