It is not often that you return to a concert hall the next day for another five-star performance, but this was my pleasant experience at the Cadogan Hall, thanks to the latest concert showcase of Donizetti Songs produced by Opera Rara. Project leader Roger Parker and his artistic collaborators are gradually highlighting their discoveries deriving from a new critical edition, which in turn is leading to an array of recordings. These researches have revealed a corpus of over 200 songs from a composer previously defined solely through his contributions to bel canto opera.
These songs are neglected now because they were usually neither collected nor preserved by the composer. Many were composed as a form of ‘social capital’, whereby the composer wrote various versions of the same song for parties, hostesses and salons that, in the case of this sample, helped oil the wheels of his life in Paris in the 1840s. But alongside them are much more substantial narratives or semi-operatic scenes, also still hardly known. Taken together this body of work serves to shift our view of Donizetti, making him a much more cosmopolitan figure within European Romanticism.
That context is further emphasised here by placing these songs of his last decade alongside those of his local Parisian ‘frenemy’, Hector Berlioz, with whom he crossed swords in print several times. Donizetti considered Berlioz a critic who had failed as a composer, while Berlioz saw Donizetti, at least initially, as an embodiment of a debased, cliché-ridden, operatic culture. Their songs do make for interesting juxtapositions though, with Donizetti’s distinguished by effortless melody and fairly perfunctory piano accompaniment; whereas Berlioz has his characteristically awkward meandering melodies and a piano part with much more sustained, if quirky, harmonic interest.
A lot of care has gone into the programme choices, balancing the two voices, the moods and lengths of the songs, and solo numbers with duets. The evening opened with five shorter numbers, all sung by Michael Spyres, offering a wonderful control of line and, where needed, dramatic flair. Pianist Giulio Zappa also got a chance to shine in ‘L’Origine de la Harpe’, a Thomas Moore setting. But the best of the first half came in a remarkable ten-minute dramatic portrayal of a mad woman’s fixation on Napoleon. Marie-Nicole LeMieux brought to vivid life this strange example of Napoleon-mania, imagining a rescue attempt on St Helena and then a collapse into despair with the news of the Emperor’s passing. Donizetti, of course, is quite the connoisseur when it comes to mad scenes, but this must rank among the best of them. Spyres and Lemieux wafted us off into the interval with a fine rendition of the very tricky love duet between Aeneas and Dido from the Trojans. There was real chemistry between them, and Zappa’s accompaniment really made us hear the waves gently lapping on the shores of Carthage.
The opening sequence of Donizetti songs in the second half, all performed by Lemieux, were witty, and in part naughty, droll character pieces in a comic vein, which she pointed deliciously. In contrast Berlioz’s setting of Shakespeare’s desciption of the death of Ophelia was characterised with minute attention to dynamics, culminating in an exquistely graded diminuendo to finish. The final two songs were both by Donizetti, and both impressive compositions that deserve to become part of the regular song repertory. The first was a huge scene focusing on the Faustian temptation of a novice priest on the eve of ordination by an evil spirit. Michael Spyres inhabited both roles with flair, making sure, as usual in this kind of romantic trope, that the sexual temptations were relished even though the delights of heaven won out in the end. The concert ended with a stunning duet in the form of an evening prayer, with a peach of melody delicately threaded together through both voices.
We then enjoyed a luxury encore in the form of the whole final scene of Bizet’s Carmen, enacted with real fire and commitment by all parties. It is rare to have an evening when both the performers were at the top of their game and the repertory opened up genuinely fresh vistas of revelation and enjoyment.
Performers: Marie-Nicole LeMieux, Michael Spyres, Giulio Zappa
10 March 2025
2 hrs with interval
Photo Credit: Russell Duncan