DONIZETTI Gemma di Vergy • Roberto Rizzi Brignoli, cond; Maria Agresta ( Gemma ); Gregory Kunde ( Tamas ); Mario Cassi ( Conte di Vergy ); Leonardo Galazzi ( Guido ); Kremena Dilcheva ( Ida) ; Dario Russo ( Rolando ); Bergamo Musica Festival Gaetano Donizetti O & Ch • BONGIOVANNI 20024 (DVD: 140:00) Live: Bergamo 2011


I certainly applaud the Donizetti Festival in Bergamo for staging a rare production of their namesake composer’s Gemma di Vergy , as seen here from the festival’s 2011 season. Pretty much neglected by opera companies in the modern age since it was championed by Montserrat Caballé in the mid-1970s, Gemma contains some little heard and quite entertaining music by composer Donizetti that deserves wider exposure. Of course Caballé, as was her wont, was not singing Donizetti’s version, but her own, with simplified and smoothed-over vocal lines replacing much of the composer’s bel canto fioratura. The Spanish diva sang the title role well enough in that style, but none of her recordings are, at least in my opinion, a truly satisfactory representation of the original opera.


The story itself, like Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda and Donizetti’s earlier Anna Bolena , tells of an aristocratic wife (here a Countess) repudiated by a husband because she has not borne an heir. The locale is France in the final years of the 100 Years’ War during the victorious ascendancy of Joan of Arc. It is instructive to note that all of these sanctimonious gents wishing to move on from barren marriages seem to have a comely lass waiting in the wings, more than ready to take up conjugal duties. Unlike Beatrice or Anna, Gemma does not go quietly or nobly into the night. She is more into the cat-fighting mode, trying to kill her new rival, the lady Ida de Gréville, and inadvertently inciting her faithful Saracen retainer Tamas (secretly in love with her) to kill the Count. Gemma spurns this rather extreme act of devotion (those crazy Saracens!) and Tamas kills himself rather than be taken by the count’s loyal followers. In fact, the opera ends quite unhappily for everyone, but in a welter of melodious, engaging music.


The Bergamo sets are simple yet effective. Painted risers and some props come and go, along with a gorgeous blue stained-glass backdrop with medieval themes. Traditional costumes are finely detailed and rich-looking, probably much too fine for war-ravaged France, but an operatic excess I can easily live with. It is when the action and singing begins on stage that the warning lights begin to go off. In fact, there is very little action, period, and what does occur seems rather amateurishly staged. The singers mostly stand and sing, and like Caballé, they don’t really do bel canto . That particular style of singing was losing cachet by 1834 when this opera premiered, but in modified form it was still central to Donizetti’s work. The lack of that type of expertise from this cast is disappointing. Young soprano Maria Agresta sings quite passionately in the demanding title role (Caballé said it was more difficult than singing three Norma s) but her voice spreads rather unpleasantly in higher register. Neither bass Leonardo Galeazzi as Guido, the Count’s retainer, nor baritone Mario Cassi as the Count really have enough voice fully to command their roles. Cassi, although good-looking in the part, could benefit from some acting lessons. The best singer seen here turns out to be veteran American tenor Gregory Kunde in the role of Saracen Tamas. Kunde’s voice occasionally displays a bit of the ravages of a long career, but he still possesses a ringing tenor top and generally turns in a fine performance. The Festival chorus is given little to do, but they sing quite satisfactorily and the orchestra is led in some brisk pacing by Maestro Roberto Rizzi Brignoli.


This is the first Bongiovanni DVD I have seen. The label’s video capture of the stage production uses pretty straightforward basic camerawork but looks professionally rendered. Sound is fine in stereo with no surround option available. Subtitle choices are limited to Italian, English, and Japanese. To my mind, despite a sincere effort here, poor Gemma is still looking for a good representative recording of her opera. This Bergamo DVD will serve to replace the Caballé discs as a place-holder until something better comes along.


FANFARE: Bill White

Despite meeting with success upon its premiere in 1836, Gaetano Donizetti himself considered his Belisario to be a step below his finest effort, 1835s Lucia di Lammermoor. Composed in a style befitting its elevated, heroic and noble subject matter (high declamation, monological rather than dialogue driven, highly symphonic in style, etc…), it nonetheless worked in the theater and testifies to Donizetti’s superior inventiveness and theatrical sense. Recorded live at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo, Italy in 2012, this Bongiovanni release marks the opera’s first appearance on DVD.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Featuring Gezim Mishketa; Elisaveta Martyrosian; Enrica Fabbri; Filippo Adami; Maurizio Lo Piccolo; Omar Montanari; Daivde Rocca; Massimo Pagnoni; Asia D’Arcangelo; Fabio Vichi.

Orchestra Sinfonica Carlo Coccia
Fabrizio Dorsi/Rosetta Cucchi, directors

NTSC All Region; Stereo, Dolby 5.1
Subtitles: Italian, English, Japanese
Running time: 85 minutes

ARRIGHETTO, A SENTIMENTAL FARCE
Madama Beritola, finding two goats on an island, having lost two sons goes to the Lunigiana: there one of her sons is with her Master and he sleeps with his daughter and is put in prison. Cicilia rebelling against king Carlo and the son recognized by the mother, marries the Master’s daughter, and finding his brother, in grand style they return. (Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, second day, sixth novella). Thus begins the Story of the novella from which Angelo Anelli tells us he took his libretto. It is the eternal edifying topos He who suffers may hope. Often in the past this Lombard poet as others before him had considered Boccaccio’s novelle as a mine from which to “extract subjects” in alternative to the noble French theatre, at the time much in vogue for this use. Suffice one title as example: Griselda, an oppressed married woman whose virtue finally triumphs over fate, taken from Apostolo Zeno but rewritten by Anelli in 1793. Obviously the story is semi-serious, even larmoyante, a genre halfway between tragic, comic and pathetic which at that time had become a favorite with audiences. It is precisely what the author so eloquently wrote down on the title page of the score: a “sentimental farce”.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Edmea (1886) is Catalani’s third theatrical opera. After the success of Dejanice (1883), Catalani started to look for a new libretto. Unable to convince Boito, attracted into Verdi’s orbit, he made do with Antonio Ghislanzoni, who had been resting for at least fifteen years on the laurels from the triumph of Aida. The poet gave the maestro the ready-made libretto of Edmea, which had bene written already for Salvatore Auteri Mazocchi and not set to the music. The libretto, drawn from a drama by Alexandre Dumas Jr., The Danicheff, is an unlikely story conceived in function of a prima donna in a state of lunacy, according to an operatic tradition revived in those years by Thomas heroine of Ophelia in Hamlet. Edmea is undoubtedly an attempt of the musician to please his audience with a relatively easy listening product, with emphasizing the vocal score, pushing it toward the extreme notes; in particular the tenor’s part is not only sharp but also kept more than due in the theatrical zone of the register passage. The main interest of the opera is in the orchestra, often splendidly used with very subtle sensibility for aims that exceed by far a mere elaborated support to singing. The orchestra language is always careful, present, alive and consistent, elegant and varied with languors and succen excitements. The musician from Lucca show his unmistakable expressive signature and succeeds to make himself unforgettable.

When, in 1928, Alfredo Casella approached opera for the first time, he was already a mature, 45-year-old composer. La Donna Serpente by Carlo Gozzi was a subject that had intrigued him for a decade or so and, in fact, in 1918 he had conceived of a choral ballet, for which he commissioned scenery and costumes from the Russian painter. La Donna Serpente kept Casella busy for three years, from October 1928 to the same month in 1931. Just days before the opening at the Teatro Reale in Rome of his "opera-fairy tale" - the description the composer and obliging librettist Cesare Vico Lodovici chose to give the score - Casella listed the criteria utilized for its composition: choice of a subject taking place in an imaginary, fantasy world given the fact that opera itself already represented an anti-realistic genre and prevalence given to the music.

Francesca Caccini, also known as la Cecchina (Florence 1587 – Lucca 1640), daughter of Giulio Caccini, and composer of Euridice (1602), Francesca Caccini is considered one of the musicians who most contributed to the evolution of the new recitative style in the early 1600s. Indeed, she was the first woman composer to write an opera and her great talent and cultural depth are equally apparent in her poetry. In Florence she was composer, lutenist and harpsichord player to the Medici, apart from a few months at the French court of Maria de' Medici. Here, the period group Romabarocca Ensemble led by Lorenzo Tozzi perform her opera Balletto.

The Oratorio Gioas re di Giuda, “a Sacred Drama,” was probably the first important symphonic-choral work by Boccherini, composed during the years 1764-1765 for performances in Lucca, the musician’s native town. After his studies in Rome and his successes in Vienna, where his brother GianGastone worked as a dancer and also as librettist for Haydn, Boccherini returned to Lucca and applied to join the Cappella Palatina. Shortly afterwards, Boccherini again began touring Europe in a Duo together with his friend Filippo Manfredi, concertmaster of the Lucca orchestra: they went first to Genoa- where evidence suggests performances of his first two oratorios- then to Paris and finally Madrid. Metastasio’s libretto for Gioas is based on one of the numerous struggles for the control of Jerusalem. Athalia usurps power after having assassinated David’s last descendants. Saved by a miracle, the youngest one, Joash, is reared in the temple by the wife of Jehoiada, the high priest. The drama opens when Ismael (one of the Levite leaders) is informed of the plan to overthrow the usurper. At the same time Athalia, with the help of her minister, Mattan, summons Sebia, unfortunate mother of the victims, in the hope of convincing her to present a false heir to the people of Israel. In Part Two, Jehoiada succeeds in thwarting the evil plan of treacherous Athalia and her wicked counselor, Mattan. Jehoiada finally overthrows the tyrants and offers Joash the throne to great jubilation of the people.

In 1834 Bellini stated that choosing a good subject for an opera was “more difficult than creating the music itself.” The success of Il Prata, with a plot containing all the ingredients of Romantic popular literature, convinced Bellini and Romani to continue in the same direction and early in August 1828 they decided on their source: The gothic novel L’Etrangere by Charles D’Arlincourt, set in an imaginary medieval Brittany. A new anti-Rossini approach was recognized by Bellini’s contemporaries as a mark of his modernity, featuring a plain vocal style free of ornament and attentive to the emotional meaning of words. Critics were immediately award of Bellini’s innovations in La Straniera. A partial sacrifice of belcanto was inevitable if opera singing was to be once more expressive and dramatic and rid itself of the flowery ornamental and virtuoso style then in vogue. In Bellini’s mature style, coloratura and vocal virtuosity are never a pretext for showing off but always intrinsic to the action. A hallmark of Bellini’s style, the arioso led to a revision of the recitative which, in order to evolve into the arioso, abandoned conventional formulae and so took on an expressive power wholly new in Italian opera at the time. The same search for flexible form is found in the lyric pieces, which Bellini revised in accordance with the needs of the action. The absence of routine numbers meant he did not indulge in the customary practice of self-borrowing from his previous operas or using La Straniera as a source for future works.

Classical Music

ALESSANDRO SCARLATTI (1660 – 1725)
Il Pastor di Corinto, Opera pastorale in tre atti (1701)

Bruna Tredicine, soprano; Anna Carbonera, soprano; Cristina Cappellini, soprano; Caterina Novak, mezzo; Carlo Putelli, tenor; Roberta De Nicola, soprano buffo; Massimo Di Stefano, bass buffo

Romabarocca Ensemble/Lorenzo Tozzi

Tito Schipa, Jr., stage director
Adriana Ruvolo, costumes; Luigi Stefano Cannelli, design

Recorded: Auditorio di San Francesco a Bolsena, August 16 & 17, 2007 NTSC All Region; 16:9; 5.1; Approx. 140 mins. Subtitled in Italian, English