“Program, contents and research: Anna Bonitatibus.” The credit at the front of the Italian mezzo’s latest album gives a clue as to what we’ll find within. Not the singer’s usual recital program, but a labour of love that requires the artist to turn detective, scholar, archivist and biographer as well as performer. 

The result isn’t for the casual listener, nor even – you could argue – really a recital at all. It’s much more: the beginning of a comprehensive audio archive of Rossini’s “fogli d’album” – the occasional works that span a lifetime and together tell a vivid story of patrons, friends, pupils, celebrations and stylistic evolution, most previously unrecorded.  

These are musical miniatures – in many cases it’ll take longer to read the detailed program notes than listen to the songs (one is a mere four bars) and to piano works deftly performed by Adele D’Aronzo. But they reveal obsessions and curiosities galore: no fewer than ten different settings of Metastasio’s Mi lagnerò tacendo, a “genre in its own right”, as Bonitatibus writes; different versions of the same melody in rival settings of Infelice ch’io son; alternatives to extant operatic episodes like the two revisits to Ermione’s Un’empia mel rapi.

Inevitably the more substantial works give the artists more to get their teeth into. Among the many premieres is lyrical 1843 ballad L’Esule, which sees Bonitatibus shade down to a breathy whisper, misty above D’Aronzo’s rolling arpeggios. And of the previously recorded works it’s the limpid Preghiera nuova, brimming with emotion, and dramatic scena La seperazione that show off the intelligence of both performers. 

Bonitatibus is surefooted in this repertoire, agile without sacrificing body of tone, capturing the fleeting breezes of irony, flirtation, sadness and delight that animate this musical marginalia.

Listen on Apple Music

Composer: Rossini
Works: La Passeggiata, Preghiera Nuova, La seperazione
Performers: Anna Bonitatibus ms, Adele D’Aronzo p
Label: Prospero PROSP0145