FRONT OF HOUSE

For more than 40 years, the

team at Opera Rara has been

on a mission to restore, perform

and record rare and forgotten

19th-century opera. Its latest ambitious

project, in collaboration with The Royal

Opera, is to present the world premiere

of Donizetti’s ‘lost’ opera L’Ange de

Nisida at Covent Garden this July.

Opera Rara became aware that

there was a real possibility of reviving

Donizetti’s opera around eight years

ago, when musicologist and editor

Candida Mantica, then a PhD student at

Southampton University, approached

the company. She had been piecing

together the fragments of Donizetti’s

L’Ange de Nisida from archives and

libraries in Paris. Would Opera Rara be

interested? It was, and after much work

the reconstructed piece will at last be

heard this summer.

But how did the opera come to

be lost in the first place? Roger Parker,

professor of music at King’s College

London and a consultant for Opera Rara,

explains: ‘As always with Donizetti – it’s

complicated.’ The work was written

during the composer’s French phase

(he had moved to Paris in 1838 in response

to his frustration and displeasure with

censorship in Italy). It was conceived as a

semi-seria work destined for the Théâtre

de la Renaissance – it is fairly unusual in

that it combines elements of comic and

tragic opera in both the music and the

plot such as ‘a buffo bass, bubbling away

in the midst of all the tragedy’ as Roger

Parker puts it.

However, the theatre suffered

financial difficulties, going bankrupt

before the opera could be performed.

So Donizetti, never one to waste a good

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How to restore a lost operatic masterpiece Roger Parker, professor of music at King’s College London, explains how Opera Rara pieced together Gaetano Donizetti’s ‘lost’ L’Ange de Nisida, as it prepares to give the world premiere of the opera at Covent Garden this summer

Words by Emma Baker

A portrait of Donizetti by Ponziano Loverini ©DeAgostini/ Getty Images

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FRONT OF HOUSE

idea, repurposed the musical material

for the Paris Opéra, removing the

comic elements and rewriting the

lead soprano role for a mezzo. In the

resulting La Favorite ‘around half the

music is from L’Ange de Nisida’, says

Parker. La Favorite (also La favorita in

its Italian version) was a success –

so much so that Donizetti abandoned

L’Ange de Nisida altogether, with the

score seemingly cast to the four winds

and lost forever.

‘Many people thought L’Ange

was too fragmented to be revived,’

explains Parker. ‘But Candida looked

very carefully in the Paris archives and

the music gradually revealed itself: we

found that most of the opera could be

recreated. Crucially, there was an original

libretto so we could see how all the

musical fragments stitched together.’

It took plenty of detective work.

‘There is a beautiful aria for the soprano

in the third act, but it lacked the last

movement – the cabaletta. We knew

that Donizetti was likely to have reused

the original music elsewhere. After

some research we discovered that the

cabaletta in Maria di Rohan fitted the

libretto exactly, so we have used it here.

‘Two or three of the numbers

also needed reorchestrating and we

have also had to add some recitative.

Finally, we had to add a prelude – all

this reconstruction work was undertaken

by Martin Fitzpatrick, a conductor at

ENO, who had worked before with

Opera Rara in the reconstruction of

Donizetti’s Le Duc d’Albe.’

The other great challenge lay in

interpreting the existing score, written

– typically for Donizetti – at top speed.

It was not just a matter of identifying

the notes, but also what the scrawled

phrasing marks meant. These Mantica

patiently decoded over many months.

‘What we had pieced together from

the archives was a very rough-and-ready

score, handwritten at huge speed with

an awful lot of essential detail missing.

For example, you could look at a typical

page of handwritten score and ask:

“Where does this phrase mark begin and

end?” Every bar throws up questions

that an editor has to answer.’

Long-term dedicationIt was an intense and detailed process

that didn’t stop at the first version of

the score. ‘One can’t get an edition of

an opera like this right the first time;

it’s a constant process of editing,

proofreading, then playing through and

correcting again.’ There is also the issue

of performance practice. ‘Donizetti was

writing at enormous speed for a musical

context where he could leave an awful

lot unspoken or unwritten and rely on

the performers to fill it in.’ Of course that

instinct and experience has been lost

in time and today’s players and singers

need precise instructions to perform

music nearly two centuries old.

‘We finally end up with a vocal

score for the singers and an 800-page

orchestral score, where every page

required several hours of work.’

With the score finally complete, and

with conductor and Opera Rara Artistic

Director Mark Elder also taking an

active role, rehearsals got under way.

The world premiere of the reconstructed

L’Ange de Nisida takes place at the

Royal Opera House on 18 July, with

a subsequent performance on 21 July;

these will be recorded for release on CD.

It represents not just the fruition

of a decade of academic research but

the rediscovery and restoration of yet

another lost masterpiece by a major

composer – as a living flesh-and-bones

performing edition to be enjoyed by

audiences for posterity – thanks to the

dedicated work of Opera Rara. n

L’Ange de Nisida opens on 18 July. See page 62.

‘It represents not just the fruition of a decade of academic research but the rediscovery and restoration of yet

another lost masterpiece by a major composer’

The master at work – an autograph score from Donizetti of L’elisir d’amore ©DeAgostini/Getty Images

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