Marino Faliero (opera)

Marino Faliero (or Marin Faliero) is a tragedia lirica, or tragic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Giovanni Emanuele Bidéra wrote the Italian libretto, with revisions by Agostino Ruffini, after Casimir Delavigne's play. It is inspired by Lord Byron's drama Marino Faliero (1820) and based on the life of Marino Faliero (c.1285-1355), the Venetian Doge.

Rossini had influenced the management of the Théâtre-Italien to commission works by the outstanding Italian composers of the day—Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini. Both wrote operas for that house in Paris, Bellini's contribution being the hugely-successful I puritani. Donizetti's opera, which premiered on 12 March 1835 (a few months after I puritani) was not nearly as much of a success. However, it marked Donizetti's first opera to have its premiere in Paris.

Marino Faliero suffers from the critical cliché that it wasn't a success in its Paris début run. The other accepted 'problems' are: the soprano lacks primacy and an aria di sortita, the score is mediocre Donizetti, and its eventual historical eclipse proves its lack of intrinsic merit. Perhaps too many critics like Donizetti in a box, as if all his operas must operate in the same way, as if all must compete with Lucia. Marino stresses a baritone, as does later Verdi. Donizetti creates four characters in dramatic equilibrium, as in the plot of Il Trovatore; curiously, writers have accorded Leonora---despite lacking Lucia-like preeminence---an acceptance denied Elena. Marino presented Paris with a score very different from I puritani; these different responses need not be taken as measures of the respective scores' worth as such. While I puritani intoxicates the ear with tonal bouquets, Donizetti's opera is the more difficult work in the best sense, a direct progenitor of Verdi and later opera. One remembers that Violetta's Amami, Alfredo is directly quoted from the opening of Donizetti's Pia de' Tolomei.

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