PERSIANI: INES DE CASTRO.(Brief Article)(Review)

PERSIANI: INES DE CASTRO [] Dragoni, Cisman, Houben; Gagliardo, Sempere, Mongiardino, Cescotti; Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana, Coro Lirico Marchigiano "Vincenzo Bellini, "Mazzola. Text and translations. Bongiovanni GB 2263/64-2 (Qualiton, dist.)

Giuseppe Persiani (1799-1869) has been relegated to footnotes in our day, now more famous as the husband of prima donna Fanny Tacchinardi-Persiani (creator of Donizetti's Lucia) and a classmate of Bellini's than as the composer of Piglia il Mondo Come Viene or Danao, Re d'Argo. The most celebrated of Persiani's eleven operas was Ines de Castro, created as a vehicle for the beloved but short-lived superstar Maria Malibran (1808-36). Malibran was doubtful about Ines during rehearsals, but its premiere at the Teatro San Carlo in January 1835 was greeted with enough rapture to satisfy even this ambitious artist: the opening-night curtain calls for Ines (fainting ladies, frenzied men, piles of thrown flowers and handkerchiefs) inspired the Naples government to pass a new law limiting soloists' bows at the end of an opera.

Malibran, whose allure might have won Ines some revivals, died less than two years after the first night; the liner notes for this CD claim that the performance history of Ines stopped cold a century and a half ago. Is it worthy of modern revival? The opera moves along in predictable fashion, with several stretches that are less than compelling musically. Persiani's contemporaries Donizetti and Bellini surpassed him in expository adroitness and lyrical intensity; Verdi, whose early successes may have hastened Persiani's retirement as a composer, accelerated the pace of Italian ...