FULL IL FURIOSO ALL’ISOLA DI SAN DOMINGO Cheltenham 2015 Craig Smith, Sally Silver, Nicholas Sharratt
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Il furioso all'isola di San Domingo
- Composer: Donizetti Gaetano
- Libretto: Jacopo Ferretti Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, England, English Touring Opera
- Recorded: April 9, 2015
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Craig Smith, Sally Silver, Nicholas Sharratt, Njabulo Madlala, Emma Watkinson, Peter Brathwaite
- Conductor: Jeremy Silver
- Orchestra: English Touring Opera Orchestra
- Chorus: English Touring Opera Chorus
- Stage Director: Iqbal Khan
- Stage Designer: Florence de Maré
- Costume Designer:
- Lighting Designer: Mark Howland
Information about the Recording
- Date Published: 2024
- Format: Unknown
- Quality Video: 3 Audio:3
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Il furioso all’isola di San Domingo is a semi-serious opera by Gaetano Donizetti with a libretto by Jacopo Ferretti .
The first performance took place on 2 January 1833 at the Teatro Valle in Rome , with great success. The title role, Cardenio, is the first great part for baritone composed by Donizetti. At the premiere he was sung by Giorgio Ronconi , at the time twenty-two years old, who in turn is considered the first great baritone in history. The opera therefore had a fundamental role in the definition of this vocal typology, in a key already decidedly pre-Verdian.
On a dramatic level, it is one of the few works that portray male madness, albeit in a tragicomic way.
A typical example of semi-serious melodrama, Il furioso abruptly alternates pathetic and comic episodes, while still leaning significantly towards comedy. The role of the comic is embodied by the black servant Kaidamà, on whom the protagonist vents his amorous disappointments by beatings with a stick.
The part of Cardenio, on the other hand, has moments of great nobility, as in the cavatina Raggio d’amor parea or in the arioso Ma dì, perché tradirmi?, before the meeting with Eleonora, in which the orchestra hints at the opening bars of Nemorino’s famous romance in Elisir d’amore , Una furtiva lagrima .
Donizetti’s contrapuntal wisdom is manifested in the sextet that constitutes the slow movement of the finale of the first act.
Once popular, Il furioso left the repertoire in the second half of the nineteenth century, probably because it was too far from the standards of the time, in its eccentric dramatic structure. The opera was performed at the Teatro Gaetano Donizetti in Bergamo in 1987 with Renato Bruson and Luciana Serra as protagonists and, later, in 2013, with Simone Alberghini and Cinzia Forte .
The bizarre nature of the theme can be explained by its relationship with Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes , the model which seems to have inspired the anonymous author of the comedy from which Ferretti drew the libretto.
Quoted from Wikipedia