Donizetti first made an impact on the primo ottocento operatic
scene with his seventh work Zoraida di Granata (see review)
premiered in Rome in 1822. In the years immediately after this
he plied his trade and wares, like many others, up and down the
Italian peninsular. In his case this was mainly in Naples with
the odd excursion to Rome or Palermo. With composers often getting
paid less than singers they had to accept frequent commissions
to keep body and soul together. What they might want to say in
musical terms was subservient to the singers on a theatre’s roster.
The choice of libretto to inspire them was often subject to the
whim of the local censor or even the local royalty. Royalty could
also influence the outcome of a new work. This is illustrated
by the response to Pacini’s Alessandro nell’Indie (see
review)
which became a great success in 1824 when the Bourbon King of
Naples, Ferdinand IV, who was present in the theatre and who had
taken a shine to the leading lady, applauded her opening aria
warmly. Compare that success with Donizetti’s Emilia di Liverpool
that had bitten the dust following a mere eight outings after
its premiere in the same city a couple of months before. The Donizetti
is of at least comparable standard musically (see review).
The presence of Royalty favoured Donizetti for his Il Castello
di Kenilworth (July 1829) during the composition of which
he showed the early signs of the syphilis that was to kill him
and which caused a delay in the premiere. After that success he
had to take six months sick leave from his Naples duties during
which his wife gave birth to their first child who lived only
two weeks. A commission for the small Naples Teatro Fondo was
followed by Il Dulvio universale (see
review) for the Lenten period at the San Carlo.
Il Dulvio universale
is characteristically melodic and was well received except for
the scene of The Flood where the staging, but not the
music, was whistled. Meanwhile the composer prepared Imelda
de’ Lambertazzi for later in the season. Perhaps Donizetti
was emboldened by his selection, alongside Bellini to compose
a new work for the 1830-31 season in Milan set up by local aristocracy
to rival La Scala. For this he wrote Anna Bolena, which
brought him international recognition. Certainly his
Imelda de’ Lambertazzi, premiered in Naples on 5 September
1830, is completely different in musical style to what
Donizetti had composed before. It is as though he deliberately
set out to push his own creativity towards new horizons. I have
to plead that my first listening took me wholly by surprise,
not having read Jeremy Commons’ informative booklet essay and
analysis. The musical form and vitality with chorus, trios and
duets replacing the usual stream of arias and florid decorated
cabalettas breaks new boundaries. Commons suggests that the
style of the work was too new for the audience and being
a naked drama such as he had never conceived before contributed
to the poor initial and subsequent audience reception that disappointed
Donizetti greatly. The opera received a mere two performances
in Naples that season where the audience expected their more
usual diet of bel canto solos and florid coloratura arias.
Never again did Donizetti venture so far off the well-beaten
path. The music of Imelda de’ Lambertazzi is inventive
virile and dramatic as behoves its tragic plot. The Naples audience
of 1830 were not as receptive to Donizetti’s creation as Milan’s
La Scala ten years later when Verdi presented an equally ground-breaking
and musically virile Nabucco to an unsuspecting audience.
As far as this recording is concerned, the impact of the vibrancy
and vitality of the music is enhanced by the leaner orchestral
timbre of The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
They are a period band using appropriate instruments under the
idiomatic and sympathetic conducting of Mark Elder. Elder contributes
a brief essay titled Donizetti on Period Instruments.
Tottola’s libretto
for Imelda was based on a play seen in Naples in 1825.
It concerns the incessant thirteenth century conflicts in Bologna
between the Ghibelines and Guelphs and is in outline not dissimilar
to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet story. The only female in
the cast is the eponymous Imelda Lambertazzi, daughter of the
chief Ghibelline magistrate of Bologna. She is in love with
Bonifacio Geremi, leader of the Guelphs. The liaison is bitterly
opposed by Lamberto, Imelda’s fanatical brother. Lamberto rejects
Bonifacio’s attempts at reconciliation, tempts him into a trap
and kills him with a sword dipped in poison. Imelda dies after
sucking the poison from his wounds in a vain attempt to save
him.
The allocation of
roles to voice registers is unusual. The lover, Bonifacio is
sung by a baritone whilst Imelda’s brother and father are both
tenors, but of a distinctly different vocal timbre. The days
of the Naples florid singing duo of Giovanni David and Andrea
Nozzari, accommodated so memorably by Rossini in his opera seria
for the city, were long gone. However, the theatre roster had
two tenors who had to be accommodated. Here the father, Orlando,
is sung by the American Frank Lopardo, one-time Rossinian who
graduated to lyric Verdi in the mid-1990s. He emerges with a
dark-toned, near spinto voice, in the opening scene (CD 1 trs.1-4)
and elsewhere. Lamberto, Imelda’s brother and the real baddy
of the story is sung with somewhat lighter tones but with typical
Italian squilla and adequate heft, by Massimo Giordano. His
strong dramatic voice inflects his lines with sensitivity; he
phrases with elegance whilst being fully in character and excellent
in diction and expression. He is best heard in the act two scene
with Imelda as he forces her to admit her love for Lamberto
and reminds her of the harsh treatment of their mother by the
enemy Guelphs (CD 2 trs1-3). Brindley Sherratt sings his henchman,
Ubaldo, with strong steady bass tones in several ensembles.
What florid singing
there is in Imelda falls, rather strangely for opera, to
the baritone lover, Bonifacio (CD 2 trs.5-8). James Westman sings
the role with smooth well covered and coloured tone although his
approach is a little studied and could have been freer. He is
new to me. Looking at the photographs in the booklet he is fairly
young and if his vocal skill and characterisation here is carried
onto the opera stage with this standard of performance it points
to a considerable career. That is what Nicole Cabell in the eponymous
role expected, and to some extent is achieving, after winning
the major Cardiff operatic prize. I guess that Opera Rara in signing
her hoped for a similar outcome to when they got Renée Fleming
equally early in her career for the title role in their recording
of Donizetti’s Rosmonda D'lnghilterra (see review).
That role is more the traditional Donizetti soprano with decorated
florid singing to the fore. Imelda on the other hand requires
a soprano with a well-coloured lower range or even a mezzo with
soprano extension. On the basis of her Cardiff performance Cabell
would fit the bill. Regrettably, she was either nervous or having
vocal problems at the time of the recording and is tremulous in
her opening cavatina (CD 1 trs.6-8) and lacking dramatic thrust
and ideal vocal impact elsewhere. As I have indicated, Donizetti’s
creation broke new grounds and did not pay heed to tradition.
Imelda does not get a display aria to die with, rather a quick
dispatch in a dozen bars (Cd 2 Tr.16). Maybe to placate his soprano
for the following year’s brief revival the composer wrote a more
traditional aria finale for the soprano and this is included as
an appendix (CD 2 tr.17).
I need hardly say
that this recording is presented in the superior boxed manner
that has always have been Opera Rara’s hallmark. Likewise, it
is accompanied by a full libretto with English translation and
the usual scholarly essay by Dr. Jeremy Commons. This essay, as
always, gives previously unknown insights into the period of composition
as well as the work under consideration. As well as the essays
referred to, the booklet has a full libretto and translation in
English. There is also a full track-listing and a synopsis in
English, French, German and Italian. The sound from the hybrid
CD/SACD discs is first rate in both formats on my reference system.
Robert J Farr
Orlando Lambertazzi,
Chief Ghibelline magistrate of Bologna – Frank Lopardo (tenor);
Imelda, Orlando’s daughter – Nicole Cabell (soprano); Lamberto,
Orlando’s son – Massimo Giordano (tenor); Bonifacio, leader of the
Guelphs, - James Westman (baritone); Ubaldo - Brindley Sherratt
(bass) 
[62.02 + 59.58] 
