Dear friends, I your lovely hostess have been knocked for a loop by spring allergies. (We had a freakishly warm winter here in New York, and the trees started blooming weeks ago.)

That said, I did manage to review Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at the Metropolitan Opera for The Classical Review. Elisir is a delightful and mercifully short opera. I sometimes wish that Verdi, Wagner, Mussorgsky, and others given to longueurs had emulated Donizetti’s restraint!

Did you know that a critical edition of the works of Donizetti is under way? L’elisir is not yet available but many other major works are.

Discuss amongst yourselves. I’ll be back at you soon!

Pierluigi Petrobelli, the president of the Istituto nazionale di studi verdiani, has died.

Petrobelli was a member of the editorial board of The Works of Giuseppe Verdi and an editor and member of the editorial board of the Edizione critica dell’epistolario verdiano.

In addition to Verdi, Petrobelli’s specialties included Tartini and Dallapiccola. His Music in the Theater: Essays on Verdi and Other Composers is a must-read book for all English-language Verdians.

His online vitae includes a list of his publications in PDF format.

Petrobelli was also named a Cavaliere di Verdi by the Club dei 27 of Parma.

Parma Today offers a more extensive obituary. Update: There is an article in Il corriere musicale, as well.

Giovacchino Antonio Rossini was born on 29 February 1792. If I calculated correctly, this means that tomorrow is his fifty-fourth birthday.

In 2010, I wrote a post about Verdi and Rossini that offers audio clips, including a French-language performance of the Guillaume Tell finale.

Over at Re-visioning Callas and in the blog archives, you can hear Maria Callas giving many unsurpassed performances of Rossini’s music.

Buon compleanno, Maestrissimo !

Late February is a period rich in anniversaries associated with Verdi.

Nowadays Francesco Maria Piave is remembered only as a librettist for Verdi. But he had one other great success in the operatic world: Crispino e la comare by Luigi and Federico Ricci, which had its world premiere on 28 February 1850 at the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice and took Europe (and Calcutta, and the Americas) by storm.

Luigi Ricci was brother-in-law to Teresa Stolz, the soprano who sang in the world premieres of the Manzoni Requiem, the revised Forza, and the revised Don Carlo, as well as the European premiere of Aida. He was a colorful character who lived with and had children by both of Stolz’s sisters, the twins Francesca and Ludmilla. Federico was Luigi’s younger brother.

Dame Joan Sutherland recorded an aria from Crispino, “Io non sono più l’Annetta,” in 1962.

Daniel Auber was born in 1782, making him some thirty years older than Verdi. The two socialized in Paris, and Verdi apparently liked and respected Auber a great deal.

Auber’s Gustave III had its world premiere on 27 February 1833 at the Opéra. Gustave III is the same subject that ultimately became Un ballo in maschera. (The Wikipedia article on Gustavo III offers details on the tribulations of that opera.)

Excerpts from Gustave III are available on YouTube. Today’s selection: the title character’s “Vieille sibylle, qu’on dit habile,” which is more or less parallel to Verdi’s “Di’ tu se fedele.”

Mirella Freni was born on 27 February 1935.

I love this woman so much that just writing about her makes me blubber. I had the pleasure of interviewing her around the time of her Met farewell, and she is a smart, gracious, and utterly endearing person, as one might expect.

Her Verdi rôles on stage and disc included Nanetta, Alice Ford, Desdemona, Aida, Violetta, Elvira (which she considered a mistake), Elisabetta, and Leonora (Forza).

Today’s selection is from the DG recording of Simon Boccanegra led by Claudio Abbado, to my mind the greatest of all Verdi sets. Freni sings “Come in quest’ora bruna.” (Read what Fabio Luisi, a Genovese, had to say about this music.)

Hear Mirella Freni in other music by Verdi.

“The voluntary servitude I consecrated to that just, most noble, and truly great man is the act of my life that gives me most satisfaction.”

So wrote Arrigo Boito of his work with Verdi. Boito was born on 24 February 1842, and he died in 1918.

Boito’s marvelous writings about Verdi are quoted in many of this blog’s posts. While most scholars agree that we “owe” to the immensely tactful and patient Boito Verdi’s last operatic masterpieces, Otello and Falstaff (plus the Boccanegra revision), Boito’s reputation as a librettist has been on a downswing for several decades.

Gabriele Baldini compared Boito with the once-maligned Francesco Maria Piave:

The meeting with Piave was far more important to Verdi’s artistic formation than the one with Boito… and the reason for this is quite simple: working with Piave was Verdi’s first opportunity to work with himself… [Piave’s] libretti are in fact those best suited to Verdi’s music—even from a literary point of view they are much finer, in the sense of being better finished, than Boito’s—simply because, in detail as well as in general shape, Verdi himself composed them. Furthermore, Piave was undoubtedly much more intelligent than Boito in artistic matters. Boito was an artist and a man of letters, but he never fully understood Verdi and so continually tried to bend him towards his own ideas. Piave, with profound critical insight, immediately appreciated the situation, and simply let libretti fall into Verdi’s lap…

The great William Weaver published an invaluable volume for all Verdians: The Verdi–Boito Correspondence. Among very recent books about Verdi, Verdi’s Shakespeare: Men of the Theater by Garry Wills considers the Verdi and Boito relationship in depth.

In honor of Boito’s birthday, here are words and music by him: “Ave, Signor!” from Mefistofele (1868, rev. 1881 and several other times). Ildebrando d’Arcangelo is the Dark Lord, and Riccardo Muti conducts this 2005 performance from Ravenna.

Incidentally, if you click through and watch the video on YouTube, you can have fun wading through the heart-rending laments by the passatisti. I mean, for Pete’s sake, I saw and heard Samuel Ramey in this rôle at New York City Opera, San Francisco, and the Met; and he was wonderful; and why on earth should this keep anyone from enjoying the admirable D’Arcangelo?

Renata Scotto, the prima donna assoluta of the Metropolitan Opera when I was a very young opera lover, turns 78 on 24 February.

Thanks to YouTube and other online resources, I have been able to revisit some of the many, many performances of hers that I witnessed. In the absence of Scotto’s spellbinding stage presence, some now fall short of the greatness that I recalled, especially given her sometimes curdled tone and mannered phrasing.

That said, the 1977 EMI set of Nabucco led by Riccardo Muti is one of my very favorite recordings of a Verdi opera, and this is due in large part to Scotto, who sings Abigaille’s death scene better than anyone—to my mind. (All of my Callas orfanelli are going to take offense at that statement.)

Listen to the exhaustion and abasement she conveys; the warmth that floods her tone at Vieni, costor s’amavano; the tearful hope at Solleva Iddio l’afflitto; that pianissimo; and, finally, the magic that she and Muti make with Abigaille’s very last phrases.

The Wikipedia article about Scotto is rich in links and information about her long career and many accomplishments.

I reviewed Rufus Wainwright’s opera Prima Donna for The Classical Review and also posted a bit about Rufus Wainwright and Verdi at Re-visioning Callas.

I have not yet seen the DVD whose cover image you see at left.

Though Wainwright is one of my favorite singer-songwriters, I did not have high expectations for Prima Donna. In the event, I enjoyed it more than I had expected to and was especially impressed by New York City Opera’s beautiful production and the superb performances by the cast.

In case you have not heard it, here is the opera’s final aria, “Les feux d’artifice t’appellent,” sung by the composer.

Giangiacomo Guelfi, the Roman baritone and pupil of Tita Ruffo, died on 8 February in Bolzano at the age of 87.

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum: though he is recalled fondly by those who favor sound and volume above all, Guelfi is in all honesty not my kind of singer. But his performance in “O prodi miei” from Nabucco is energetic and emphatic in a way that few singers today would venture.