Gaetano Donizetti

Gaetano Donizetti drew inspiration from the Tudor queens and their sad fates to compose three operas that are considered some of the best works of bel canto: Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux. It is a great opportunity for a singer of Diana Damrau’s calibre who, like her colleague Beverly Sills has done in the past, uses the Italian composer’s sumptuous melodies to express the femininity and determination of these heroines who fell victim to either machismo or raison d'état.The final scenes presented in this album detail terrible demises, even though Donizetti and his librettists don’t strictly stick to historical truth. Poor Mary Stuart is beheaded by her cousin while Queen Elizabeth I and Anne Boleyn’s heads are chopped off by Henry VIII. Elizabeth is plunged into despair after the love of her life, Roberto, the Earl of Essex, is executed. Stricken with grief, she starts hallucinating and sees the crown of England bathed in blood and a man running around the palace wearing her own head. One hundred years after Donizetti, cinema has been able to explore these macabre situations even more vividly.Diana Damrau is particularly fond of Donizetti's characterisation of the three women. He gives them, she says, “the capacity to love, an enormous tenderness, an insatiable desire, vulnerability, a grandiose appearance, strength, conviction, vanity, pride, greed, ruthlessness, determination and harshness, a sense of responsibility and power, anger, rage, despair, helplessness, distress, sadness... and an underlying anxiety of death”. At the lectern we find Maestro Antonio Pappano, heading the Choir, Orchestra of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome and six vocal soloists. He has chiselled away at the accompaniments, elevating the tragedy of these three heart-breaking fates. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Gaetano Donizetti’s Ange de Nisida has had a strange history. It is never included in the composer’s list of operas for a very simple reason: Escaping Italian censorship, Gaetano Donizetti decided to have it performed in French in Paris (libretto by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz). Rehearsals began in 1840, but stopped when the company went bankrupt. Donizetti ended up using some of this work in La Favorite, similar to the way Rossini used Il Viaggio a Reims in Le Comte Ory.Sir Mark Elder’s record is therefore a world premiere. The maestro is surrounded by outstanding soloists in this recording made in July 2018 at Covent Garden in London. The concert was made in collaboration with the label Opera Rara, dedicated to opera premieres. The opera’s libretto had never been printed before. At the French National Library, the piece required major archival research using three different manuscripts for it to be to put together. Candida Mantica worked as an archeologist carefully exploring and comparing numerous versions including the composer’s own manuscript. The scenes that were discovered were not in the right order and often not fully orchestrated.Though it was written for France and in French, the opera is a 100% Italian in its style. It shines as a wonderful discovery, even if it never changes our idea of Donizetti. Now that the record is out, we are looking forward to its rendition on stage. The plot takes place in the 15th century on a desert island, the way opera lovers liked at that time. The king of Naples is keeping his mistress a prisoner when a young and fiery tenor falls in love with her. The story goes through many twists, featuring the pope, between comedy and tragedy before its tragic ending for poor Sylvia, who dies, creating one more female martyr in the history of opera. © François Hudry/Qobuz