Donizetti 24

Donizetti's three-act tragic opera Belisario was a resounding success in its day, driven by its composer’s superlative theatrical instinct and his skilful interweaving of intense tragic narrative and emotional pathos. Belisario is betrayed by his wife Antonina, who falsely accuses him of high treason.

Since its foundation in 2013, the Berliner Operngruppe has made a name for itself by giving annual, semi-staged first performances in Berlin of works such as Donizetti’s Deux hommes et une femme and Betly, together with other operatic rarities. This album is the world premiere recording, made on 14 May 2023, of Donizetti’s opera Dalinda, a work that had a brush with the censors, similar to that experienced by his opera Lucrezia Borgia, and disappeared unperformed until it was rediscovered a few years ago by the musicologist Eleonora Di Cintio, in whose critical RICORDI edition it’s heard here.

In 1822, the young Donizetti was engaged by La Scala to compose an opera. Chiara e Serafina was the outcome and the librettist was Felice Romani, a refined scholar but a notoriously slow and touchy worker. Consequently, Donizetti had barely twelve days to compose the whole work. Because of the incoherent plot, which concerns Don Meschino and his daughter Chiara who are kidnapped by Algerians, and the villainous Don Fernando who schemes to marry the nobleman’s younger daughter Serafina, the result was a fiasco. Donizetti’s music, however, is characterful and profuse with delightful duets, trios and ensembles.

Star tenor Javier Camarena makes his Pentatone debut with Signor Gaetano, together with Gli Originali under the baton of Italian opera specialist Riccardo Frizza, presenting a carefully-curated exploration of Donizetti's greatest tenor arias. Besides famous excerpts from L'elisir d'amore, Don Pasquale and Roberto Devereux, this project focuses on hidden gems from rarely-recorded works such as Betly, Maria de Rudenz and Il giovedì grasso. Camarena and Frizza's exceptional sense of style is enhanced by the period instrument playing of Gli Originali. The recording took place at the Teatro Donizetti in the composer's hometown Bergamo, as part of the yearly Donizetti Festival, of which Frizza is the musical director. Javier Camarena is one of the most in-demand tenors of his generation, and one of the world's leading bel canto specialists. Riccardo Frizza frequents major opera houses, was awarded the Best Conductor prize at the International Opera XXI Awards, and returns to Pentatone after having featured on The Three Queens (Donizetti) with Sondra Radvanovsky and Lyric Opera Chicago (2022). Gli Originali was founded within the context of the Bergamo Donizetti Festival, and aims to revive the sound world of early nineteenth-century opera with period instruments and a historically-informed approach.

Written for the Opéra in Paris, Gaetano Donizetti’s La Favorite contains some of his most famously enthralling arias. While its much-reduced Italian version has continued in popularity, this superb production from the Donizetti Opera Festival in his birthplace of Bergamo returns the work to its rarely heard 1840 French grand opera origins. Set in 14th-century Spain, the tragic story is of a pious novice (Fernand) who falls in love with a noble lady and abandons the cloister, meeting her in secret. He becomes a war hero and asks the King for her hand, later finding out to his horror that she is Léonor de Guzman, the King’s beloved mistress.

Sonatas for piano four hands: What is the affinity between an insurance company and a performance of classical music? Between the cold technical assessment of a risk, the institutional tendency towards business, the pursuit of corporate profit, and the poetic search for an inner emotion, the cultural and sentimental yearning for a musical expression, the intellectual striving for spiritual perfection?

Donizetti Le Nozze in Villa opera to a libretto by Bartolomeo Merelli. Directed 2020 by Davide Marranchelli at the Teatro Donizetti Bergamo. Stars Gaia Petrone (Sabina), Omar Montanari (Don Petronio), Fabio Capitanucci (Trifoglio), Giorgio Misseri (Claudio), Manuela Custer (Anastasia), Claudia Urru (Rosaura), and Daniel Lettieri (Anselmo).

Linda di Chamounix is a pretty country girl who is in love with Carlo, who she believes is a penniless artist. Her honor is threatened by the local squire and she escapes to Paris in search of fortune.

The Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli is one of the most charming and talented singers to appear on the scene in recent years, and this collection of Italian songs by three great opera composers–Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini–is a most deserving bestseller. There are many small pleasures in the selections, which reflect the bel canto predilections of their authors, and Bartoli renders them artfully. Some will be familiar even to casual listeners (Rossini's La Danza, the famous tarantella); others will be new to most, but equally deserving of a hearing. The sensitive and skillful accompaniment is by conductor-pianist James Levine.

Donizetti Le Nozze in Villa opera to a libretto by Bartolomeo Merelli. Directed 2020 by Davide Marranchelli at the Teatro Donizetti Bergamo. Stars Gaia Petrone (Sabina), Omar Montanari (Don Petronio), Fabio Capitanucci (Trifoglio), Giorgio Misseri (Claudio), Manuela Custer (Anastasia), Claudia Urru (Rosaura), and Daniel Lettieri (Anselmo).