United Kingdom Opera Rara’s Donizetti Song Project: Rosa Feola (soprano), Sally Pryce (harp), Carlo Rizzi (piano). Wigmore Hall, London, 2.11.2024. (JPr)
Donizetti (1797-1848) – Una vergine donzella; Vieni, la barca è pronta; Fra l’erbe cosparse; Or che l’età ne invita; Sono nata in Oriente; No: tu non m’hai tradita! (with Sally Pryce)
Donizetti (arr. Albert Heinrich Zabel) – ‘Regnava nel silenzio’ (from Lucia di Lammermoor) Sally Pryce
Ponchielli (1834-1886) – Sonetto di Dante
Ciro Pinsuti (1829-1888) – Sonetto di Dante
Respighi (1879-1936) – Quattro rispetti toscani
Encore: Donizetti – Quel guardo il cavaliere (from Don Pasquale)
Gramophone’s 2024 Label of the Year, Opera Rara has recently released the first two volumes in its Donizetti Song Project recording cycle featuring 28 tenor songs performed by Lawrence Brownlee, and 26 baritone songs sung by Nicola Alaimo. Both artists were accompanied by Opera Rara’s Artistic Director Carlo Rizzi the spearhead of a multi-year initiative inspired by the company’s Repertoire Consultant, Roger Parker’s lockdown project four years ago.
Over the course of a couple of years, Parker’s detective work tracked down Donizetti’s entire catalogue of solo songs – nearly 200 in total – many of which have never been heard in more recent times. Parker researched archives and collections worldwide, from Italy, France and the UK to Austria, Sweden and Australia. His new edition of the Donizetti solo songs (completed in collaboration with Ian Schofield) will be published by Casa Ricordi and made publicly available for artists, scholars and audiences alike. The project’s overall aim is to continue to reshape the world’s view of Donizetti and embed these songs into the art song repertory, long dominated by German and French composers.
The Opera Rara’s Donizetti Song Project launched in September 2023 with a public performance at Wigmore Hall with Rizzi and Brownlee, which followed a week of recording in the studio. The second ‘Donizetti & Friends’ recital last May featured the company’s Artist Ambassador Ermonela Jaho. Now the company presented its third recital at the Wigmore Hall, this time with soprano Rosa Feola, making her Opera Rara debut, accompanied by Rizzi and harpist Sally Pryce. They presented five rare songs by Donizetti, including a modern-day premiere, together with some of later Italian composers Amilcare Ponchielli, Ciro Pinsuti and Ottorino Respighi.
Donizetti spent most of the 1830s and 40s in Paris and Flora Wilson introducing the YouTube livestream (still available there for a limited time) mentioned that the five songs of his we heard were composed during his final five years there. Rosa Feola from the start revealed an accomplished, limpid, fluid, mellow, agile and technically correct soprano voice and this was the highlight of her entire short recital. However, with Feola’s eyes glued to the scores in front of her it meant she was unable to communicate fully the meaning of all the words. Feola also had a tendency to ‘conduct’ each song with the merest of glances at Rizzi whose playing of Donizetti’s rather plain, rum-ti-tum accompaniments was in more of a supporting role than with some pianists; at least at the start of what we saw and heard.
Nevertheless, all five of these rarities (to various texts) were near-perfect in miniature. Una vergine donzella was something of a prayer to ‘an Angel of God’. Vieni, la barca è pronta about two lovers in a boat was gaily romantic and with some nice coloratura (another feature of Feola’s singing). The more declamatory Fra l’erbe cosparse had a gypsy fortune-teller as the protagonist and brought Verdi’s Ulrica (Il trovatore) strongly to mind. Or che l’età ne invita was suitably ardent which fitted a song about the nature of love. Whilst the joyful Sono nata in Oriente (or La bohémienne) – which had a bel canto, exotic (according to Flora Wilson) character and was recycled by Donizetti for the finale of Don Pasquale – was rediscovered by Roger Parker and had its modern-day premiere (if not its first public performance since the mid-1800s).
Last of these five we heard was No: tu non m’hai tradita! composed by Donizetti apparently for a friend’s wife before he left Rome and requires a harpist and not a pianist. Feola was joined by Sarah Pryce whose harp reminded me of the glass harmonica the composer famously utilises in his 1835 Lucia di Lammermoor. Feola suggested the fierce determination of someone who cannot adjust to the fact they might have been betrayed.
Mentioning Lucia there then followed an instrumental interlude with Pryce eloquently playing Albert Heinrich Zabel’s arrangement of ‘Regnava nel silenzio’ from Act I of the opera.
The remainder of what Feola sang, I believe, was from her recording with pianist Ian Burnside on the Opus Arte label, Musica e Poesia. The first two works had the same text, a famous Dante Sonnet ‘Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare’ about a woman’s beauty: the first set to music by Amilcare Ponchielli and then the other by Ciro Pinsuti. Now released from relying on any music, Feola was at her very expressive best; the Ponchielli version was heartfelt and the Pinsuti more intensely dramatic with Rizzi’s piano at last coming to the fore resulting in one of the better collaborations in the entire programme.
Finally, we heard Respighi’s Quattro rispetti toscani which were published in 1915. Quando nasceste voi was a delightful conversation between a rose, lily, the sun and a nightingale; the rocking accompaniment to Venitelo a vedere ‘l mi’ piccino suggested a lullaby for the sleeping baby; with Rizzi at his most tremulous Viene di là, lontan was about parted lovers with the girl anxious that she has been deserted; and in the operetta-like Razzolan, sopra a l’aja, le gallin, Rizzi was now as lively as at anytime in the recital and Feola was wonderfully coquettish as the girl teasing the dumbstruck boy.
Rosa Feola’s sole encore was Norina’s aria Quel guardo il cavaliere from the first act of Don Pasquale; Donizetti’s last and best loved comic work. Norina is reading a passage in a book about love and singing about how she can make a man do as she pleases. Feola was in a playful mood once again, swishing her skirt and sparkling in an aria which tested her coloratura to the maximum and in which she gave her most complete performance of everything we heard.
Next March, the project continues with Artist Ambassador baritenor Michael Spyres and contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux at Cadogan Hall.
Jim Pritchard
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