Opera Rara is a label long devoted to the exposure of rare and obscure operas, mostly from the Baroque through Romantic periods. Try this one on for size -- Ferdinando Paër's Sofonisba, an opera of 1805 vintage written during Paër's employ as Kapellmeister to the Saxon court of Elector Frederick Augustus II, soon to fall to Napoleon's intrigues. Sofonisba was used to open the Teatro del Corso in Bologna, and presumably has not been heard again until this recording was made in 2005.
Sofonisba is the tale of the third century B.C. Carthaginian princess who, captured during the Second Punic War, decided to opt for poison rather than to be paraded through the streets of Rome. Keeping to form, that's not exactly what happens at the end of Paër's opera, set to a libretto written by a lawyer named Domenico Rosetti, who in turn knocked it off from a 70-year-old Zanetti text already set by several composers. The title role is performed by
Jennifer Larmore, who is in fine form here, along with
Paul Nilon who serves as her foil in the role of Siface (i.e., Syphax, if you know your Porphyry.) This recording of Sofonisba is condensed, and perhaps mercifully so, as the courtly conventions of the late classical period can really slow an opera down, although Rosetti's libretto is fairly well planned and does provide some plausible dramatic moments. There is only one disc, but the judicious process of pruning seems to have yielded the fruit, rather than the rind. What one gets with the Opera Rara set of Sofonisba is a lot, as the sizeable box also contains a huge booklet and a catalog of prior releases.
Stylistically, Sofonisba sounds close to
Mozart, although it is not as immediate, nor are Paër's tunes as memorable. Nonetheless, it is a very good classical opera, and is kept moving by Paër's variable, and at times almost kaleidoscopic, orchestration, not to mention excellent singing by the principals. Even with that, the listener should take a break somewhere between tracks 10 and 16 just so that Paër's Sofonisba continues to sound fresh.