DONIZETTI’s CASTELLO DI KENNILWORTH

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

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By 1829, the date of the premiere of Il Castello di Kennilworth Donizetti had established his reputation as a composer to be taken seriously. He had some three dozen operas in his dossier and about the same number still to compose before his untimely death at age 51.

Rossini premiered William Tell (his swansong) that same year, leaving the operatic field wide open for the younger Donizetti to become the favorite of audiences throughout Europe, which is precisely what the Bergamo master did, picking up where Rossini had left off.

The Donizetti operas called for a new kind of singer with more protein in the voice, with still some of the agility that the works of Rossini demanded, but with more attention paid to diction and dramatic inflection.

In Il Castello di Kennilworth, a precursor to the Tudor operas, a.k.a The Three Donizetti Queens (Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, and Roberto Devereux) we hear flashes of the greatness to come, so much so that it is inexplicable that this early work should get so little attention.

The Donizetti Festival in Bergamo recorded Il Castello di Kennilworth last December, and Dynamic Opera Classic has released it for American distribution. The cast features a good mix of younger up and coming singers side by side with established Italian singers.

Among his estimable colleagues, we found the Spanish lyric tenor Xabier Anduaga vocally and visually impressive in the role of Leicester, the Queen’s favorite. English soprano Jessica Pratt is lovely to look at and equally lovely to listen to as Elisabetta. Baritone Stephan Pop is a properly sinister and sonorous Warmey. Carmela Remigio is an effective Amelia.

Ricardo Frizza conducts with complete mastery of the Bel Canto style. The streamlined Donizetti Festival orchestra and chorus do yeoman work in the excellently filmed video.

Maria Pilar Perez Aspa stages the opera imaginatively on a raked platform set against a cyclorama, with various props and scenic elements that enter and exit providing visual reference points for the various locales.

Rafael de Acha              http://www.RafaelMusicNotes.com

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”