Giovanni Pacini - IL CONTESTABILE DI CHESTER - Act I finale

IL CONTESTABILE DI CHESTER OVVERO I FIDANZATI • Melodramma romantico in 3 acts • Composer: Giovanni Pacini • Libretto: Domenico Gilardoni, after Sir Walter Scott’s The Betrothed (1825) • First performed: Naples (Teatro San Carlo), 23 November 1829 Il Contestabile di Chester takes place in 1187 at the Castle of the Mountain. Damiano loves Evelina, but his father Ugo di Lacy, the Constable of Chester, reveals that Evelina’s dying father promised her hand to him. Evelina is bound by duty. Damiano is devastated, and Ugo is suddenly summoned away by King Richard the Lionheart. Alexander Weatherson describes the opera as “a remarkably lively score, full of bouncing rhythms, special effects, surprising interventions and so much invention and innovation that the audiences were deposited outside in a state of exhaustion”. Paventa Insano: Pacini and Mercadante Arias and Ensembles (ORR236), Opera Rara, 2005 Annick Massis Majella Cullagh Alan Opie