Gaetano DONIZETTI (1797-1848)
Marino Faliero - Tragic opera in three acts (1835)
Marino Faliero, elderly Doge of Venice - Giorgio Surian (bass); Elena, his
wife, in love with his nephew - Rachele Stanisci (soprano); Fernando, Marino’s
nephew - Ivan Magrì (tenor); Israele Bertucci, Captain of the Arsenal - Luca
Grassi (baritone); Steno, a young patrician member of the Council of Forty
- Luca Dall'Amico (bass-baritone); Leoni, member of the Council of Ten - Leonardo
Gramegna (tenor)
Orchestra and Chorus of the Bergamo Musical Festival Gaetano Donizetti/Bruno
Cinquegrani
Director: Mario Spada; Set and Costumes: Alessandro Ciammarughi; Video Director:
Matteo Ricchetti
Filmed: Teatro Donizetti, Bergamo, Italy, 31 October, 2 November 2008
Picture format: NTSC 16:9. Sound format: PCM 2.0, Dolby Surround 5.0, DTS
5.0.
Menu language: English; Subtitles: English and Italian
Performed in the Critical revision by Maria Chiara Bertieri for BMG Ricordi
Music Publishing
NAXOS OPERA DVD 2.110616-17 [73.27 + 78.48]
NAXOS OPERA CLASSICS CD 8.660303 [72.40 + 71.44]
A rhetorical question; when is good not good enough? In the case of Donizetti’s
Marino Faliero it was when it was up against Bellini’s I Puritani
premiered in the same theatre and with the same principal singers six
weeks before in the winter of 1835. According to the booklet essay, it was
Donizetti’s fiftieth opera. My list says his forty-sixth and the New Grove
a different figure. It’ not that some of us cannot count but rather what constitutes
a new opera. Donizetti famously re-worked the music of Maria Stuarda
into Buondelmonte. This was after the King of Naples banned the former,
at very short notice, after hearing about the scene between the two Queens
and the physical scrap between the divas that ensued! I count that as one
opera, others as two.
Donizetti and Bellini had first featured together in the Milan season at the
Teatro Carcano in the winter of 1830 when a group of bankers tried, but failed,
to take over the franchise of La Scala. The bankers had signed up both composers,
Felice Romani the then leading librettist, and a cast of singers including
the leading tenor of the day, Rubini, and the formidable soprano Giuditta
Pasta. Both composers hit the high spots with Anna Bolena and La
Sonnambula respectively, works which guaranteed each a successful future.
Donizetti was the more prolific often composing and presenting three or four
new works each year. By the time the two composers featured, at Rossini’s
invitation in the 1835 season at the Théâtre Italien, Paris, Donizetti
had presented nineteen operas whilst the often ailing Bellini managed a mere
three. Rossini had gathered a formidable group of principal singers for the
season. These included the baritone Tamburini and bass Lablache as well as
Rubini and Pasta. This fabulous quartet became known as The Puritani Quartet
as they toured Bellini’s work to London. Over several seasons they reprised
it in Paris, achieving the singers’ great fame and fortune along the way.
Whilst Donizetti went on to compose a further twenty-two or so operas before
being overtaken by the consequences of tertiary syphilis in 1848 at the age
of fifty-one. He was in a comatose state for the last years of his life. I
Puritani was Bellini’s last opera, he died suddenly six months after the
premiere shortly before his thirty-fourth birthday. There would be no more
rivalries between the two.
Each composer attended the premiere of the other’s opera, so Donizetti knew
what he was up against in terms of music and audience response. He set a more
dark and dramatic libretto with no happy ending. The story is loosely based
on historical fact of Marino Faliero, an elderly Doge of Venice, who was executed
for plotting to make himself a Royal ruler; an aspiration not unknown in the
Paris of 1835! Marino Faliero was Donizetti’s first opera for the Théâtre
Italien. He tempered his compositional style towards the French model.
Its immediate successor in the Donizetti oeuvre is Lucia di Lamermoor,
the most romantic and melodic of all his works and very much in the tradition
of Italian opera at the time. Despite being somewhat overshadowed by Bellini’s
opera, Marino Faliero enjoyed a long and successful run of international
performances throughout the 19th century before disappearing from the stage
until its modern revival in 1966.
This performance from the Bergamo Festival was based in the town where the
composer was born and died. It is set in period costume and in an evocative
and imaginative set, when one can see it that is. Even allowing for the fact
that much of the plotting goes on at night the stage scene is often under-lit.
The presentation of both the DVD and CD issue has the long act 1 on the first
disc with acts 2 and 3 on the second. Thankfully this issue is by Naxos so
that on the DVD the Chapter divisions are generous and in number sequence,
unlike those on the Dynamic Label from Italian Festivals. Artist profiles
are another welcome virtue to go alongside an informed and informative introductory
essay, and the full list of Chapter and Track divisions and timings.
As to the singing, not many of these soloists would compete with the original
quartet, but there are not many around that could. As the ageing Doge the
Croat bass Giorgio Surian is an excellent actor and whilst having moments
of vocal unsteadiness, he has been around for many years, creates a viable
character whose dignity is impressive. Luca Grassi as leader of the anti-patrician
insurrection, Israele Bertucci, acts the role with conviction and sings with
good expression if a little dry of tone. As the Doge’s wife, who fancies something
younger in the form of her husband’s nephew, Rachele Stanisci, lacks the ideal
weight of voice but is expressive and in tune. Her soft singing in the last
act is especially noteworthy. As her would-be lover, Ferrando, Ivan Magri
has to attempt the high notes written for Rubini, famous for his skill in
the highest tessitura and range. He fails in this test, although the enthusiastic
applause at his curtain made me wonder about my critical judgement until I
repeated his efforts in the act 2 aria and cavatina, which Rubini had to encore
at the premiere. I find Magri’s tone rather bleaty and dry.
The conducting of Bruno Cinquegrani is well paced and the chorus vibrant and
involved. It being Paris a ball scene and some dancing was de rigueur.
The trouble with this brings me back to the stage picture and lighting. Whilst
the patterned centre of the stage, often a point of focus, comes into its
own in the final act as it opens to allow the prisoners to emerge for their
execution. However, as elsewhere, and as with the dancing, it is so poorly
lit as to negate the effect.
A full libretto, in Italian is available at www.naxos.com/libretto/660303.htm
Robert J Farr
Despite questionable lighting, if you can afford it go for the DVD. Subtitles
make the complications of the action and the plot so much clearer.
See also reviews by Robert McKechnie and James Zychowicz.