Donizetti: L’ASSEDIO DI CALAIS (THE SIEGE OF CALAIS)

Libretto by Salvatore Cammarano (based on Luigi Marchionni’s play L’assedio di Calais)
Conducted by Gil Rose

Donizetti’s L’assedio di Calais (The Siege of Calais) focuses on the bleak wartime and tales of courage and self-sacrifice in Edward the III’s year-long Siege of Calais during the Hundred Years’ War. This rarely-heard Italian bel canto work has undeservedly been absent from the operatic stage but recent revivals have shown it to be a work of great beauty and poetry. Salvatore Cammarano wrote the Italian libretto, which has been described as “…a remarkable libretto, the closest Cammarano ever got to real poetry, particularly in his description of the embattled city and the heartfelt pride of its citizens”