“Gaetano Donizetti’s most famous work, Lucia di Lammermoor, written in 1835, is seen as one of the great European operas,” writes Dalya Alberge in Saturday’s (2/17) Guardian (U.K.). “L’Ange de Nisida (The Angel of Nisida)—composed in the late 1830s … was thought to have been lost until musicologist Dr. Candida Mantica, then a PhD student at Southampton University, painstakingly located and deciphered the score’s fragments over eight years. Mantica said she found some pages in Paris’s Bibliothèque Nationale, but they were scattered among 18 folders and in no specific order. The reconstruction involved archive research across Europe and the U.S.…. The work will be premiered on 18 July at Covent Garden by London-based Opera Rara [in a concert performance]…. Mark Elder, artistic director of Opera Rara … will conduct the performance….. Donizetti used some of this music in later works, including 1840’s La Favorite, but Elder said: ‘Over half of [L’Ange] has never ever been heard, which is terribly exciting.’ … Roger Parker, repertoire consultant to Opera Rara … said: ‘For L’Ange to get as popular as Lucia di Lammermoor or L’Elisir d’Amore, that would be ambitious…. But … it’s some of the best music that you’ll hear from Donizetti.’ ”
Posted February 23, 2018
