Argentina Donizetti, Il Campanello: Soloists and Orchestra of the Superior Institute of Artwork of the Teatro Colón / César Bustamante (conductor). Teatro Coliseo, Buenos Aires. 29.6.2023. (JSJ)

Manufacturing:
Path – Mariana Ciolfi
Surroundings – Matías Otálora
Lighting – Fabricio Ballarati
Costumes – Stella Maris Müller
Refrain – Miguel Martínez

Solid:
Don Annibale di Pistacchio – Iván García
Enrico – Felipe Carelli
Serafina – Ana Sampedro
Spiridione – Pablo Truchljak
Rosa – Guadalupe Barrientos

In what was a ‘double Donizetti’ providing from the Teatro Colón, there couldn’t have been a extra hanging distinction than between the quick one act farsa Il Campanello and its camp manufacturing and the prolonged and darkish and tragic Anna Bolena of some days earlier than.

Il Campanello, which dates from 1836 and the latter a part of Donizetti’s compositions, is certainly one of two giocoso works from that yr (the opposite being Betly) interspersed between the various seria, with each remaining largely unknown at this time.

Its storyline, considerably harking back to Rossini’s Barber of Seville, takes place on the marriage day of the aged physician Annibale di Pistacchio together with his younger bride Serafina.

Her cousin and ex suitor Enrico turns up among the many friends on the celebration and hoping to win Serafina again, together with her aunt Rosa hatches a plan which includes him returning in the course of the night time in a sequence of various guises with more and more worse maladies – though to not see her however to maintain the physician away from the marital mattress till the morning when he is because of depart to Rome to acquire the bequest from his aunt’s will.

The manufacturing, a part of a ‘Divine Italy’ season in partnership with the Italian Embassy and the Italian Institute of Tradition in Buenos Aires, concerned youthful performers, aside from the skilled Venezuelan bass Iván García as Annibale and mezzo-soprano Guadalupe Barrientos because the aunt Rosa – each excellent of their respective roles.

However the star was Felipe Carelli – beforehand unknown to me (and no biography given within the quick programme) – who within the position of Enrico needed to tackle the completely different types of the completely different characters and his final duet with Annibale (‘Mio signore venerato’) was a patter quantity that was a feat of breath management.

The manufacturing was appropriately brilliant and vibrant with an enthusiastic refrain. Nevertheless it was flawed in two elements, the primary being the necessity for some nearly fixed type of motion with at instances the refrain bobbing within the background. However extra considerably, whereas the ending as written is fairly weak, for Annibale to be straightjacketed and led off whereas promising to see everybody on the return from his journey, forged a disappointment over what was in any other case an hour of light-hearted enjoyable.

Was the entire occasion a supposed fantasy? With no rationalization forthcoming within the programme, this was opposite if to not the spirit however to the phrases of the libretto.

Jonathan Spencer Jones