Donizetti Society Newsletter 10
14 The Stuarts and their kith and kin Alexander Weatherson Elis No- Figlia impura della Guisa, parli tu di disonore? Meretfice indegna oscena in te cada il mio rcssore. Profanato i il suolo Scozzese. vil puttana dal tuo piA. The other side oflhe coin? Not before dme I dare sav, and anvwav Queen Elizabeth has soi it dgh1, Scotland's soil was about 1o be Profaned by a stream ofoperas that bore the footprint ofher rival Wletherhistory should, or should not, be called brn* is a matter ofopinion but ought nor be left in the hands ofa cabal ofcerman melodramatic queens - withoul Mary Sruan Scotland miSht have been l€ii in peace. yil bellarda'l a species of Sruaft indusiry rvas a rcsult of her inlervention, in ltaly alone in the earliest decades ofthe nineieenth century there was a Scotch broth of operas by Aspa, Capecelalro, Carafa, Csrlini, Casalini, Casella, Coccia. Donizeui,-Gabrieili, Mazzucato, Mercadanter, Nicolini, Pacini, Pavesi, Pugni, Rajentroph, the Riccis, Rossini, Sogner and Vaocai - and this isjust a scraich upon the su ace ofthe European infatuation with the decapitated Stuar! and/or her nodern fastness which boiled-up in rhe bloodbath finale of the eight€€nth century, op€ras often rabid and inconsequential, full offashionable confrontations and artificial conflicts, politically molivatd, repetitious and soon forgotten At the heart ofthe plot, however, lay an ltalian, th€ puh plays and novels of Carniuo Federici (1749-1802) a former acror whose prolific vulgarisations of Schiller and Kotzebue sel ltalian librellisls scribbling for four decades Indeed, without ,ifl it is to bc suspected ihat Sir walter Scolt would never have captured the imaginaiion ofso many poets, nor for so long.
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