Micaele Sparacino General Director and Conductor

Why create a new edition of La Favorita?

By Micaele Sparacino

It may seem a lot of trouble to revise the score of an opera first performed 160 years ago, but the trouble is worth taking. Our objective was to present La Favorita as Donizetti would have wanted to see it debut in Italy all those years ago.

The Italian version of Donizetti's French opera La Favorite undeniably has had a flawed text since it was corrupted by 19th century Italian censors. Objecting to the depiction of a Roman Catholic seminarian in an illicit love affair, the censors introduced serious inconsistencies that mar the story line. Yet this disfigured Italian adaptation has been traditionally presented in the opera houses of Europe and America for more than a century.

The new critical edition we have prepared in cooperation with the Donizetti Foundation of Bergamo, Italy, adopts the story line of the original French opera.

In addition, this edition features major musical restorations, including an aria, a duet, and the original Italian finale, which was presumed lost.

Donizetti, like Rossini, Verdi and all of the major opera composers of their time expected their operas, when they crossed national borders, to be performed in the language of the audience. A French opera making its way into Italy would most assuredly be performed in Italian. Although Paris, in Donizetti's day, had the Theatre Italien, in which works like Marin Faliero or Bellini's I Puritani could be produced in Italian, he prepared many of his own Italian scores in French versions — for instance, Lucie de Lammermoor, Gemma de Vergy and Les Martyrs.

As for his operas originated in French, such as La Fille du Regiment and La Favorite, he would never have been expected them to play in French when they opened in Italy.

These "crossover operas" that cross national boundaries sometimes differ musically and dramatically as well as in language. Les Martyrs is a perfect example. It diverges in many places from the original Italian version, Poliuto. Yet, because the publisher was unwilling to print two separate versions, we have had to live with an Italian translation of Les Martyrs billed as Poliuto for more than a century. Compare Les Martyrs to the new critical edition of Poliuto, which I presented in its American premiere, and you will see that we have two different operas.

Likewise, the La Favorita of Donizetti's time was not a quick translation of La Favorite. But the Favorita we have used for more than a century and a half is a butchered version of La Favorite. (For more about the mixed ancestry of La Favorita, see Prof. William Ashbrook's article on our website.)

Donizetti made extensive musical revisions for the Italian version that were never entered into the scores published by Ricordi and have sat dormant on the shelves for 150 years. Casa Ricordi merely superimposed a censored Italian translation by Signors Jannetti and Bassi onto La Favorite, excised Donizetti's musical revisions and cut the maestro's new finale entirely, leaving the opera to end most abruptly at Leonora's death, with Fernando shrieking: "e spenta!" (She has died) — a most inept truncation.

The authentic Italian version had several major musical differences from the French original: The role of Leonore in La Favorite is meant for contralto or Falcon (a voice of extraordinary range, capable of singing both soprano and contralto roles), but La Favorita's Leonora is written for soprano and has an entirely new and different cabaletta, with soaring ascending scales, to follow the aria, "O Mio Fernando." There is a second duet for Alfonso and Leonora and an extended and entirely new finale for the opera. These differences alone are enough to merit a critical revision of La Favorita.

At the same time, our new edition repairs the theatrical damage done by the Italian censors.

The story of a young Roman Catholic novice (seminarian) having an affair with the mistress of the King of Spain surely titillated and entertained Parisian audiences of that day. Yet it would have horrified Italian audiences and would not have been permitted by their censors, who deplored any illicit depiction of the Church. (For more about the story line, see Prof. Ashbrook's synopsis.)

For today's audiences, the French original is preferable theatrically, but I have not simply translated and inserted its libretto into La Favorita.

It is true that the Jannetti/Bassi translation contains many silly changes in the story mandated by the Italian censors at the time, but as an Italian-American, I find much to admire in most of their lyrics. At this late date, it would seem absurd to me to impose new words on an aria known and loved all around the world such as "Spirto Gentil." Can you imagine a tenor intoning "La donna e mobile" to the text of "Capricciosa femina" or a soprano singing 'Vissi D'Arte" to the words "Per l'arte vivo, vivo per l'amore"? It would be a rude jolt to anyone who ever knew the aria.

What the libretto needed was not a new translation but a subtle "tweaking" to bring the story in line with the original. For instance, we change the pilgrims in the first chorus back to the monks of the monastery of St. James simply by switching the word "compagni" (companions) to "fratelli" (brothers). When Baldassare enters with his "daughter" (figlia), we insert "la regina" (the queen), and so on.

With these tweaks, we are back to the original story of the Parisian premiere but with an Italian text and the major arias intact, with the Italian lyrics we know. This will prove a major help to singers the world over who do these roles.

At these performances you will not be hearing La Favorite! You will, however, hear La Favorita for the first time ever in the 21st century — or the 20th!

See also Prof. William Ashbrook's articles on the ancestry of La Favorita and his synopsis of the plot.