La Grange-Brignoli Italian Opera: Lucrezia Borgia

Event Information

Venue(s):
Pike's Opera House

Manager / Director:
Max Strakosch

Conductor(s):
Giuseppe Nicolao [cond.]

Event Type:
Opera

Record Information

Status:
Published

Last Updated:
29 August 2018

Performance Date(s) and Time(s)

17 Jan 1868, 8:00 PM

Performers and/or Works Performed

1)
aka Lucretia Borgia
Composer(s): Donizetti
Text Author: Romani
Participants:  La Grange-Brignoli Italian Opera Company;  Domenico Coletti (role: Guibetta);  Bernardo Massimiliani (role: Gennaro);  Adelaide Phillips (role: Orsini);  Domenico Orlandini (role: Duke Alfonso);  Anna de La Grange (role: Lucretia Bogria)

Citations

1)
: Boston Daily Evening Transcript, 01 January 1862.

“Pike’s Opera House.—Donizetti's opera of ‘Lucrezia Borgia,’ was given here last night to a good audience. It is a work which interests not only by its music, but by its strong dramatic situations. Mme. La Grange interprets the rôle of the heroine with a thorough perception of its beauties and terrors. She sings the music with the skill of an artiste, and she acts the character powerfully. The support which she received last night was not quite equal to the occasion. Signor Massimiliani was laboring under a severe cold, and with difficulty got through the romanza of the first act. The same difficulty prevailed with the other members of the company, excepting Miss Adelaide Phillips, who fortunately escaped the epidemic. It is the misfortune of this opera to have many small parts that are important, and when they are badly rendered the ensemble is destroyed. This was, to some extent, the case last night, but many of the principal members were nonetheless encored. It is unnecessary to add more.”  

2)
Advertisement: New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung und Herold, 16 January 1868, 6.
3)
Advertisement: New York Herald, 17 January 1868.
4)
Advertisement: New-York Times, 17 January 1868, 7.
5)
Review: New York Herald, 18 January 1868, 8.

“Pike’s Opera House.—‘Lucretia Borgia,’ that dark, dismal and terrible story of the Borgias, was the bill at this house last evening, and with La Grange as Lucretia, Miss Phillips as Orsini, Massimiliani as Gennaro, Orlandini as the Duke and Coletti as Gabetta, it was presented with a powerful team. The severe exactions upon the voice required in the rôle of Lucretia are, perhaps, as fully adapted to test the capacity and strength of the party attempting it as any part in any other living opera, and this test La Grange survived, even in her death, with the flying colors of a conqueror. She is a great singer, a great artist, and is now in the full meridian of her glory. Massimiliani as Gennaro was good, very good; Orlandini as the Duke was majestic, and Coletti as Gubetta showed that he is equal to something larger. Of late years, with every appearance of this famous singer, we are reminded of what Carlyle, that queer compound of the Roundhead and the Royalist, has said of him:--‘And this Coletti, a man of good presence, and seemingly for better things cut out; to see this man, Coletti, in his gewgaws of the playhouse, and to see him in these mummeries of fiddlesticks, straining his lungs in windy rubbish, ‘twas melancholy. What music and what harmony enduring would be Coletti’s royal lungs tuned to the Psalms of David, chanting the praises of the Lord, instead of Belzebubbian delusions.’ We are not sure that these are the words of Carlyle, but they give the gist of his ideas of Coletti. What then must be the merits of this troupe, if such are the views of the great critic, Carlyle, of the singing of Coletti—a choice man, but only one of the shining planets revolving around La Grange? Next to her, Miss Phillips, a perfectly fascinating Orsini, bore off, in the brindisi, the honors of the night. What a figure for a sculptor have we here! And by her side, as a model of beauty, what a lank and skimpy specimen is the Greek Slave. And with what abandon she sings this drinking chorus. No wonder it brought down the house.”