Meyerbeer: Margherita d'Anjou.(Sound Recording Review)

Massis, Barcellona; Ford, Previati, Miles, Putnins; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Geoffrey Mitchell Choir, Parry. Text and translations. Opera Rata ORC 25 (3) (Harmonia Mundi, dist.)

German-born Giacomo Meyerbeer changed the world of opera with a series of French spectacles in the mid-nineteenth century, but earlier he had spent the better part of nine years in Italy, learning his craft. He produced six Italian operas. The fourth of them, Margherita d'Anjou, was a great success at its La Scala premiere in 1820, but it seems to have disappeared by the 1860s. Opera Rara, which has already given us Meyerbeer's final Italian opera, Il Crociato in Egitto, now does the great service of presenting Margherita to modern audiences. It doesn't qualify as a neglected masterwork, but it is rip-roaring fun and full of novel musical ideas. There is an inventive trio for three basses, their staccato syllables interlocking with each other as trickery is afoot. Another trio, an exceedingly clever number, finds the three characters lost in the forest, with busy little accompaniment figures in the orchestra portraying the unidentified sounds of nature that frighten them. Of particular interest is the way in which Meyerbeer is able to combine disparate types of musical expression. Isaura, an abandoned wife, laments her lot, while jack-of-all-trades Michele patters on; Queen Margherita holds forth, while her banished former guard spews venom. Distinctive bassoon and horn writing is already in evidence.

Although it offers more than two and a half hours of music, Margherita seems compact, because the individual numbers are so gracefully proportioned. There are problems of dramaturgy--the plot hinges on Isaura's wayward husband singing a ten-minute tripartite duet with her in Act I and still not recognizing her until just before curtain fall--and there is a surfeit of military ...