Mercadante Il Proscritto Ramón Vargas, Irene Roberts, Iván Ayón-Rivas, Sally Matthews, Goderdzi Janelidze; Opera Rara Chorus; Britten Sinfonia/Carlo Rizzi Opera Rara 9293800622 124:04 mins (2 discs)
It’s a mystery why Mercadante’s Il Proscritto from the 1840s should have been banished to the archives. Salvatore Cammarano’s well-structured libretto transports us confidently to the invented Scotland of Donizetti and Bellini, while Saverio Mercadante cocks an intelligent ear in the direction of a young Verdi. However, Mercadante is no faithful follower of fashion, as Carlo Rizzi, who rediscovered the opera in the Naples Conservatory archives, demonstrates in a vivid performance. We know from Opera Rara’s earlier recordings of his music that Mercadante was a consummate orchestrator with an ear for telling instrumentation. There are trombones for the tomb that awaits Malvina, torn between her new man Arturo, and a rippling harp for the dreams of her supposedly drowned husband, Giorgio, a Stuart supporter. While Cromwell’s man Arturo has a plaintive horn and pizzicato strings tip-toeing around his plot against his rival.
Mercadante wrote for a stellar cast, and Opera Rara field fine singers too. Ramón Vargas makes a tortured Giorgio, though sometimes a little stretched in the upper register. But as his rival – unusually a second tenor – the young Peruvian Iván Ayón-Rivas, who won the Operalia two years ago, is at the top of his game. As is Irene Roberts’s Malvina with lush tone and real heartache in the remarkable finale to the last act, where the composer lets his three principals rule the stage. As the metaphorical curtain falls Malvina is dead, but Rizzi and Opera Rara have indeed brought her opera back to life.
Christopher Cook