Gaetano Donizetti wrote some 80 operas, but only a few remain in the repertory. Il Paria (The Pariah), as recorded here with care by the specialist label Opera Rara, may make a good place to start with the rest. Composed in Naples in 1829, it dates from just before Donizetti's first enduring hit, Anna Bolena. It bombed when it first appeared, closing after just six performances; it's unlikely setting in India might have been just the ticket 50 years later, but in what was still Rossini's day, it probably mystified audiences ...
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Gaetano Donizetti wrote some 80 operas, but only a few remain in the repertory. Il Paria (The Pariah), as recorded here with care by the specialist label Opera Rara, may make a good place to start with the rest. Composed in Naples in 1829, it dates from just before Donizetti's first enduring hit, Anna Bolena. It bombed when it first appeared, closing after just six performances; it's unlikely setting in India might have been just the ticket 50 years later, but in what was still Rossini's day, it probably mystified audiences, and the story is dramatically unsatisfying and falls apart at the end. None of these complaints, however, apply to the music, which shows many aspects of Donizetti's mature style already in place, with pregnant orchestral scene-setting, arias that turn dramatic corners, and a highly varied vocabulary in the recitatives. The orchestra has a lot to do in the arias as well, as in Zarete's "Notte, ch'eterna a me parevi" from Act II, where the soloist doesn't appear at all until halfway...
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