Caterina Cornaro DONIZETTI GAETANO

Description :

Caterina Cornaro was the last of Donizetti’s revised melodramas to debut during composer’s lifetime. From what we’ve been able to reconstruct, a host of anomalies regarding the work’s ontogeny come to light, including a sudden interruption in Donizetti’s work on the opera, which led to what would be, for the composer, an unusually drawn-out undertaking; a change in venues – from Vienna to Naples, over the course of six months; censorial interference that effectively sabotaged the production; and the fact that Donizetti himself did not preside over rehearsals for the only two performances of the opera during the 19th century. Given the opera’s beleaguered history, we opted to base the critical edition of Caterina Cornaro on Donizetti’s original score, which is to say, the composition that the author sent to production before any third parties meddled with it. Thus, the newly restored version of Gaetano Donizetti’s Caterina Cornaro is at long last available to performers and academics. It is surely one of the composer’s boldest works from his intense period of experimentation with the melodrama genre, which Donizetti further explored during the final phase of his career.