CHAN 3077 Book Cover.qxd 22/5/07 2:06 pm Page 1 CHAN 3077 reat Operatic CHANDOS O PERA IN G ARIAS ENGLISH PETER MOORES FOUNDATION CHAN 3077 BOOK.qxd 22/5/07 2:11 pm Page 2 Paul Ferris Paul Great Operatic Arias with Andrew Shore Andrew Shore as Dulcamara in San Diego Opera’s production of Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love 3 CHAN 3077 BOOK.qxd 22/5/07 2:11 pm Page 4 Time Page Time Page Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848) Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) from The Elixir of Love from The Barber of Seville Dulcamara’s Cavatina Bartolo’s Aria 1 ‘Attention! Attention! You country folk!’ 7:56 [p. 56] 5 ‘Dare you offer such excuses’ 6:39 [p. 65] (Udite, udite, o rustici) (A un dottore della mia sorte) with Geoffrey Mitchell Choir from CHAN 3025(2) The Barber of Seville Nemorino and Dulcamara’s Recitative and Duet from The Italian Girl in Algiers 2 ‘Good doctor, beg your pardon’ – Isabella and Taddeo’s Duet ‘It was Tristan who employed it’ 8:04 [p. 58] 6 ‘All the changes in my fortune’ – (Voglio dire… lo stupendo elisir) ‘Ah, yes, as friends united’ 8:00 [p. 66] with Barry Banks (Nemorino) (Ai capricci della sorte) with Della Jones (Isabella) Adina and Dulcamara’s Duet from CHAN 3049 Great Operatic Arias with Della Jones 3 ‘How he loved me!’ — ‘With a look of love and laughter’ 7:09 [p. 61] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) (Quanto amore) from Don Giovanni with Mary Plazas (Adina) Leporello’s Catalogue Aria 7 ‘Look here: this not so little volume’ – Act II finale ‘Pretty lady, I have something to show you’ 5:54 [p. 68] 4 ‘It will give you cheeks like peaches’ 2:35 [p. 64] (Madamina, il catalogo è questo) (Ei corregge ogni difetto) with Mary Plazas (Adina), Bary Banks (Nemorino), and Ashley Holland (Belcore), from CHAN 3057(3) Don Giovanni Geoffrey Mitchell Choir from CHAN 3027(2) The Elixir of Love 4 5 CHAN 3077 BOOK.qxd 22/5/07 2:11 pm Page 6 Time Page Time Page Gaetano Donizetti Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) from Don Pasquale from Falstaff Malatesta and Pasquale’s duet Honour Monologue 8 ‘She’ll be here by midday’ – 11 ‘Hey, Page boy!’ 4:55 [p. 75] ‘Quite unexpectedly passions inflame me’ 2:52 [p. 68] (L’onore! Ladri!) (Un foco insolito, mi sento addosso) from CHAN 3079(2) Falstaff with Jason Howard (Malatesta) TT 70:40 Pasquale and Norina’s duet Philharmonia Orchestra (tracks 1–4 & 7) 9 ‘Well good evening! You’re in a hurry’ 5:50 [p. 69] London Philharmonic Orchestra (tracks 6 & 8–10) (Signorina, in tanta fretta) with Lynne Dawson (Norina) David Parry (tracks 1–4 & 6–10) Malatesta and Pasquale’s Duet English National Opera Orchestra (tracks 5 & 11) 10 ‘Don Pasquale…’ – Gabriele Bellini (track 5) ‘Ah brother… a living corpse is standing here before you’ 10:05 [p. 71] Paul Daniel (track 11) (Cognato, in me vedete un morto che cammina) with Jason Howard (Malatesta) from CHAN 3011(2) Don Pasquale 6 7 CHAN 3077 BOOK.qxd 22/5/07 2:11 pm Page 8 Hanson Bill Rafferty Bill Andrew Shore in the title role of Opera North’s production of Berg’s Wozzeck Andrew Shore in the title role of English National Opera’s production of Verdi’s Falstaff CHAN 3077 BOOK.qxd 22/5/07 2:11 pm Page 10 Donizetti: The Elixir of Love was staged at the Paris Opéra in 1831. (The Great Operatic Arias We were told in book after book that The dashing sergeant in both works was created by Elixir of Love was an opera written at speed; the same singer, Henri-Bernard Dabadie.) A The old arguments about ‘opera in the original norm, even for operas in Russian or in Czech. the manager of the Canobbiana Theatre in good deal of Romani’s work is straight language’ versus ‘opera in the language of the Covent Garden – where in the postwar years Milan, at his wits’ end when a commissioned translation. (Compare the hero’s opening listeners’ never cease. Nor should they: there is Kirsten Flagstad and Hans Hotter relearned composer suddenly failed to produce, begged cavatina: ‘Qu’elle est jolie!… Elle sait lire… too much to be said on both sides. It was not The Valkyrie and Ljuba Welitsch relearned Donizetti to revamp one of his own old operas Moi, je ne suis qu’un ignorant’ and ‘Quanto è opera as such but, specifically, Italian opera in Salome in English, and Boris Godunov, The to fill the gap. And Donizetti replied: ‘Are you bella!… Essa legge… Io son sempre un London that Dr Johnson famously described Queen of Spades, Jenuºfa were as a matter of joking? I’m not in the habit of touching up idiota’.) But to the Scribe comedy Romani as ‘an exotic and irrational entertainment’. course translated – has become a foreign- my works, or anyone else’s. Let’s see whether I added a vein of semiseria romance. The And in a 1711 Spectator Joseph Addison language, ‘exotic’ house, its performances can write a new opera for you. Send for parallels with Bellini’s Sonnambula are wrote: distanced from its audiences. Meanwhile Romani!’ And to Felice Romani, Donizetti deliberate, I believe. (La sonnambula, which There is no question but that our great Grand- English National Opera, at the Coliseum, has then said: ‘A new opera is due from us in a also has a Romani libretto after Scribe, had Children will be very curious to know the sustained the ideals of the men who invented fortnight’s time; I’ll give you a week to prepare appeared in Milan in 1831.) The tender duets Reason why their Forefathers used to sit together opera: drama directly understood, and given the libretto.’ ‘Son geloso del zefiro errante… Son, mio like an Audience of Foreigners in their own new force by music’s power. Wagner and Verdi Be that as it may, a gem of comic opera bene, del zefiro amante’ (in La sonnambula) Country, and to hear whole Plays acted before were well aware of, and complained about, the appeared at the Canobbiana on 12 May 1832. and ‘Chiedi all’aura lusinghiera… Chiedi al them in a Tongue which they did not distortions introduced by translation, yet they The Canobbiana, built at the same time as rio perchè gemente’ (in L’elisir) are in similar understand. welcomed it, enjoined it, believing that the La Scala, by the same architect, was for much vein, and similarly placed. Le Philtre had no But nearly three hundred years later people gains outweighed the losses. But they wanted of the nineteenth century La Scala’s ‘second ‘Una furtiva lagrima’. are doing it still. During the second half of the the translations to be good. house’. It specialised in comic operas but also The heroine’s first words in L’elisir are ‘È la twentieth century, opera in the original – what Enough! On this disc Andrew Shore sings had a reputation for introducing interesting storia del Tristano’. She reads the story to the the great American baritone David Bispham comic opera. (The rather special case of Don novelties from abroad, such as Le Comte Ory, company. (Wagner’s version of it was still way called ‘the foreign-language fad’ – gained new Giovanni is discussed below.) The arguments Robert le Diable, Martha. The Elixir of Love in the future.) When the travelling charlatan impetus. And in the great houses of Milan, pro and con change somewhat when comedy’s was revived there the following two seasons – Dulcamara arrives in the village, ‘Attention! Munich, Paris, Vienna, where foreign operas in question. Incominciate! – or, as the standard by which time it had already been widely and Attention!’ (track 1 ) is his lively sales-patter used regularly to be presented in the language English translation of Pagliacci puts it, ‘Ring internationally performed. as he peddles his wondrous ‘elixir’ – a specific of the audience, and in many of the smaller up the curtain!’ – on scenes from some of the Romani took his plot from ‘Scribe’s latest’, against every ill that flesh is heir to. The houses too, ‘original language’ became the greatest comic operas. the libretto for Le Philtre, an Auber opera that lovelorn Nemorino approaches him: does he 10 11 CHAN 3077 BOOK.qxd 22/5/07 2:11 pm Page 12 by any chance stock the potion that aroused The Elixir of Love was first performed in its premiere the opera was deferentially edition as a handbook, since “Manca un the passions of Queen Isolda? ‘Why, I brewed English at the Surrey Theatre and then Drury entitled Almaviva, or The Useless Precaution; foglio” is now very generally substituted for it myself’ Dulcamara replies (in the original Lane, in 1839. The translator was only later that year, in Bologna, was it billed “A un dottor”.’ But ‘Manca un foglio’ is now Italian), and sells Nemorino a bottle of cheap T.H. Reynoldson. The Arthur Jacobs translation with Paisiello’s title. the rarity. wine. Nemorino is delighted: soon the used here was first performed by the Maidstone Dr Bartolo tries to keep his lively young The first English performance of The Barber disdainful Adina is bound to find him Opera Group, in 1964. Arthur Jacobs ward, Rosina, whom he hopes to marry, of Seville, in a translation by John Fawcett and irresistible (track 2 ). (1922–1986 ) translated many operas, including securely under lock and key. But she’s been Daniel Terry, was performed at Covent Garden The potion doesn’t act fast enough.