I understand that the mission of outfits like the Teatro Donizetti is to “rescue” forgotten operas but, frankly, some of them ought to remain forgotten. I would put Donizetti’s Alfredo il Grande in that category. It premiered in Naples on 2nd July 1823 and closed after one disastrous performance not to be seen again until a run in Bergamo in November 2023 which was recorded for video.
Throughout the history of Italian opera the long running feud between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines has provided composers and librettists with endless opportunities for pointless revenge killings and other assorted mayhem. They werer still doing it in 1907 when Frencesco Cilea premiered his short three act opera Gloria.
Ferrucio Busoni’s Doktor Faust was left unfinished at the composer’s death in 1924 and completed by Philip Janarch. Further sketches for the work by the composer were fleshed out and incorporated into the score by Anthony Beaumont in 1982. That more complete version was performed at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2023 and recorded for video.
The annual Donizetti festival in Bergamo makes a point of resurrecting less well known Donizetti operas. In 2022 Chiara e Serafina; Donizetti’s first commission for La Scala, got the treatment. It’s got some very decent music if you like early Donizetti. The Sestetto in Act 2 is particularly well constructed and it’s generally tuneful and allows the singers to strut their stuff.
So here goes with a video recording of one of those 19th century Paris operas that nowadays, if they get done at all, tend to get done in an inferior Italian version. We are talking Donizetti’s 1840 opera La favorite written for l’Opéra de Paris. The recording is of a production given at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo in 2022 and it’s clear that both director and conductor have gone to some lengths to get as close to the spirit of the work as possible. I think by and large they succeed.
Ernani is an early Verdi opera (1844) and it’s not performed that often (16th most performed Verdi opera according to Operabase). It was given at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2022, in a production by Leo Muscato, which was recorded for video release. How you react to it may partly depend on how you feel about bel canto operas on (more or less) serious themes. This is an opera about unrequited love and revenge (lots of revenge) but, in typical bel canto style, the music doesn’t always fit the mood. So hear we open on a prelude where Ernani’s bandit gang are sorting out the corpses from their latest skirmish while the orchestra plays a rather jolly tune, then they break into a drinking song and then Ernani enters and sings a rather lovely cavatina. There are places where the music is darker and some of it is really rather good. In particular there are some strong duets for Ernani and his (everyone’s) love interest Elvira. Overall, I rather liked it musically.
Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz might be the perfect antidote to an unsuccessful reimagining of Götterdämmerung. It’s short, uncomplicated, tuneful and nobody dies. It’s a simple love story in which an Alsatian landowner, who is a confirmed bachelor, makes a bet with the local rabbi that he can’t find him a bride. Then he falls hopelessly in love with the daughter of his tenant and they all live happily ever after.
Acis et Galatée was Lully’s last completed opera. Like pretty much all of his work it displays in abundance the qualities that Voltaire claimed made Racine and Corneille superior to Shakespeare. How you feel about that will probably affect how you feel about Acis et Galatée, which is an elegant and classically correct retelling of Ovid’s tale of a nymph who loves a shepherd and the Cyclops who spoils the fun. It has an allegorical prologue too, which celebrates the glories of Louis XIV (natch). It also has lots of dance numbers.
Violanta is one of those works which seem oddly out of place, among other things. It’s a one act opera by the eighteen year old Erich Korngold which premiered in Munich and Vienna in 1916. It hardly needs saying that most eighteen year olds in Europe in 1916 were engaged otherwise than in composing rather overwrought operas about seduction and death in 15th century Venice but there you go.
There are only two video recordings of Giodarno’s Fedora in the catalogue. There’s a classic 1996 recording from the Met and, now, a 2015 production from the Teatro Carlo Fenice in Genoa. The Genoa version, directed by Rosetta Cucchi, attempts to inject some serious ideas into the piece, which the Met production most certainly does not. Whether this is a good idea is questionable for Fedora, even though it contains some good numbers and some great melodies is, dramatically, about as clichéd as it gets. Cucchi attacks this problem in two ways. First, an old version of Loris Ipanov is on stage throughout observing the action and dies at the end. I’m not sure what this adds. Second, at various points a mime/ballet sequence is staged behind the main stage area. This seems like an attempt to link the narrative specifically to WW1 and the death of the Romanovs which seems odd as the ending makes no sense in a post-revolutionary context. So, I’m not sure the idea is sound and I’m not sure the piece would carry the freight even if it were. The rather quirky video direction by Matteo Ricchetti doesn’t help either as it’s often hard to figure out what is going on in total.
operaramblings 