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"The Favorite of the King and... of the Impresario"
The umpteenth work of the amazingly prolific, yet painstaking, Donizetti in his French phase, La Favorita enjoyed a solid reputation throughout the 1850's and '60's. The public paired it with Lucia di Lammermoor, as two tragic pendants to Donizetti's sparkling comic operas Elisir d'Amore and Don Pasquale. In short, it ranked fourth among his works in the public esteem.
Yet at the start of the '60's we see La Scala giving greater prestige to its revival of Anna Bolena, a Donizetti opera which had already won the highest accolades at its performances in Lisbon and immediately afterwards at its revival in Bergamo. And at the same time San Carlo Theatre and Florence's Maggio Theatre had set out to demonstrate the incontestable importance of the composer's Roberto Devereux and Maria Stuarda.
And so La Favorita as if giving way to the conjugal rights of more legitimate ladies lost its high position and public esteem. Nor did revivals of Favorita in its original French "grand-opera" version help much, though they restaged the original ballets and divertissements and restored parts of the score that are not essential, thus bringing out the opera's original grandeur.
In 1840, for the benefit of the Paris Opera, Donizetti took his L'Ange de Nisida which he had never completed because the impresario who had commissioned it had gone bankrupt and made it into a new, more grand opera by transferring to it parts of other operas of his, most importantly the romanza "Ange si pur" ("Spirito gentil"--gentle spirit in the Italian version) from his Due d'Alba.
He also composed a new (almost new) fourth act, plus an ample amount of the customary operatic tinsel.
Perhaps La Favorita' s star had shone longer than its real virtues deserved, as Robert Schumann said in one of his typically disparaging judgments. But the true reason that its popularity faded may be found in the gradual decline of the mezzo-soprano range. The role of Leonora di Gusman, the favorite mistress of the king of Castile, had always gained its signal importance from the full use--even somewhat too imperious and insolent use of this register, even though Leonora is humiliated and brought low by events: the beautiful and beloved favorite rejected and cursed by courtiers and clergy.
From Viardot-Garcia to Alboni, from Besanzoni to Pederzini, from Stignani (acclaimed for her high C at the end of the concertante) to Barbieri and despite the valued addition of Cossotto (perhaps a touch too stentorian) and the more appropriately suffering Verrett there has been a virtual abdication: the protagonist's scepter has passed from the mezzo-soprano to the tenor. Regaining prestige with the excellent Duprez, and bolstered more recently by Kraus and Pavarotti, the role of Fernando now bathes in the spotlight that great opera houses reserve--though less and less frequently--for works by Donizetti. In the performance reproduced here, the San Carlo Theatre without doubt had the ideal means to illuminate the nuances of Leonora's character: the voice of Giulietta Simionato. In Simionato's day, the managements of some opera houses insisted on a territorial division, so that if a singer wanted to appear in the same season on stages in both northern and southern Italy, he or she was forced by managements to choose one or the other and was even, it is said, intimidated. Thus it was that Simionato lent her presence to Naples, and was gratifyingly applauded, in various performances of Carmen (conducted, among others, by Bohm and Reiner), Cenerentola, The Marriage of Figaro, Adriana Lecouvreur, and The Damnation of Faust.
The petite but indomitable Simionato made a recording of La Favorita for a famous English recording company, and in her intelligent exploration of the role of Leonora in the undoubted brilliance of her high notes, and the full value that she gave to the humblest accents--she there produced an incontestably complete performance. And in the recording here, too, one hears again with what a tone of resignation she knew how to sing her reproof of the king at the start of the larghetto, "Quando le soglie paterne varcai," and on the other hand, with what proud vehemence she sang the cabaletta of Act Three. Nor is the tenor role neglected in this San Carlo performance, profiting as it does from the efforts made by Gianni Raimondi. He was endowed with a clear, bold high range, and in various performances of Tell, I Puritani, and Lucia his voice seemed to gain strength from every challenge to high C. But his stylistic results were a bit ...casual.
Mario Zanasi's baritone voice is as light colored as might be permissible, certainly lighter than the bass-baritone of the original version. However, he knew how to make himself valuable onstage through beautiful control of his voice and acting, so that he was always a valued interpreter of monarchs roughly contemporary with Alfonso of Castile, above all Macbeth in Verdi's opera.
Nicola Zaccaria, ably delivering Baldassare's invective, added greatly to the vocal work of a fine cast, work which included also the excellent musicianship of Zanotti in the role of Ines and the solidly experienced conducting of Fernando Previtali.
The genuine, satisfying success of the performance here reproduced was generously applauded by the Neapolitan public, perhaps because they saw it as a continuation of the magnificence of the Parisian original starring the brilliant, imperious Rosine Stolz. She, a mezzo-soprano, had caused the role of Leonora, originally written for a high soprano voice, to be transposed to her lower register. Donizetti agreed to make this change which somewhat harmed the characterization of Leonora, who was originally a more humble figure perhaps because he was coerced, but surely in homage to Stolz's power over Leone Pillet, the general manager of the Paris Opera. For she was widely known to be more than a protegee of Pillet's: she was known to be "la favorita" of the king of Castile ...and of the Opera's impresario.
Vincenzo Ramon Bisogni
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