Apparently, we learn very little in life; the follies we pursue with haste in youth are answered by the follies we commit in age with great deliberation. Such is the atmosphere of Gaetano Donizetti’s great opera buffa, Don Pasquale. Composed in 1842-3 for the Paris Théâtre-Italien, it was intended for the star talents of Luigi Lablache, Antonio Tamburini, Giovanni Mario, and Giulia Grisi, at least two of whom might be said to have had a shaping impact on the character of Italian bel canto–Tamburini created more than a dozen important works by Donizetti, Bellini, and Mercadante, and Grisi was Bellini’s first Adalgisa in Norma. Read more »
It is, as Noel Coward remarked, astonishing how potent cheap music is. According to Brockway and Weinstock’s World of Opera, Gounod’s Faust was performed, after a rather lackluster debut in 1859, a thousand times inParis at the Opera between 1869 and 1894—a gobsmacking average of once every nine days. Read more »
I half-wanted to dislike it; my expectations were very low. Renée Fleming in the Baroque, after her very uncertain recent outings in bel canto! Let’s face it; this year, her Rossini (Armida) and Donizetti (Lucrezia Borgia) did not cover her in glory. How, at this HD relay on December 3, would she cope with Handel’s stitchery, hardly less complex for the voice than that of Rossini? Read more »
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