LA FAVORITA
THE FAVORITE
Opera in four acts, by Donizetti; words by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Waez, adapted from the drama "Le Comte de Comminges," of Baculard-Darnaud. Produced at the Grand Opéra, Paris, December 2, 1840. London, in English, 1843; in Italian, 1847. New York, Park Theatre, October 4, 1848.
Characters
| Alfonso XI., King of Castile | Baritone |
| Ferdinand, a young novice of the Monastery of St. James of Compostella; afterwards an officer | Tenor |
| Don Gaspar, the King's Minister | Tenor |
| Balthazar, Superior of the Monastery of St. James | Bass |
| Leonora di Gusmann | Soprano |
| Inez, her confidante | Soprano |
Courtiers, guards, monks, ladies of the court, attendants.
Time—About 1340.
Place—Castile, Spain.
Leonora, with Campanini as Fernando, was, for a number of seasons, one of the principal rôles of Annie Louise Cary at the Academy of Music. Mantelli as Leonora, Cremonini as Fernando, Ancona as King Alfonso, and Plançon as Balthazar, appeared, 1895-96, at the Metropolitan, where "La Favorita" was heard again in 1905; but the work never became a fixture, as it had been at the Academy of Music. The fact is that since then American audiences, the most spoiled in the world, have established an operatic convention as irrevocable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. In opera the hero must be a tenor, the heroine a true soprano. "La Favorita" fulfils the first requisite, but not the second. The heroine is a rôle for contralto, or mezzo-soprano. Yet the opera contains some of Donizetti's finest music, both solo and ensemble. Pity 'tis not heard more frequently.
There is in "La Favorita" a strong, dramatic scene at the end of the third act. As if to work up to this as gradually as possible, the opera opens quietly.
Ferdinand, a novice in the Monastery of St. James of Compostella, has chanced to see and has fallen in love with Leonora, the mistress of Alfonso, King of Castile. He neither knows her name, nor is he aware of her equivocal position. So deeply conceived is his passion, it causes him to renounce his novitiate and seek out its object.