When the notoriously unreliable Felice Romani missed the deadline for delivering the libretto of Donizetti’s first commission for La Scala in 1822, the composer managed to complete the score in only twelve days, but was not optimistic about its fate. "Bring a requiem," he told his former teacher, "so there will be my funeral."
He was not far wrong. The work was a flop, and disappeared for 200 years. But there are few more diligent custodians of a cultural flame than those at the Donizetti Festival in Bergamo, and in 2022, they dusted off an old copy of the score for this production directed by Gianluca Falaschi.
Sadly, it’s still a flop, but the blame is not all Donizetti’s. The plot is far-fetched—a convoluted story of sea captain Don Alvaro and his daughters Chiara and Serafina who escape the clutches of pirates and the machinations of Alvaro’s enemy Don Fernando.
The work is entitled as opera semiseria, but Falaschi, better known as a costume designer, destroys what little seriousness there is in the piece by imposing Cyrano-style prosthetics on most of his characters. I felt sorry for soprano Fan Zhou trying to evoke sympathy in Serafina’s final aria wearing a false nose and chin that could open a small tin.
Falaschi’s set, somewhere between a rehearsal room, a ship and an inn, and costume design, which includes frilly-skirted sailor girls, a clown, a Chaplinesque Alvaro and Tahitian maidens, make an already confusing story almost incomprehensible, and on-stage direction relies too often on poorly co-ordinated disco moves that speak of inadequate rehearsal time.
Gli Originali, playing on period instruments, sound occasionally scratchy and the continuity of the piece is not helped by delays between some early scenes.
The critic Charles Osborne remarked with understatement: "the hastily composed score is hardly one of Donizetti’s most exciting." On this first hearing, I’d say it lacks vitality and melodic invention, and that the accompaniment can be perfunctory.
There is a pleasant duet for soprano and baritone and a lively if unremarkable sextet in the second act, but the one bright spot in the enterprise is Greta Doveri as Chiara, who is mercifully spared the rubber features. She possesses a lovely clear tone, sings serenely throughout, and shines in "Queste romite sponde" ("These remote shores"), the best number in the show.