Gaetano Donizetti ORC 3 in association with Box cover : ‘ Eleonore, Queen of Portugal’ by Joos van Cleve, 1530 (akg-images/Erich Lessing) Booklet cover : The duel, a scene from Gioja’s ballet Gabriella di Vergy , La Scala, Milan, 1826 Opposite : Gaetano Donizetti CD faces: Elizabeth Vestris as Gabrielle de Vergy in Pierre de Belloy’s tragedy, Paris, 1818 –1– Gaetano Donizetti GABRIELLA DI VERGY Tragedia lirica in three acts Gabriella.............................................................................Ludmilla Andrew Fayel, Count of Vergy.......................................................Christian du Plessis Raoul de Coucy......................................................................Maurice Arthur Filippo II, King of France......................................................John Tomlinson Almeide, Fayel’s sister...................................................................Joan Davies Armando, a gentleman of the household...................................John Winfield Knights, nobles, ladies, servants, soldiers Geoffrey Mitchell Choir APPENDIX Scenes from Gabriella di Vergy (1826) Gabriella..............................................................................Eiddwen Harrhy Raoul de Coucy............................................................................Della Jones Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor: Alun Francis –2– Managing director: Stephen Revell Producer: Patric Schmid Assistant conductor: David Parry Consultant musicologist: Robert Roberts Article and synopsis: Don White English libretto: Brian Thornton Recording engineer: Robert Auger Recorded at Henry Wood Hall, London September and October 1979 19th-century prints, pages 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 26, 27, 32 and 39: Opera Rara Archive –3– CONTENTS Donizetti and the three Gabriellas by Don White ..................................Page 8 1826 Bergamo autograph. ..................................................................Page 40 1869 Naples manuscript.....................................................................Page 42 1838 Sterling Library (London) manuscript.......................................Page 44 The story............................................................................................Page 47 Résumé de l’intrigue...........................................................................Page 52 Inhalt.................................................................................................Page 57 La trama.............................................................................................Page 62 Libretto..............................................................................................Page 67 –4– CD 1 65’03 GABRIELLA DI VERGY Dur Page ACT I [1] Preludio ed introduzione – preghiera 3’54 67 [2] Giovin, leggiadra, amabile – cavatina: Fayel 4’00 69 [3] Ah! Si, corra andiam 3’44 70 [4] Si mai pietoso cielo – cavatina: Gabriella 2’21 72 [5] Delle nostr’anime 5’02 73 [6] Ah talor in mezzo al duolo 4’01 74 [7] E dessa! – duetto: Raoul, Gabriella 1’48 74 [8] In notte oscura e tacita 3’43 76 [9] Deh! Pensa ai dì beati 2’33 78 [10] Voi che al fianco – cavatina: Filippo, Coro 3’33 79 [11] O miei fidi 4’30 80 [12] Questi ardenti ingenui voti 6’18 82 [13] Quanti in un punto aduna – 3’23 84 duetto: Gabriella, Fayel [14] Ch’io lieto ritorni? 5’09 85 [15] Paventa o perfida 2’13 87 –5– Dur Page ACT II [16] Il liquor fervido – coro 2’13 88 [17] Si compia il sacrificio! – scena ed aria: Raoul 2’25 88 [18] Io l’amai nell’etade primiera 3’30 89 [19] Questo raggio lusinghiero 2’25 90 CD 2 51’45 [1] Giorno di nozze! – finale Act II 7’22 90 [2] Rea non sono; il giuro a Dio 4’44 97 [3] Il tuo delitto 2’57 100 ACT III [4] Qual ti veggo – duetto: Raoul, Fayel 4’45 101 [5] Io tremar? 3’09 103 [6] Quell’aspetto, quegl’accenti 4’00 104 [7] Oh qual m’ingombra il petto 2’28 105 [8] Sarà Fayel il vincitor? 2’09 106 [9] Intrepidi entrambi – coro 2’59 109 [10] Quale orror mi circonda! 6’22 110 [11] L’amai... sì... come un angelo 3’46 112 [12] Ah! Vanne togliti 6’10 113 –6– Dur Page APPENDIX [13] Respiro alfin – aria: Raoul 2’53 118 [14] A te sola 2’55 120 [15] Ah, che fra palpiti 3’12 121 [16] Minacciosa perché me sgridi – 2’38 121 duetto: Gabriella, Raoul [17] Oh instante felice! 4’59 124 [18] Tormenti crudeli 2’44 126 [19] Ah fermate! – aria: Gabriella 8’11 127 –7– DONIZETTI AND THE THREE GABRIELLAS by DON WHITE In a musicologist’s dream he stands in the dusty library of a music conservatory, somewhere in Italy or France and, pulling a shabby, untitled manuscript from the bookshelf, recognises it instantly as the lost work of a major composer – Verdi’s Rocester , Rossini’s Ugo Re d’Italia . For Patric Schmid and me, dream became reality not on any foreign shore, but a mere two thousand yards from our own front door, in the Sterling Library of the University of London. For more than 20 years the Library has housed a manuscript copy of Donizetti’s Gabriella di Vergy – at first sight, not the most exciting of discoveries. In musical encyclopaedias it is quickly dismissed as a work written in 1826 during Donizetti’s early career in Naples. It was never performed during his lifetime and, when finally given in 1869, the score had been so tampered with that it was no longer the opera Donizetti had written at all. Our examination of the Sterling Library score was to determine which of the two Gabriellas it was: the 1826 original or the 1869 revision. It is neither. What the Library has held, unwittingly, all these years is in fact a totally new version of the opera, written when Donizetti was at the peak of his creative maturity – a work alluded to by his first major biographer but otherwise, until now, completely forgotten. The mysteries surrounding these various versions of Gabriella are manifold, and we cannot claim to have straightened them all out yet. The following, therefore, is an attempt to present the various versions, mysteries and all, as we now understand them. –8– GABRIELLA 1 In 1826, Donizetti was still a relatively unknown composer. Rossini’s operas continued to dominate the Italian stage, although their author had already deserted Italy for Paris. Bellini’s star was beginning to rise with Adelson e Salvini and Bianca e Fernando . Operas by Pucitta, Paer, Pavesi, Guglielmi and Generali were receiving their last rites. The romantic movement that had begun to blossom barely more than a decade before would not fully flower for another year with Il Pirata . In eight years, Donizetti had already composed 14 operas. Only one had enjoyed a major success, L’Ajo nell’Imbarazzo (Rome, 1824). What reputation he had rested chiefly on his work as resident composer of the Neapolitan Theatres. In February 1826, Donizetti had completed a highly unpleasant year of harassment and frustration as maestro di capella and musical director of the Teatro Carolino, Palermo. He had returned to Naples to supervise the first performances there of L’Ajo and Alahor in Granata (which had received its premiere in Palermo in January of that year). He was also contracted to provide a dramma per musica for the birthday gala of Queen Maria Isabella at the San Carlo on 6 July. It was one of the busiest years of Donizetti’s career and yet on, 15 June, he was writing to his teacher, Giovanni Simone Mayr: “Dearest Maestro, to amuse myself I am writing the Gabriella of Carafa. His music is beautiful, I know, but what I am doing, I am doing to please myself”. –9– A busman’s holiday, indeed. For a hard-worked composer to write an opera for his own diversion without a contract and without expectation of production was unheard of. What, then, was the point of such an exercise? Perhaps this 1826 Gabriella di Vergy was the chrysalis from which the Donizetti of Anna Bolena would emerge: a first tragic work written to prove, if only to himself, that he was capable of writing an opera that would satisfy a Donizetti that Italian audiences had not yet encountered – the tragic Donizetti who would rise to the heights of Lucia di Lammermoor , Lucrezia Borgia and Roberto Devereux . Carafa’s Gabriella di Vergy , the work that had so inspired Donizetti, had first been given at the San Carlo, Naples, in 1816 with Isabella Colbran as the tragic heroine. It had been one of Carafa’s most successful works, and pieces of the opera had been published in Naples and Vienna. [The final scene can be heard on Opera Rara’s 100 Years of Italian Opera – 1810–1820 (ORCH103).] The gory libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola was based on an 18th-century drama by Pierre de Belloy, which was based in turn on a confused marriage of two medieval French legends, Le Chatelain de Coucy et la Dame de Fayel and Roman de la Chastelaine de Vergy . This gruesome tale had been kept alive through the centuries by Boccaccio, Bandello, D’Arnaud and Gozzi. It had reached its widest audience in 1733 with the publication of Anecdotes de la Cour de Philippe Auguste by Mlle de Lussan. It was she, too, who bestowed upon the anonymous ‘Dame de Fayel’ the name Gabrielle de Vergy. The story is set in the 13th-century. In the Castle of Autrei in Burgundy, Gabrielle – forced by her father to marry the cruel Fayel, Comte de Vergy – –10– MICHELE CARAFA Composer of Gabriella di Vergy , premiered at the San Carlo, Naples, 1816 and the inspiration for Donizetti’s opera. mourns the man she loved and whom she believes dead, Raoul de Coucy. Raoul, however, is very much alive. He has been held prisoner by Fayel’s henchmen. He escapes and, on his way back to Autrei, saves the life of King Philippe II, who wishes to reward him with the hand of Fayel’s sister, Almeide. Fayel, discovering Gabrielle and Raoul together, accuses them of betraying him and, despite Gabrielle’s protestations of their innocence, kills Raoul in a duel. In the tower where he has imprisoned her, Gabrielle is presented by Fayel with an urn containing the still-warm heart of Raoul. Stricken by this horrible sight, Gabrielle dies. (In the original legend Fayel stews Raoul’s heart and has it served to Gabrielle. When she learns what she has eaten she starves herself to death.