GAETANO DONIZETTI Francesca di Foix ORC28 in association with Box cover: Waiting for the King’s Favourite, Laslett John Pott Booklet cover: Luigia Boccabadati-Gazzuoli, the first Francesca di Foix Opposite: Gaetano Donizetti CD face: King Ferdinando II of Spain –1– Gaetano Donizetti FRANCESCA DI FOIX Melodramma giocoso Libretto by Domenico Gilardoni Il Re The King, in the flower of his life....................................Pietro Spagnoli Il Conte The Count........................................................Alfonso Antoniozzi La Contessa, The Countess, Francesca di Foix..........................Annick Massis Il Duca The Duke.......................................................................Bruce Ford Il Paggio The Page, Edmondo.............................................Jennifer Larmore Knights, Ladies, Peasants, Squires, Members of the Countess’s Household Geoffrey Mitchell Choir London Philharmonic Orchestra Leader, Pieter Schoeman Antonello Allemandi, conductor –2– Producer and Artistic Director: Patric Schmid Managing Director: Stephen Revell Assistant producer: Jacqui Compton Assistant conductor: Robin Newton Répétiteur: Nicholas Bosworth Italian coach: Maria Cleva Assistant to the producer: Gunnar Pruessner Article, synopsis and libretto: –3– CONTENTS Francesca di Foix by Jeremy Commons...............................................Page 9 The Story........................................................................................Page 32 Résumé de l’intrigue........................................................................Page 37 Die Handlung.................................................................................Page 42 La Vicenda......................................................................................Page 47 Libretto...........................................................................................Page 52 –4– Patric Schmid (Producer) with Annick Massis FRANCESCA DI FOIX Dur Page Introduzione – Il Duca, Il Paggio, Il Conte, Il Re, Coro [1] Coro – Senti senti... Già l’eco ripete 2’42 53 [2] Duetto – Quest’è il loco stabilito 5’16 53 [3] Scena – Ecco il Conte... 2’48 55 [4] Cavatina – Grato accolse i vostri accenti 2’29 60 [5] Cabaletta – Oh quale apporta all’anima 3’26 61 Recitative – Il Re, Il Duca, Il Conte, Il Paggio [6] Duca, è così?... 2’16 61 Recitative – Il Duca, Il Conte, Il Paggio [7] Voi non seguite il Re? 1’35 63 Cavatina – La Contessa [8] Aria – Ah! ti ottenni alfin 2’19 66 [9] Cabaletta – Donzelle, se vi stimola 3’30 66 Recitative – La Contessa, Il Duca [10] Quest’è l’anello... 1’52 67 Duetto – La Contessa, Il Paggio, Il Duca [11] Signore, a dirvi il vero 3’52 69 [12] Che siete una sciocca 2’15 71 [13] Quante son delle civette 3’16 74 Recitative – Il Conte, La Contessa, Il Duca [14] Oh! Duca, mi rallegro!... 1’50 75 Canzonetta del Paggio, Coro [15] Vieni, e narra o bel paggetto 1’59 80 [16] E’ una giovane straniera... 1’00 80 -6- Dur Page [17] Che dan vita ad ogni festa 1’47 81 Recitative – Il Paggio, Il Conte, Il Re, Il Duca [18] Edmondo?... Edmondo?... 3’51 82 Terzetto – Il Re, Il Conte, La Contessa [19] Vi presento, o Baronessa 4’04 87 [20] Stretta – Questo acciar che il Sovrano vi affida 3’59 90 Recitative, Romanza – Il Duca [21] Ve’ come il Conte segue al gran Tornéo 0’50 91 [22] Donne, che ognor più bella 4’23 93 Marcia – Coro [23] La vaga straniera 2’41 93 Finale – Il Paggio, Il Conte, Il Duca, La Contessa, Il Re [24] Scena – Ma via rasserenatevi... 2’23 94 [25] Marcia (reprise) 0’52 97 [26] Recitativo – Or sia l’opra appien compita 0’48 97 [27] Cantabile – Fausto sempre splenda il Sole 4’09 99 [28] Rondo – Per voi di gelosia 4’19 102 The performing edition for this recording was made by Patric Schmid and Robert Roberts from a copy of Donizetti’s autograph manuscript. This manuscript is in the library of San Pietro a Majella at the Conservatory of Music, Naples -7- Antonello Allemandi FRANCESCA DI FOIX MOST OF US are so accustomed to finding operas with titles like Lucia di Lammermoor, Rosmonda d’Inghilterra, Beatrice di Tenda, Elena da Feltre and Emma d’Antiochia that, encountering for the first time one of Donizetti’s least-known works, Francesca di Foix, we may be forgiven if we expect yet another romantic tragedy, with the heroine eventually expiring either in an effusion of elegiac lyricism or in a paroxysm of impassioned protest! But the libretto of Francesca di Foix came from the pen of Domenico Gilardoni, perhaps not one of the most able but certainly one of the more imaginative, exploratory and eagerly experimental of Donizetti’s librettists; and the text that he supplied on this occasion quite simply defeats all expectation. Described in the printed text as a melodramma, it turns out to be an opera semiseria rather than a tragedia lirica, and, what is even more remarkable, a witty and often wry little satirical comedy. Donizetti himself defines it, on the first page of his autograph score, as a melodramma giocoso, ‘a comic (‘jocular’) melodrama’. It is a salutory lesson for jealous husbands who, far from trusting their wives, try to restrict their favours to themselves by keeping them shut up at home away from public notice and the gaze of prying eyes. It was, for 1831, a highly unusual choice of subject, much more French than Italian in its intellectual climate, and there is no denying that the resulting opera remains a quirky odd-man-out in Donizetti’s output. –9– LUIGIA BOCCABADATI-GAZZUOLI The first Francesca This soprano is remembered mainly as a Donizetti interpreter. She sang in many of his operas throughout her career. This work with the composer began in Naples where she created five of his operas: 1829 Il castello di Kenilworth 1830 I pazzi per progetto Il diluvio universale 1831 Francesca di Foix La romanzesca e l’uomo nero Originally conceived under what may well strike us as the more appropriate title of Il paggio e l’anello (‘The Page and the Ring’), it was based on a French opéra-comique libretto, Françoise de Foix, written by Bouilly and Dupaty and set by Berton in 1809. Quite apart from its setting at a Renaissance French court, the wit, urbanity and pithy concision of the dialogue – the thrust and parry of repartee as the characters size each other up – unmistakably proclaim its French origins. The King who presides over the action is, intriguingly, almost certainly the same François Ier (1494- 1547) who was 21 years later to be the original of the Duke of Mantova in Verdi’s Rigoletto. But if Victor Hugo shows us his supercilious and inconsiderate libertarianism, Gilardoni shows us a rather more scrupulous and benevolent figure, still a man of intrigue, flirtation and gallantry, but ultimately also a king who is concerned for the happiness and well-being of those around him. At the end of the opera Francesca pays tribute to him in these words: COUNTESS to the King Per voi di gelosia With your help the chains Son frante le catene; Of jealousy have been broken; Per voi godrò d’un bene, With your help I shall enjoy a benefit Che mai potea sperar! Which I could never previously have hoped for! –11– They are sentiments which, appropriate here, would be inconceivable in the context of Rigoletto. Two fascinatingly different portraits, therefore, of the same figure, a figure whom history records as the archetypal Renaissance king, a man of cultivated intelligence, with a sincere passion for and appreciation of letters and art, but also a man of innumerable dalliances and amatory peccadilloes. There is no denying that Francesca di Foix was a slightly odd subject for an opera, but as some of the above remarks will suggest, it was by no means unsuited to delicately and wittily nuanced treatment and intimate presentation. Yet was this the right subject for Donizetti in 1831? Only a few months earlier, on 26 December 1830, he had scored a momentous success with Anna Bolena in Milan. The success had been so great that it had altered the opinion of his music hitherto held by some of Italy’s most influential critics, and had opened up new horizons for him: indeed the years from 1830 to 1838 were to see a succession of remarkable tragedie liriche, showing his powers at their most sensitive and lyrical: Parisina (Florence, 1833), Lucrezia Borgia (Milan, 1833), Rosmonda d’Inghilterra (Florence, 1834), Maria Stuarda (composed for Naples in 1834 but given in Milan at the end of 1835), Gemma di Vergy (Milan, 1834), Marino Faliero (Paris, 1835), Lucia di Lammermoor (Naples, 1835), Belisario (Venice, 1836), Pia de’ Tolomei (Venice, 1837), Roberto Devereux (Naples, 1837) and Poliuto (composed for Naples in 1838, but not seen in Italy until ten years later, Naples 1848). Placed alongside these soon-to-follow tragic operas, Francesca di Foix looks more quirky than ever: an oddity the like of –12– which Donizetti was never to tackle again after the death of Gilardoni late in this same year, 1831. We should probably be justified if we were to see both this opera and the farsa which followed it, La romanzesca e l’uomo nero, primarily as attempts to fulfil – in the quickest and easiest manner possible – the requirements of a long-standing but increasingly irksome contract with the impresario Domenico Barbaja. In the words of William Ashbrook, ‘Both [these operas] seem to express Donizetti’s desire to wind up this phase of his Neapolitan career with the minimum exertion.’1 The fact that there is not a single reference to Francesca di Foix in the composer’s collected correspondence would seem to confirm that he probably entertained but scant regard for it. If we are justified, then, in doubting whether Francesca di Foix was the right subject for Donizetti at this time, we may also query whether it was a suitable choice for Naples in the intellectual climate of 1831. Ferdinando II, the young, diffident and excessively earnest king of Naples, had come to the throne in 1830, and in 1832 he was to marry Maria Cristina of Savoy, a princess whose nun-like devotions were rapidly to make the court resemble a cloister.