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Opera on 3

Music: Classical: Opera

Programme presenting rare and fascinating operatic performances

Programme presenting rare and fascinating performances and vividly communicating the immediacy of the live experience

Opera on 3: Donizetti's Les Martyrs

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Music: Classical

Donizetti's Les Martyrs

15/11/2014

BBC Radio 3 - Opera on 3, Donizetti's Les Martyrs

Donizetti's Les Martyrs, revived at the Royal Festival Hall by Opera Rara and Mark Elder.

A performance of Donizetti's rarely heard opera Les Martyrs, given at the Royal Festival Hall by Opera Rara and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Donizetti's unjustly neglected Les Martyrs, revived at the Royal Festival Hall by Opera Rara and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducted by Mark Elder.

Presented by Ivan Hewett and Simon Rees.

Polyeucte.....Michael Spyres (tenor)
Pauline.....Joyce El-Khoury (soprano)
Sévère..... David Kempster (baritone)
Félix.....Brindley Sherratt (bass)
Calisthènes.....Clive Bayley (bass-baritone)
Néarque..... Wynne Evans (tenor)
Opera Rara Chorus
Renato Balsadonna (chorus director)
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Sir Mark Elder (conductor)

Les Martyrs was Donizetti's first grand opera for Paris. It was based on his Italian work, Poliuto, written for Naples but banned there because of its religious content.
Donizetti, well aware his new Paris opera was an important international debut, went to enormous pains to adapt Les Martyrs for the French stage, adding an elaborate new overture, the obligatory ballet score, and - most importantly - several complex and musically innovative ensemble scenes. The end result is one of the composer's most challenging and musically varied scores, with a level of orchestral and harmonic detail not found in his more popular Italian operas.
Les Martyrs soon disappeared from the Paris Opéra's repertory, although it had some circulation in an Italian version in the mid 19th century. Since then, however, it has very rarely been heard.
In this revival by Opera Rara Les Martyrs is performed on period instruments by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and with singers adept at the particular demands of French grand opera at this period. Sir Mark Elder conducts, restoring to life one of Donizetti's most remarkable and most unjustly neglected late operas.

Recorded 4th November 2014.

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