Gaetano Donizetti’s “L’Ange de Nisida” and ‘opéra de genre’ in mid-nineteenth-century Paris
- Submitting institution
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University of Southampton
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 67093731
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
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- Brief description of type
- University of Southampton
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Donizetti’s L’ange de Nisida is one of the composer’s first works for Paris, composed before La fille du régiment, La favorite, Dom Sébastien and Les martyrs. It remained largely unknown because of the fragmentary and scattered state of its sources and because large parts were cannibalised and used for La favorite when the theatre for which L’ange de Nisida was conceived – the Théâtre de la Renaissance – went bankrupt. This research project reassembles the surviving material for the opera, creates an edition, and documents its recreation as well as the work’s implications for Donizetti’s Parisian career, and the status of musical genre in the city’s theatrical culture, in three scholarly articles. Reconstructing L’ange de Nisida required the careful sifting of several manuscript versions of the libretto in the Archives Nationales in Paris, and then matching the scattered musical remains, some in sketch form, some in short score, others fully orchestrated, and yet further ones recovered from the autograph of La favorite, to the reconstruction of the libretto. This resulted in the performance edition (included in the submission) which was premiered at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in June 2018, and given a fully-theatrical production in Bergamo at the Donizetti Opera Festival in 2019. The submission also includes three articles: a consideration of the thorniest editorial problem, namely the lack of sources for the soprano’s aria in the third act (‘Chantons l’ange de Nisida!’); a formal account of the process of reconstruction (‘Ricostruire L’ange de Nisida’); and a study of the work with reference to the emergence of opéra de genre in Paris c1840 (‘Gaetano Donizetti’s L’ange de Nisida and opéra de genre in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Paris’).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- Yes
- English abstract
- This article sheds light onto Donizetti’s creative process for L’ange de Nisida. The genesis of L’ange de Nisida, underpins a detailed description of the opera’s sources. The closing section retraces the different phases of the opera’s creative process, characterised by a close collaboration between Donizetti and his librettists. Donizetti los final section for his 1839 operam L'ange de Nisida is discussed. Based on a thorough examination of its extant sources, this article addresses several, interconnected elements that can offer clues to a reconstruction of Donizetti’s intentions for Sylvia’s aria.