Donizetti: Roberto Devereux.(Sound Recording Review)

[] Miricioiu, Ganassi; Bros, Frontali; Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Benini. Text and translation. Opera Rara ORC-24-2 (Harmonia Mundi, dist.)

Alongside its Tudor companions, Maria Stuarda and Anna Bolena, Roberto Devereux seems comparatively, and unjustly, neglected. Its Act III offers one first-class musical scene after another: the incisive Sara/Nottingham duet, Roberto's eloquent aria and cabaletta, Elisabetta's moving finale. If the melodic design and rhythmic energy in the previous two acts, as in much of Donizetti's output, sounds more nearly formulaic, its vocally grateful lines and well-wrought ensembles offer technically accomplished singing actors ample scope for expression and vocal coloring.

Opera Rara is needlessly cagey about this issue's provenance, merely noting that it was recorded at Covent Garden in July 2002. Audience applause conspicuously rewards the set pieces, yet the photographs in OR's usual elaborate booklet show singers before the microphones, with the orchestra onstage, suggesting an in-concert recording. In any case, the job has been done well. At the podium, Maurizio Benini displays a good feel for tempos, articulations and rhythmic buoyancy, drawing a lively, alert response from the orchestra, while the producers have assembled a creditable cast from a generation offering no obvious successors to the Sutherland/Caballe school of bel cantists.

Nelly Miricioiu, gradually ...