Product Description
This 2024 release on the {|Opera Rara|} label emphasizes the Rara part of the name, even if the music is only opera adjacent; {|Donizetti|}'s songs are very rarely performed, let alone recorded. Some of the songs here were dug out of archives in Naples and elsewhere and may well be receiving their world premieres. This, in itself, might be a reason to hear the album, but the better news is that it is actually a lot of fun. {|Donizetti|} wrote some 200 songs, and this release, featuring tenor {|Lawrence Brownlee|}, is billed as {|Volume 1|}; it is unclear whether he is going to cover more of the 200, which might be welcome. ({|Volume 2|} features baritone {|Nicola Alaimo|}.) The songs he has selected make a varied group and a convincing program. They are of various types: some have elaborate melodies that could have been short numbers from an opera, but there are also distinctively song-like pieces, romanzas, canzonettas, a cavatina, a barcaruola, a bolero, and, even way back then, a Neapolitan song, subtitled {|Amor marinaro|}. The melodies are all well crafted, and there is a level of humor in many of them; sample the closing kiss-off anthem, {|Non giova il sospirar|}. {|Brownlee|} strikes the right semi-popular note, avoiding operatic mannerism in what is really music of a different genre. More than a historical document, this is a release that can be enjoyed by anyone and should be of special interest to singers, who may want to try adding some of these numbers to their own repertories, at least if the songs are available in published form. ~ James Manheim
