Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848)
Maria de Rudenz (1838)
Maria de Rudenz – Katia Ricciarelli (soprano)
Enrico Waldorf – Alberto Cupido (tenor)
Corrado Waldorf – Leo Nucci (baritone)
Mathilde di Wolf – Silvia Baleani (mezzo)
Rambaldo – Giorgio Surjan (bass-baritone)
Chorus and Orchestra of the Teatro La Fenice/Eliahu Inbal
rec. live, January 1981, Teatro la Fenice, Venice, Italy
Warner Fonit 2564698616 [2 CDs: 117]
Donizetti’s 59th opera had its premiere at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice in January 1838. Adolphe Nourrit, the legendary French tenor who created the lead tenor roles in such operas as La Juive, Les Huguenots, Le Siège de Corinthe, Le Comte Ory and Guillaume Tell happened to arrive in Venice just in time to attend the final dress rehearsal of the second and third acts. He wrote of it in a letter to his wife: “There is nothing very new in what we heard, but it is music that will probably please the public and have a good success. The company seems to be the best of any I have yet encountered.” Nourrit’s words notwithstanding, neither the opera nor the singers pleased the Venetians and the work was withdrawn after only two performances. It was hardly ever staged again until La Fenice mounted the production that is preserved on these CDs. Since then, the opera has received only a handful of productions, unlike so many other operas from the Donizetti canon.
The work was partly based on a particularly lurid French play of the Gothic persuasion “La Nonne Sanglante” by Anicet-Bourgeois & de Mallian. It would also inspire Gounod to write his own opera on the subject in 1854. Although Donizetti considerably toned down the bleeding nun aspect of the story , exactly what inspired him by this subject is a bit of a mystery. What is certain is that it wrought from him some fairly inspired music, in particular the first Act Finale. It is without a doubt his most effective ensemble finale since writing the sextet for Lucia di Lammermoor three years earlier. The largo section of the finale is so good that Donizetti would re-use it in his next opera Poliuto (alas sabotaged by the Neopolitan censors), where he slightly altered it to fit with the different dramatic situation in that opera. When Poliuto finally achieved a staging as Les Martyrs for Paris, the largo was altered even further from the original version. The stretta portion of that first Finale of Maria de Rudenz is one of the most exciting pieces of music that Donizetti ever penned and it is odd that Donizetti didn’t try to make use of it again.
The performance on the CDs under consideration is generally quite good, although not ideal in all respects. The lead role of the abused and conflicted heroine is sung with style by Katia Ricciarelli. When singing softly, she commands a lovely cantilena line and the voice fairly glows with suffused light. However, when she has to sing forcefully (which occurs often in this role) her tone tends to pool until it shatters in a less than ideal manner. It mars an otherwise fine performance of the title role. She works hard to vocally project the inner fire of the obsessive Maria, and she achieves much in spite of a voice that is not a good match for the role. Ideally, Maria calls for a soprano of extremely good technique with a darkly coloured tone. Leyla Gencer comes to mind as the perfect vocal match for Maria. I once heard a radio transmission of this opera from Paris in which Maria was sung by the stunningly dark-toned Margarita Castro-Alberty which first revealed the role’s possibilities to me.
The role of Corrado Waldorf is not exactly a villain; he is more of a conflicted, flawed lover, not unlike Pollione in Norma. Interestingly, the aspects of villainy in this opera are divided equally between the two brothers Corrado and Enrico, so that they both have a dual sympathetic/antagonistic nature. Leo Nucci was in splendid voice for this production. His tone is firm and rings out clearly with power and strength. His medium-weight baritone is ideally suited to this kind of role. He is not as gifted as Ricciarelli at getting the character across by purely vocal means at this early point in his career, but he is still effective and his singing gives great pleasure on this occasion.
Alberto Cupido’s firm, clear tenor starts off well enough, but the vibrato-less, piercing quality of his timbre can sound a bit tiring when he sings beyond mezzo forte. In addition, his phrasing is clumsy, verging on coarseness at times. Still, he never makes an ugly sound, so he can be counted as a partial success here.
Silvia Baleani has a cooler, more linear vocal quality than Ricciarelli, so on recording at least she makes a good foil as the seconda donna. The role is not as large as Jane Seymour’s in Anna Bolena and she doesn’t get much of a solo to sing despite her importance to the plot. However, Donizetti does let her rip in the stretta of the exciting Act One Finale; all the way up to a high “D”. Baleani conquers it twice, superbly. In the rival Opera-Rara recording, Regina Nathan doesn’t even attempt it.
The very young Croatian bass Giorgio Surjan reveals a fine dark voice of great promise in a fairly small role. There would much larger roles for him in future.
Eliahu Inbal conducts in a swiftly driven manner, although he does manage to shape some of the more lyric pages of the score with sensitivity. The superb and rather unique duo for Harp and Basset Horn which opens Act Two is beautifully executed here. There are a few real highlights in the score, aside from the important finale. There is a rather exciting duet for the two brothers in Act Two, and Maria’s final cabaletta of pyrotechnical display is a good deal more musically interesting than the one Donizetti provided to poor Lucrezia Borgia. I cannot make an outright recommendation though because of the indifferent quality of the live recording. It is hardly ideal even among other live recordings, but despite the quality being rough at times it is still, on the whole, acceptable. There is a rival recording on the Opera-Rara label which features a booklet filled with fascinating notes and background on the opera, not to mention a libretto with English translation. The sound is also a great improvement over this one, but unfortunately the performance lacks the fire to be found on these CDs. Opera-Rara also features a heroine (Nelly Miricioiou) who, despite a fine voice, is simply too droopy of manner to be a convincing Maria. One might even say that Miricioiou’s wound only trickles blood, rather than the full-on exsanguination of Ricciarelli’s Maria.
Mike Parr
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