Act II. In the castle of the _Marquise_. _Marie_ is learning to dance
the minuet and to sing classical airs. But in the midst of her singing she and _Sulpice_, whom the _Marquise_ also has brought to the castle, break out into the "Song of the Regiment" and stirring "rataplans." Their liveliness, however, is only temporary, for poor _Marie_ is to wed, at her aunt's command, a scion of the ducal house of Krakenthorp. The march of the grenadiers is heard. They come in, led by _Tonio_, who has been made a captain for valour. _Sulpice_ can now see no reason why _Marie_ should not marry him instead of the nobleman selected by her aunt. And, indeed, _Marie_ and _Tonio_ decide to elope. But the _Marquise_ confesses to the _Sergeant_, in order to win his aid in influencing _Marie_, that the girl really is her daughter, born out of wedlock. _Sulpice_ informs _Marie_, who now feels that she cannot go against her mother's wishes.
In the end, however, it is _Marie_ herself who saves the situation. The guests have assembled for the signing of the wedding contract, when _Marie_, before them all, sings fondly of her childhood with the regiment, and of her life as a vivandière, "Quando il destino, in mezzo a strage ria" (When I was left, by all abandoned).
The society people are scandalized. But the _Marquise_ is so touched that she leads _Tonio_ to _Marie_ and places the girl's hand in that of her lover. The opera ends with an ensemble, "Salute to France!"
LA FAVORITA
THE FAVORITE
Opera in four acts, by Donizetti; words by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Waez [Transcriber's Note: more commonly 'Vaëz'], 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" [Transcriber's Note: this is the Italian title] 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.