Porin, Chivalric Opera in 5 acts (2 volumes)

Vatroslav Lisinski (1819 – 1854) was the leading composer of early Romanticism in Croatia. Having left school in 1837, after also studying music privately with J. Sojka and J. K. Wisner von Morgenstern, he graduated in arts and law and began work as an unpaid clerk. His first compositions were enthusiastically received, and he rapidly progressed from minor works to an opera, Ljubav i zloba (Love and Malice, 1845). This was the first opera in modern Croatian and South Slavonic music, and its performance was recognized as a significant event by the Revue et gazette musicale (19 April 1846) and the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung (8 May 1846)... „The fate of Porin (1850), the second opera of the greatest composer of Illyrian sympathies, Vatroslav Lisinski, is paradigmatic of the destiny of the great majority of the central works of our musical heritage. We are proud of them, we advance them as irrefutable proof of our belonging to the main currents of European culture – but they still linger in the archives, cry out for performance and new evaluation, proper recordings. (…) Our objective, then, was to present to the music public a properly ordered score of this important opera, while at the same time avoiding the temptation of correcting what, ultimately, is the authentic musical idiom of Vatroslav Lisinski – irrespective of the fact that in him, with all his obvious talent and flashes of sincere invention, we cannot avoid the traces of insufficient composing craftsmanship, a lack of practical operatic experience and unevenness of accomplishment. Every serious conductor, in the attempt to bring this score to life, will according to his own conscience perhaps introduce certain abridgements (we resisted the temptation of suggesting them in advance), and endeavour to let this noble work continue to live in our cultural awareness, as one of the foundation stones of Croatian musical romanticism. This edition will of a surety facilitate this path.” (Zoran Juranić)