Olivo e Pasquale

 

Donizetti Olivo e Pasquale opera to a libretto by Jacopo Ferretti. 1827 Neapolitan Version revised by Maria Chiara Bertieri for the Donizetti Foundation. Directed 2016 by Ugo Giacomazzi and Luigi Di Gangi of operAlchemica. Stars Bruno Taddia (Olivo), Filippo Morace (Pasquale), Laura Giordano (Isabella), Pietro Adaini (Camillo), Matteo Macchioni (Le Bross), Edoardo Milletti (Columella), Silvia Beltrami (Matilde), and Giovanni Romeo (Diego). Federico Maria Sardelli conducts the Orchestra dell'Accademia Teatro alla Scala and the Coro Donizetti Opera (Chorus Master Fabio Tartari). Set and costume design by Sara Sarzi Sartori, Daniela Bertuzzi, and Arianna Delgado; light design by Luigi Biondi. Directed for TV by Matteo Riccheti. Sung in Italian. Released 2017, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

According to Wikipedia, the Teatro alla Scala "has an associate school, known as the La Scala Theatre Academy (Italian: Accademia Teatro alla Scala), which offers professional training in music, dance, stage craft and stage management." This is the operation that worked with The Donizetti Foundation to write and produce a new and improved Olivo e Pasquale. I note the cast includes Laura Giordano, whom I several times called the most beautiful woman in opera to look at. Mark Pullinger, writing in the June 2017 Gramophone at pages 91-92, praises her singing stating, "Only sweet-toned Laura Giordano, as Isabella, puts in the sort of performance to stand up to repeated listening."

If my daughter saw this clip, she would call it a "hot mess":

OR