Mercadante: Il Proscritto (1842)

[Alan Howe]

...forthcoming from Opera Rara:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/il-proscritto/hnum/11173879
...featuring that great tenor, Ramon Vargas.

More here:
https://opera-rara.com/donor-portal-il-proscritto

All I can say is 'yummy!' It's going to be properly sung!!

[Mark Thomas]

I'm very much looking forward to this release as I attended a concert performance at London's Barbican in June last year of Il Proscritto, staged by Opera Rara straight after they'd completed recording the work and with the same performers of course. The performance itself was electric and very enthusiastically received, with soloists of a uniformly high standard. As for the music itself, it was well up to the standard of the best of Mercadante's works that we already know. Act II, with an energetic, angry duet for the two tenors and a terrifically exciting finale, was the absolute winner. After that the short third act, in which the heroine resolves her conflicted loyalties by committing suicide, was a chorus-free and a rather downbeat end, which certainly disappointed some people around me, but that's a measure of the impact of the previous act, I suppose. Here's a review from Opera Today which gives a very fair assessment. By the way, for anyone living within striking distance of London, these Opera Rara concert performances are really excellent and, by today's standards, modestly priced; my balcony front row seat was only £42 - no wonder the place was around 80% full.

[BerlinExpat]

A real pity, again, though, about the  presentation. At first I thought that it was an advert for the SNP! It's not exactly encouraging for anyone who doesn't know what it's about.