Elvida (review)

It is generally conceded that the incredibly productive Donizetti achieved his first lasting success with Anna Bolena, the thirty-fifth of his seventy operas. In his customarily detailed and highly informative annotations for the Opera Rara recording, Jeremy Commons quotes from several letters by the young Donizetti that reveal him to be a very realistic and practical man in his early (pre–Anna Bolena) years, above all a man with a gift to manage his own career wisely and purposefully. The opportunity to write a brief tribute in the form of an opera honoring the birthday of Maria Isabella of Spain, wife of Francisco I of Naples, came to him in 1826, and the subject was Elvida. (It is well to remember that Naples in those years was under Spanish rule, and operas with Spanish-Moorish subjects had been quite common even before Donizetti's time.) Elvida's librettist was the experienced Giovanni Schmidt, who delivered exactly what Donizetti had been contracted for: a tightly woven story with minimal complications, following certain surefire formulas of Spanish-Moorish conflicts, emphatically nonhistorical, and guaranteed to show the Spanish elements in a favorable light.

The scheme of the resulting one-act opera called for four principals and two comprimario singers. The principals assembled for the Naples premiere were legendary names: soprano Henriette Méric-Lalande, tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini, bass Luigi Lablache, and contralto Brigida Lorenzani (less illustrious perhaps than her stellar colleagues, but well known to the Naples audience). With a cast of this caliber, Donizetti knew he could not fail. Prior to the premiere, he gave this realistic summation of Elvida to his teacher Simone Mayr: "It is of no great note, to tell the truth, but if I can carry it off with Rubini's cavatina and the quartet, that's enough for me. It goes without saying, on gala evenings one pays much attention." Following the gala evening, another letter to Mayr recalled that "I was applauded by the King and the Queen, and on the second evening I was called forth with Rubini, La Lalande and all the others."¹

Elvida received only four performances in 1826 and fell silent for the next 170 years. That in the year 2004 this regally launched but otherwise minor work would receive two independent recorded productions in England and Italy is curious but certainly welcome. It is not really surprising, though, because the twenty-nine-year-old Donizetti, while still under Rossini's influence, already evidenced a combination of melodic felicities and a keen dramatic sense that were to characterize the best of his later operas.

Opera Rara surpasses its Adriatic rival, and by a considerable margin. The four leading roles are interpreted by artists who bravely challenge the fame of Rubini and his legendary colleagues. Annick Massis is a triumphant Elvida, a role that demands a regal tone and fearless agility. She has a long scene beginning with a brief aria-like recitative and expanding into a trio and a quartet (tracks 17–21), embracing the basic conflicts of all the characters. The soprano sails through these contrasting demands with superlative facility, undeterred by the Cs and Ds at culminating points. Bruce Ford, her Spanish rescuer from Moorish captivity, seems to relish his entrance aria and cabaletta "Cara immagin del mio bene," in which Rubini must have brought down the San Carlo.

Luigi Lablache, the original Amur, was a bass or certainly a bass-baritone. Pietro Spagnoli, his modern successor, is definitely a baritone, but one seasoned enough to negotiate the role's wide range. He also convincingly portrays Amur's haughty and implacable character while expertly and accurately rendering the florid elements of his music. To quote Wagner's Siegfried, Amur's son Zeidar "is not a man" but rather a luscious-toned mezzo-soprano, flawlessly interpreted by Jennifer Larmore.

Conductor Antonello Allemandi creates a lively and incisively controlled background around these outstanding singers. Bongiovanni's Franco Piva does his best, but his orchestra is not the London Philharmonic. He has a good Amur in Massimiliano Fichera, though not quite Spagnoli's equal, and an attractive Zeidar...