ProStudioMasters.com

"[This recording's] strengths lie in powerhouse performances from James Westman as Bonifacio and Massimo Giordano as Imelda's appalling brother Lamberto. Nicole Cabell's Imelda, though exquisite, seems disengaged in comparison. Mark Elder's conducting is wonderfully insistent, while the dark, period sound of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment adds immeasurably to the oppressive atmosphere of it all." - The Guardian Imelda de’ Lambertazzi immediately precedes Donizetti’s first masterpiece, Anna Bolena, and was written for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in the same year (1830). However, its fate was very different and scholars now take the view that the composer’s very concision in his setting of the Romeo and Juliet–like plot, in which Imelda loves Bonifacio, the son of the faction hated by her father Orlando and brother Lamberto, wrong-footed the Neapolitan public. The casting politics of Naples also played a role in the Imelda San Carlo reception and, after a brief stage history; the work unfortunately disappeared for well over a century. Now, with Opera Rara’s world premiere studio recording of this innovative work, a wider audience can experience one of Donizetti’s most thrilling and dynamic scores. The wonderful young soprano, Nicole Cabell (Cardiff Singer of the World, 2005), takes the title role, surrounded by an impressive cast with Mark Elder conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. The 2-disc set, which includes as an Appendix to the recording the aria finale written specifically for Luigia Boccabadati in 1831.