Giuseppe Patanè, Münchner Rundfunkorchester - Gaetano Donizetti: Maria Stuarda (1990)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 560 Mb | Total time: 133:26 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Philips | # 426 233-2 | Recorded: 1989
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 560 Mb | Total time: 133:26 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Philips | # 426 233-2 | Recorded: 1989
How this opera grows in the affections. And how it strengthens the larger, ever-deepening appreciation not merely of Donizetti's work but of operatic conventions as such. I mean that the frequently derided forms of opera (the set pieces, aria-and-cabaletta and so forth) can increasingly be a source of pleasure and of perceived power in the writing. Here, for instance, part of the exhilaration arises out of the composer's skill in suiting the conventions to his dramatic and musical purposes. Elizabeth's first aria, meditatively hopeful yet anxious, fits the lyric-cantabile form; then the arrival of Talbot and Cecil with their opposing influences provokes the intensified turbulence of irresolution that makes dramatic sense out of the cabaletta. It is so with the duets and ensembles: they look like conventional set-pieces, but established form and specific material have been so well fitted that, with the musical inspiration working strongly (as it is here), you have opera not in its naive stage awaiting development towards freedom from form but, on the contrary, opera at the confident height of a period in its history when it was entirely true to itself.