This is a collection of short songs, all but six of which appeared between 1833-44 in a Neapolitan literary, theatrical, and musical journal called Il Sibilo (The Whisper). For the most part they were composed for non-professional singers and were meant for the general public to enjoy and perform at home. Therefore, by definition they tend not to be vocally challenging; also by definition, they are catchy and easy to take. Three are duets, one is a quartet, all are charming, none is overwhelming.
The subject of the songs is unrequited love, whose theme is treated in a variety of ways, among the more notable: a delicious third person narrative, with music by Pacini, about a disdainful girl who didn’t return a knight’s love so he “burned himself up like a torch”; an appeal to good Christians to open their doors to pilgrims (also by Pacini); the plight of a fortune-telling gypsy, with music by Luigi Cammerano, brother of the librettist of Lucia di Lammermoor and Il trovatore; a one-minute ditty wherein the singer acknowledges the ways of his heart (by Girolamo Crescentini, a famous castrato); and a curse by a girl to her faithless boyfriend that he choke on the first bite of food he next eats (by Luigi Ricci). Taken a handful at a time, these are a real treat, albeit of the hors d’oeuvres variety.
The performances are mostly quite good: Nuccia Focile, in fine voice, takes her tasks very seriously and turns each of her songs into a little drama, nicely varying her manner and sound. Donata d’Annunzio Lombardi’s tone is young and shiny–a bit too shiny, in fact–but she’s a sensitive singer with a nice trill. Ildebrando d’Arcangelo, with the least to do, adds a welcome dark sound to the mix. Only tenor Paul Charles Clarke is uniformly too noisy for his music; he sounds like an Irish tenor pushing for the lead in Cavalleria Rusticana. Pianist David Harper’s accompaniments are ideal, as is the recording, which has a nice, living-room-close (but not too close) ambience to it. The notes, texts, and translations Opera Rara includes should stand as an object lesson to other labels.
