L'ange de Nisida

Composer: Donizetti, Gaetano

Librettist/Text Author: Royer, Alphonse

Librettist/Text Author: Vaez, Gustave

Conductor: Tingaud, Jean-Luc

Orchestra: Donizetti Opera Orchestra

Chorus: Donizetti Opera Choir

Chorus Master: Tartari, Fabio

Don Fernand d'Aragon: Sempey, Florian

Don Gaspar: Lorenzi, Roberto

La comtesse Sylvia de Linares: Fridman, Lidia

Le Moine: Benetti, Federico

Leone de Casaldi: Kim, Konu

Set Designer: Sala, Angelo

Costume Designer: Baldoni, Margherita

Lighting Designer: Andreoli, Alessandro

Stage Director: Micheli, Francesco

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Date of Production: 11-2019

Venue: Cantiere del Teatro Donizetti, Bergamo

Playing Time: 02:55:32

Catalogue Number: 37848

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Gaetano Donizetti's L'Ange de Nisida was commissioned by the director of the Theatre de la Renaissance in Paris. The libretto was entrusted to Gustave Vaez and Alphonse Royer, and the opera en quatre parties was completed in 1840. Unfortunately the theatre went bankrupt and the opera never reached the stage. Donizetti was aware that other venues would have rejected his work as it stood, for both repertoire and censorship reasons (the plot revolved around the King of Naples, Ferdinando d'Aragona, and his mistress). Consequently, he revised the score and incorporated a significant portion of it within his new one, La favorite.

The autograph score of L'Ange was subsequently lost and it is only thanks to the painstaking research of musicologist Candida Mantica that it was brought to light again. She took on the huge challenge of classifying the roughly 470 randomly alternate pages of L'Ange de Nisida that had survived at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris; she re-established their original order and finally managed to reconstruct roughly 97 percent of Donizetti's music. The few gaps in the score were judged as irrelevant by both Mantica and Donizetti Opera, so that the opera was considered a complete work in itself, with no need for additions written by other composer.
? years after its composition, the opera was finally performed for the first time in its original theatrical form in Donizetti's native Bergamo, at the construction site of the city theatre bearing his name, a most symbolic coincidence that added emotional value to a long-awaited event.

The performance was hailed as a triumph by both the public and the critics and was awarded a special prize at the 39th Franco Abbiati Prize of Italian music critics.