Recording of the Week, Signor Gaetano from Javier Camarena and Gli Originali

In my other capacity as an Open University tutor, one of my more pleasurable duties is to introduce newcomers to the sheer joy of opera, and for the past few years one particular YouTube clip has served me especially well: the footage of Mexican tenor Javier Camarena despatching Donizetti’s assault-course of high Cs with irresistible exuberance in a performance of La fille du régiment at the Metropolitan Opera, then doubling down on the feat by adding in a couple more when his ecstatic audience clamour for an encore.

Those eager to hear Camarena in that aria on disc will have to bide their time a little: as the title suggests, his new album Signor Gaetano (out today on Pentatone) focuses squarely on Donizetti’s Italian operas, though a sequel exploring the composer’s French-language works is already in the pipeline…The programme’s an astute mix of favourites and rarities, and the opening track sits squarely in the latter camp: like La fille du régiment, the 1836 dramma giocosa Betly involves military hijinks in the Swiss Tyrol, though the plot also harks back to that of L’elisir d’amore.

With his sweet, warm timbre (rounder and less astringent than that of his slightly older contemporary Juan Diego Flórez) and endearing stage-presence, Camarena is ideal casting for Donizetti’s wide-eyed comic heroes and here he excels as the gullible young landowner Daniele, a-quiver with excitement at receiving what he believes is a love-letter from the object of his affection. In deference to the Swiss setting, the aria opens with an unaccompanied, high-lying faux-yodel figure which bears a strong resemblance to the cor anglais melody from Rossini’s Guillaume Tell Overture, and Camarena navigates the wide intervals and trills with the same easy aplomb which brought the Met audience to its knees in that Fille performance.

Next up is the best-known Donizetti aria of them all, ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ from L’elisir d’amore, which Camarena must have sung hundreds of times over the course of his twenty-year career (Nemorino was the first complete role he ever learned). It comes up fresh as a daisy here, thanks to his thoughtful but spontaneous way with the text and the additional plangency supplied by the principal bassoonist of Gli Originali – this is the first time I’ve heard this aria performed with period instruments, and what a difference it makes. (In a video-call last week, Camarena beamingly informed me that singing it at this ever-so-slightly lower pitch felt ‘like being wrapped in silk!’).

It's quite a sea-change from Nemorino’s simple eloquence to the darker and stormier utterances of Enrico in Maria de Rudenz, a man in the grip of a near-pathological obsession with a love-rival whom he believes to be his brother. One of the great pleasures of this programme is its commitment to showcasing Donizetti’s evolution as a musical dramatist, and here (as in the excerpts from Caterina Cornaro, Roberto Devereux and Marin Faliero which follow) one sees him paving the way for works like Verdi’s La forza del destino and I due Foscari in terms of both orchestration and vocal writing.

And Camarena seizes the gauntlet with gusto: having always associated him with lightweight comic roles, it was a thrilling shock to my system to hear him unsheath the vocal steel that lurks within the velvet here, especially once the high Cs, Ds and even E flats start flying.

These weightier scenes are offset by an extraordinary little aria from the one-act farce Il giovedì grasso, which Camarena describes as second cousin to works like Rossini’s La scala di seta and La cambiale di matrimonio; frothy and fun, it’s full of the sort of rapid-fire patter which Donizetti and Rossini usually assign to buffo baritones, with a few bare-knuckle top Cs thrown in for good measure.

The punchy, pungent playing of Gli Originali under Riccardo Frizza’s dynamic direction is a constant pleasure - Frizza founded the ensemble in Bergamo a few years ago with the express purpose of exploring Donizetti’s lesser-known works, and the players’ deep immersion in this repertoire is evident in every phrase. All in all, a gloriously sung and played album which showcases the versatility of both singer and composer - roll on the Francophone sequel…