A contemporary of Rossini and Donizetti, Saverio Mercadante was one of Italy’s most productive 19th century operatic composers. Don Chisciotte alle nozze di Gamaccio was written during the composer’s stay in Spain, and is based on a chapter of Cervante’s Don Quixote in which the hero prevents the forced marriage of a poor farm girl to the wealthy Camacho. Magnificently entertaining and dramatically innovative, Don Chisciotte combines fashionable Neapolitan style with Spanish folk music elements in an unforgettable melodramma giocoso. It is heard on this recording in its first modern performance.
There is some local colour...but the style is essentially Rossinian...And as well as writing gratefully for the voice, Mercadante has an ear for effective scoring...Fogliani gets delightfully pointed playing from the woodwind. Ugo Guagliardo's rich bass is ideal for Quixote's dignified melancholy
This youthful cast - all Italian (with the exception of an Argentine baritone and a Colombian tenor) - goes at the piece with a good deal of verve, but the voices (except for tenor Hans Ever Mogollon's youthfully eager, bright-voiced Basilio) are uniformly undistinguished.
Ugo Guagliardo possesses an agile, well-tuned bass of no distinction and soprano Laura Catalani has quite a big, blowsy sound with something of an edge and a good facility in coloratura...[Fogliani] conducts very well, with sensitivity and variety.
Composers Mercadante, Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele (1795-1870) Works Mercadante: Don Chisciotte all nozze di Gamaccio
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