DONIZETTI : DOM SÉBASTIEN

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 25th of November 2007 at 3 pm

INTRODUCTION &SYNOPSIS
LIBRETTO (French)
LIBRETTO (Italian/Spanish)
DONIZETTI: Dom Sébastien, Roi de Portugal,
an opera in five acts
Zayda....................................... Vesselina Kasarova
Dom Sébastien.......................... Giuseppe Filianoti
Dom Juam de Sylva.................. Alastair Miles
Abayaldos................................ Simon Keenlyside
Camoëns.................................. Carmelo Corrado Caruso
Dom Henrique.......................... Robert Gleadow
Dom Antonio/First Inquistor...... John Upperton
Second Inquistor....................... Lee Hickenbottom
Ben-Sélim................................. Andrew Slater
Dom Luis.................................. Martyn Hill
Soldier...................................... Nigel Cliffe
Third Inquistor.......................... John Bernays
Royal Opera House Chorus & Orch, Covent Garden/Mark Elder
(Opera Rara ORC 33)

A finalist in the 2007 Gramophone Awards
Another opera from Donizetti's vast repertoire (which amounts to a "universal deluge", to quote the title of the previous one we heard on a Sunday afternoon). He left eighteen of them incomplete, but this is the last of the multitude of survivors (though its hero and heroine drown at the end!). Donizetti's venereal malady brought on madness after this, but his swansong was this massive marvellous French opera, which contains a barcarolle, and a ballet, of course, and a battle, leaving a host of dead bodies (but they will not concern us listening on the radio), and a funeral march, and a frightening Inquisition procession to the stake (as in Verdi's Don Carlos). In the end, Portugal falls under the domination of Spain.
Donizetti revived it for a German version in Vienna; and it had a long life married to an inferior Italian translation. In 1982, William Ashbrook (Donizetti and his operas, p. 532) prayed for a major company to revive it in French, to show the magnificence of this noble work, which the composer hoped would be his masterpiece, and to reveal "Donizetti's importance as Verdi's great and influential predecessor".