Why does an opera by Donizetti suddenly switch into the style of Verdi?
The other day a work colleague asked me this question: "Are ‘rare’ operas worth listening to at all? Surely they have fallen into neglect for very good reasons? Aren’t we be safer sticking to the Bohèmes and the Lucias?"
Umm… here you get a cop-out answer from me. Yes and no. Yes, because sometimes the work is an unmitigated disaster, both musically and dramatically. I can think of quite a few.
But once in a while history draws a veil over a certain work because it's damned by circumstances and changing tastes. Here’s an aria, "Angelo casto e bel", from just such an opera: Donizetti’s Il duca d’Alba. But there's a catch which I'll explain later:
It’s a beautiful, soaring aria – and Rolando Villazon makes a lovely job of it. But… the music sounds almost Verdian, don't you think? Which is odd.
Il duca d’Alba is the completed version of Le duc d’Albe. Donizetti left the opera unfinished half way through, in 1839, having written Acts 1 and 2 but only sketched out melodies for the final two acts. There’s a beautiful tenor aria in there, and, not wanting to waste a good tune, he transferred it in his grand opera La favorite (1840), where it became "Ange si pur".
Fast-forward to 1881, 33 years after Donizetti's death. His pupil Matteo Salvi decided to prepare a performance score for Il duca d’Alba but found a hole where the big tenor aria should be. So what did he do? He composed one himself – some say with the help of Ponchielli. The result is "Angelo casto e bel" – written at a time when La Traviata and Aida were among the world's best-loved operas and bel canto was a distant memory.
So that explains why it sounds like Verdi. And not bad Verdi at that…
This article is from my blog on the Daily Telegraph Originally published on 12 Nov 2013