Three Donizetti Rarities

Since the publication of the Opera Quarterly's Donizetti commemorative issue (spring 1998), the composer's compact-discography has slowly grown to include not only more Lucias but also a number of seldom or never recorded titles. Over the past few years we have had the pleasure of reviewing some of them in these pages, namely, Lucia's French reincarnation, Lucie de Lammermoor (vol. 15, no. 2 [spring 1999], pp. 339-40); Alahor in Granata and Zoraida in Granata (vol. 16, no. 3 [summer 2000], pp. 499-502); and La romanziera e l'uomo nero (vol. 18, no. 2 [spring 2001], pp. 273-74). Now, more rarities make their appearance in the guise of these three recent releases.

La zingara is the first opera Donizetti composed for Naples. The libretto is by Tottola, one of the most prolific poets for the Neapolitan stages between 1802 and his death in 1831. The genre of the plot is semiseria, but since this score was destined for the Teatro Nuovo, it contains a prominent role for a capocomico in the local dialect; thus it forms part of a tradition that had flourished there for a century before La zingara had its highly successful opening run. The musical numbers are separated by spoken dialogue instead of recitative.

The plot of La zingara is a gallimaufry of melodramatic clichés. Argilla, the title-character gypsy, pretends to magical powers that enable her, no matter how improbably, to (1) free an unjustly detained prisoner; (2) expose a murderous plot; and (3) unite a pair of lovers, once the young man's true (and appropriate) identity is established. In a final twist, she reveals that she is not really a gypsy at all, but Don Sebastiano's long-lost daughter, kidnapped as an infant. Considering that the occasional stretches of dialogue included in this recording often move velocemente and are partly in dialect, the complete libretto (with translations in both English and French) is a welcome element of the accompanying booklet.

In the hands of conductor Arnold Bosman, the performance (captured live at Martina Franca in July 2001) is musically taut. The cast is diligent, if lackluster for the most part, and usually reliable in their pitches. The mezzo, Manuela Custer, is an intrepid and gutsy Argilla, but her descents into chest voice involve an audible shifting of gears. I found the rest of the cast tolerably engaging, if unmemorable.

For me, the chief interest in this release was encountering for the first time a work that I had no expectations of ever hearing. It is only the seventh of Donizetti's sixty-odd operas, composed when he was twenty-four. As is so often the case with his scores, the most interesting parts are the ensembles, particularly their slow movements, in which one invariably hears the apt turn of melody, the building of momentum in a span of related...