Mainly Opera and Ballet
This opera about Anne Boleyn was Donizetti’s first big success in 1830, and under the excellent baton of Jeremy Silver singers and orchestra came together to bring it fully to life. During the overture we see a silent mime where a queen removes her crown and her jewels, observed by a noble lady in a green …
This opera, mixing tragic and comic elements, has a Shakespearean tinge in the relationship of its main character Cardenio to a local slave named Kaidamà, like King Lear and his fool, though the ending is pure Donizetti. The back-story is that the unfaithfulness of Cardenio’s wife Eleonora — with his brother Fernando to boot — …
This is stirring stuff. Although Donizetti’s L’assedio di Calais (The Siege of Calais) with its unsatisfactory third act is rarely performed, James Conway’s production, which eliminates Act III and its happy ending, is a revelation. This opera, which immediately followed Lucia di Lammermoor, deals with real historical events. In 1346, towards the start of the …
