Darina l

Rossini liked to write operas about women (specifically mezzo-sopranos) who were smarter than the men around them, such as Rosina in "The Barber of Seville" and Angelina in "La Cenerentola." This charming, melodious bit of operatic fluff, composed before either of those two better-known operas, is dedicated to the proposition that an Italian woman is a match for any man or group of men. The thesis is tested in an extreme situation; Isabella (Larmore) is shipwrecked on the coast of a place where shipwrecked Europeans were routinely enslaved and, if they were women, consigned to a harem.

The first modern revival of Rossini’s Torvaldo e Dorliska was a broadcast by RAI on February 2, 1976. I was one of the founders of Voce Records, and in the late 1970s we released that performance on LP. It was conducted by Alberto Zedda and featured Lella Cuberli, Pietro Bottazzo, Siegmund Nimsgern, and Enzo Dara. In 1992 a public concert version was released on the Arkadia label, which I have not heard. Now two new recordings have appeared, one from Naxos, which was reviewed in Fanfare 30:3 in January of this year, and this new critical version by Francesco Paolo Russo from the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro in 2006…

FANFARE: Bob Rose