And so we finally reach the end of the marathon Donizetti Song Project! Before the start of this last recital in the series, Carlo Rizzi, artistic director of Opera Rara, gave a summary of its achievements, which is worth repeating here.
While some songs by Donizetti were certainly known, no one had a sense that there were 178 of them, of great variety and many of considerable originality. Composed for special occasions and given or left with friends, publishers and business associates, they have settled as barely noticed leaves in disparate collections. Roger Parker and his team discovered examples scattered across the libraries and archives of Europe, even including 20 stashed away in the monastic library of Kremsmünster Abbey in Austria. These are now all available in a full critical edition that reveal a world of song that, perhaps surprisingly, is not very close to the tone and sensibility of the operas that we associate with this composer. While many are simple canzonettas, others, especially those written in the 1820s and 1840s are forward-looking in melodic shape, harmonic language and choice of instrumental accompaniment, quite apart from setting modern texts in French as much as conventional Italian poetry. What is striking, coming from the world of the bel canto operas, is the concise economy of effect and means deployed by the composer.
Opera Rara have put together a superlative array of singers on the recording and deft programming in the concert performances which have wisely interpolated songs by Donizetti’s friends and contemporaries alongside his own, thus providing vivid contrast and intriguing comparisons. The songs themselves are now available in eight CD albums accompanied by learned and witty essays that range widely so as to give us a comprehensive new sense of the world of Italian domestic song in the first half of the nineteenth century. Surely it will not be long before a number of these items find their way into song festivals around the world, and deservedly so.
It fell to bass-baritone Nicola Alaimo to ring down the curtain. He is a naturally theatrical performer, bringing a broad range of mood and emotion to songs that covered romantic ardour, comic drollery and intense inward anguish. He and Rizzi were also joined in three items by Hetty Snell, principal cello of the Royal Opera House Orchestra. These were at the centre of the programme and formed a particular emotional highpoint. In ‘L’amor Funesto’ the cello and the voice joined in a exquisite dialogue, superbly sustained, that sat well alongside the typically long-breathed melodies of Bellini nearby in the programme. A delightful Largo for cello and piano also offered a ‘song without words’, evoking a golden-toned twilight serenade.
Elsewhere we were treated to an atmospheric evocation of an unlucky troubadour, ‘Il rovatore in caricatura’, an Italian equivalent of Schubert’s exiled wanderer in Winterreise, with quirky effects to depict croaking frogs, a ghostly cat and vain knocking on doors. Another highly dramatic number, requesting divine intervention to ease romantic pain, was ‘Dio che col cenno moderi.’ Alaimo signed off with a catchy cabaletta ‘Amor marinaro’, a sailors whimsical fantasy of a love nest out at sea.
While the piano parts are restrained in format, Rizzi was always a careful and attentive accompanist and floated a beautiful singing line when the piano was required to imitate or sit in counterpoint with the vocal part. With its carefully calculated range of dramatic situation, romantic gesture and instrumental dynamics, this programme provided a fitting end to an exemplary voyage of exploration and rediscovery.
Opera Rara – Donizetti Project
Performers: Nicola Alaimo, Carlo Rizzi and Hetty Snell
16 June 2026
1 hr, no interval
Photo Credit: Russell Duncan