Diana Montague

Renee Fleming’s remarkable vocal technique is ideally suited to the role of Rosmonda, who battles with Eleanor of Aquitaine, (Nelly Miricioiu) for the love of Henry II (Bruce Ford). Donizetti reserves some deliciously florid vocal writing for Rosmonda, allowing Fleming to display the luscious tone for which she is so admired. This disc contains all of Rosmondas music, with her big Act 2 aria as the final item. Don’t miss Donizetti’s powerfully tragic duet for two sopranos, playing one diva off against the other.

As part of its 40th anniversary celebrations, Opera Rara proudly presents this re-release of highlights from the first complete opera recording ever made by world-famous soprano and Opera Rara Patron, Renée Fleming.

One of Opera Rara’s historical strengths has been its enthusiasm to discover, nurture and promote bright young singers. One of the beautiful lyric soprano voices the late Patric Schmid took under his wing belonged to American singer, Renée Fleming, who went on to become one of the most celebrated sopranos of our time. And also one of the best-selling!

Rosmonda d’Inghilterra was a work of Donizetti’s artistic maturity, produced in between Lucrezia Borgia (Milan, 1833) and Maria Stuarda (intended for Naples in 1834, but in fact premiered in Milan in 1835), with a libretto by Felice Romani, the leading practitioner of the genre in Italy at that time.

Despite the opera’s rarity, its qualities as a work remain exceptional. The plot is derived from English history (suitably fictionalised) and centres on the bitter hatred of Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Henry II, for his mistress Rosamond Clifford, whom she eventually murders. Donizetti was able to depict the heightened emotions of the characters with particular vividness.

In order to present these highlights to the best possible musical effect, Patric Schmid re-ordered them slightly from their appearance in the context of the opera.

Featuring the superb cast of the original recording (including Bruce Ford, Nelly Miricioiu, Alastair Miles and Diana Montague), the disc has undergone a stunning makeover and is sure to attract the attention of opera and Fleming fans alike.

“[Gruberova's] purity of tone, like her range and technical accomplishment, is outstanding.” Gramophone

Giovanni Simone Mayr was born in Mendorf, a small village not far from Ingolstadt in Bavaria, on 14 June 1763. Ever ambitious to study in Italy, he travelled to Bergamo and on to Venice. He is particularly remembered for Medea in Corinto (Naples, 1813), but many of his works enjoyed great success and were widely heard in their day. In 1803 he was appointed maestro di cappella of S. Maria Maggiore, the great Romanesque basilica of Bergamo, a position which gave him a home-base and a stability enjoyed by few composers at the time. It was in Bergamo that he also became famous as a teacher, founding in 1806 his celebrated lezioni caritatevoli or ‘charitable lessons’, which were designed to train the sons of indigent parents as choirboys. His most famous pupil was Gaetano Donizetti. He was one of several composers credited with the invention of the so-called Rossinian crescendo. He is also believed to have been the first to introduce the harp and the cor anglais among the instruments of the Italian operatic orchestra. Believing that ‘the simplest means are always the best’, he concentrated on purity of melody, and on choosing instruments, especially solo instruments, for their timbre and colour. Consequently one has to listen ‘inwardly’ to his music: to harmonies, to instrumental colours and textures, to the unfolding of melodies, to the expression of words and emotions. As Louis Spohr remarked, Mayr has, ‘if not so much imagination as Rossini, yet, certainly, more knowledge and aesthetic feeling’.

The introduction in English, French, Italian and German and accompanying booklet notes are by Jeremy Commons.

This disc is accompanied by a fully illustrated 64 page booklet with an introduction and notes to the songs by the distinguished writer, broadcaster and music journalist Patrick O’Connor. One of the most inspired of Opera Rara’s recent initiatives has been a series exploring the more intimate world of the salon (salotto, in Italian) and the music written for this most sophisticated of social environments. Throughout 19th-century Europe the drawing-rooms of fashionable hostesses (or occasionally, like Rossini, hosts) rang to the sound of high-quality music-making, especially when the performers, in the very best houses, were the great singers of the day. Opera Rara responds, aptly, with some of the leading bel canto singers of our day, including Diana Montague, Bruce Ford, Majella Cullagh and Barry Banks. Composers both major and minor would regularly attend such occasions, and many wrote songs, duets, trios and larger ensemble pieces especially to delight the guests. This latest selection takes its title from a setting by Ambroise Thomas, and includes his most famous song, the enchanting Le soir, as well as other examples from the pens of Mercadante, Donizetti, Offenbach and Pacini and several of their lesser-known contemporaries. And there’s a sure winner in the sextet La Galopomanie, written by Amédée de Beauplan in 1840 in response to the latest dancing craze – the gallop!