Composer: Ferdinando Paër
Performer: Eloeonora Bellocci, Paolo Fanale, Renato Girloami, Marie Lys, Luigi De Donato, Carlo Allemano, Krešimir Špicer
Orchestra: Innsbrucker Festwochenorchester
Conductor: Alessandro De Marchi
Number of Discs: 2
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: CPO
Catalogue: 555411-2
Release: 2021
Size: 879 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Leonora (Live)
CD 01
01. Overtura
02. Fedele mio diletto
03. Ma se Fedele non ritorna
04. Mia cara!
05. Bisogna che alla schieta
06. Que vuol dire?
07. Ma lasciatemi dire
08. O cielo!
09. Mio povero Fedele
10. Tre sentinelle
11. Quai pensieri
12. Esecrabil Pizzaro
13. I tuoi gemiti
14. Si tendi del crudele
15. Fiero aquilon furente
16. Mio padre or parla
17. Corri, corri da qualche astrologo
18. Ed io debbo soffrire
19. Morto?
20. Vedete quanto zelo
21. Signor mio
22. Vi trovo a tempo
CD 02
01. Ciel! Che profonda oscurità tiranna!
02. Dolce oggetto del mio amore
03. Oh giustizia
04. Come fa freddo
05. Da bravo, via lesto!
06. Ei si risveglia
07. Deh per pietade
08. Ah, mio malgrado
09. Che l’eterna provvidenza
10. Tutto è all’ordine
11. È all’ordine ogni cosa?
12. Fermate!
13. Ed io potei lasciarmi
14. Fedele!
15. Volentieri, volentieri o mio carino
16. E che quella ragazza
17. Momento barbaro!
18. Signore, eccoli là
19. Voi donna impareggiabile
20. Così oltraggiare osaste
In 2020, in a fitting contribution to the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, the Innsbruck Early Music Festival presented a concert performance of the opera Leonora by his contemporary Ferdinando Paër. With this program selection the conductor Alessandro De Marchi rescued from oblivion the counterpart of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio and its model.
The enterprising and successful composer Paër comes from the tradition of the Italian opera and finds his place at the beginning of the bel canto opera. Spirited recitatives, extended arias, cabalettas, and marvelously mellow duets occur in sequence in his works, including his opera Leonora, premiered in 1804. During the Napoleonic Wars what he presented here was a heroic liberation opera of French stamp. The action corresponds to the spirit of the times, and the faithful wife displays heroism in her rescue of her unjustly imprisoned husband from a self-complacent tyrant’s dungeon. Dark political intrigues are denounced, and honesty, uprightness, and pure love are glorified.
Paër’s musical setting of Fidelio’s heroic story differs from Beethoven’s only opera in many respects. First and foremost because the libretto is in Italian, a language that has very different effects on the melodic, rhythmic, and rhetorical flow of the music and its expressive character. Then there is also the fact that Paër composed considerably more coloraturas for the principal singers than Beethoven did. Here an Italian opera composer of the high Neapolitan school clearly continuing to point back to Hasse and Porpora makes his voice heard.