Donizetti reviews

This is boys having fun. And the CD is at its best when the composer is having fun too. So Rolando Villazón and Ildar Abdrazakov make the most of Donizetti’s Act I duet from L’eslisir d’amore, with Villazón a plaintive love-sick Nemorino and Abdrazakov a snake-like Dulcamara.

This new disc from the South African soprano covers similar territory to her previous, prize-winning debut disc. She begins with a nigh-on immaculate account of the waltz song from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. To the Mad Scene from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (her previous disc included different extracts) she brings a pure and ethereal tone, entering into the character and her poignant situation within a world of her own beyond earthly reality.

Katie Mitchell’s ‘split-screen’ production of Lucia di Lammermoor opened to mixed reviews in 2016: some focusing on the drip of the plumbing in Vicki Mortimer’s scrupulous reconstruction of a Victorian bathroom; some on over-crowding issues in the grand set pieces for chorus and principals; some on the intrusive manifestations of the ghosts of the Lammermuir girl and Lucia’s mother. The staging is over-stuffed but it is not stupid or careless.

Riccardo Chailly’s collection with the orchestra of La Scala, where the Italian conductor is now music director, consists of orchestral extracts from Italian operas.

Giovanni Simone Mayr was the first of Donizetti’s teachers, and they remained lifelong friends. As well as opera, Mayr specialised in church music, while much of Donizetti’s sacred output dates either from his years of study or the beginning of his career before he really got going on the operatic circuit. There’s only one complete authentic Mass setting by Donizetti – in C minor (1837) – and even this was assembled by him from earlier pieces.

One of Donizetti’s most charming short operas, with a Don Pasquale-like plot, and gorgeously performed by Agnes Baltsa and Enzo Dara, this is a nice way of spending a spare 55 minutes.

Michael Tanner

Tonally and technically magnificent singing (with the odd hairy-chested moment) from this Georgian tenor, whose Hermann in Queen of Spades is probably unsurpassed. Beautifully sensitive conducting by Ermler.

Malcolm Hayes

This is the most exciting debut album to come my way for a long time. Pretty Yende, a South African who has already made a big impression in Europe and at the New York Met, sings a selection of mainly bel canto scenes. And they are scenes, not just arias, with supporting singers and chorus, which makes all the difference. Her voice is full, already has many colours and her coloratura is effortless but also expressive – nothing she does is merely for show. 

One of the finest of Donizetti’s serious operas, sung here in the original French, La favorite impresses in this recording under Marcello Viotti, though Vesselina Kasarova’s Léonor sounds thin.

George Hall