Donizetti Revived

In a publisher's warehouse in Milan last fall, Kalamazoo-born Conductor Thomas Schippers discovered an opera score dedicated to Queen Margherita * of Italy and tied up in purple string. In Spoleto last week, at the opening of Gian Carlo Menotti's Festival of Two Worlds, he unwrapped his find before a capacity audience. Italian critics promptly hailed the long-forgotten work as one of the finest creations of Composer Gaetano Donizetti.

Work on Donizetti's last opera, Il Duca d'Alba, was interrupted by the composer's insanity, and the score remained unfinished at his death in 1848. Completed by Journeyman Composer Matteo Salvi, it had its premiere in Rome in 1882, was rarely heard after that. Conductor Schippers, of the Metropolitan Opera, spent eight months unscrambling the "blurred, impossible handwriting" of the original score, shaved away Salvi additions, reconstructed most of the originally proposed ending from Donizetti's own figured bass and some solo sketches. What he arrived at was, said Schippers, "pure Donizetti and pure delight."

The opera's improbable libretto has to do with the efforts of the heroine, Amelia Egmont, to kill the Duke of Alba, 16th century Spanish governor of the conquered Low Countries. She succeeds only in killing her lover Marcello, who turns out to be Alba's long-lost son. In a preposterous ending, the duke leaves Marcello's body lying on the dock and sails for home to a cheerful mariners' chorus.

The chief wonder of Alba was that Donizetti's music again surmounted the absurdities of plot. In last week's production the orchestra sailed in whirlwind rushes through Donizetti's lush score; as whispered duets and trios alternated with bellowed choruses, the opera built to its lyrical climax in Act II with a love duet for Amelia and Marcello. Critics found the duet as fine as anything in Lucia di Lammermoor, proclaimed Alba "worthy of Donizetti's genius." But they reserved their warmest praise for 29-year-old Conductor Schippers, who had triumphed, one wrote, "with all the faith and enthusiasm of his beautiful young years."

* Margherita of Savoy (1851-1926), strongwilled, mandolin-playing wife of Umberto I, mother of Victor Emmanuel III (1900-46).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.