Sources ''L'Ange de Nisida
incorporated many of the manuscript pages from Adelaide
, an unfinished score that Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti was probably working on in 1834, from a libretto of unknown origin. This libretto contained elements from the 1790 Parisian play Les Amants malheureux, ou le comte de Comminges'' by François-Thomas-Marie de Baculard d'Arnaud. In his book
Donizetti and his Operas, musicologist
William Ashbrook states that the
Adelaide libretto has similarities to that of the Giovanni Pacini opera
Adelaide e Comingio, whose libretto was written by
Gaetano Rossi. Donizetti is believed to have taken the manuscript for
Adelaide to Paris in 1838. Because the subject matter of ''L'Ange
involved the mistress of a Neapolitan king, and may thus have caused difficulties with the Italian censors, Donizetti decided that the opera should be presented in France. Additionally, in September 1839, the French press had announced La Fiancée du Tyrol'', a translation of Donizetti's 1833 opera ''Il furioso all'isola di San Domingo
. In October 1839, he wrote to a friend in Naples: "La Fiancée du Tyrol
will be Il furioso
amplified, L' de Nisida
will be new." Donizetti began work on L'Ange
shortly thereafter; La Fiancée du Tyrol'' never materialized.
Composition Donizetti completed ''L'Ange de Nisida
on 27 December 1839, the date on the final page of the autograph score. He had been working on Le duc d'Albe, but postponed work on the half-completed score in favor of L'Ange
and La fille du régiment''. Although Donizetti noted in correspondence to his close friend Tommaso Persico in Naples that ''L'Ange'' was "an opera in three acts", both the autograph score and Donizetti's contract with Anténor Joly, the owner of the theater company Donizetti contracted, make clear that ''L'Ange'' had four acts. Regardless, Donizetti's letter has caused confusion among opera journalists and scholars. For example,
The Musical Times journalist
Winton Dean wrote of the Italian version of
La favorite in 1979: "[I]t was expanded from an unperformed three-act French opera, ''L'Ange de Nisida''." Ashbrook speculates that Donizetti may have considered the first two acts as one.
Contract and cancellation On 5 January 1840, Donizetti signed a rehearsal and performance contract with his librettists and Anténor Joly, who was operating a company named
Théâtre de la Renaissance and giving performances at the
Salle Ventadour in Paris. Théâtre de la Renaissance chose ''L'Ange'' over
Richard Wagner's
Das Liebesverbot. Joly's company had premiered the French version of Donizetti's
Lucia di Lammermoor the previous year, and ''L'Ange'' was meant to be its successor. The contract, which is on display at the
Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra National de Paris, stipulates that ''L'Ange
be performed uninterrupted twenty times unless three consecutive performances sold poorly, and that Joly could not premiere any other opera until the revenue from L'Ange'' started to decline. The contract contains nothing about Donizetti's compensation; therefore, it is possible that another contract existed. ''L'Ange
was set to begin rehearsal on 1 February 1840. Donizetti had two other operas in various stages of preparation at other theaters during this time: Les martyrs and La fille du régiment''. Later in January, Joly terminated all opera productions of the Théâtre de la Renaissance company due to financial hardship, despite a reported 5,000-franc loan from Donizetti. Joly tried to keep the operation afloat by staging ballets, but it closed completely in May 1840. He filed for bankruptcy and therefore avoided paying Donizetti the large fee owed for backing out of the production. Writing for the
Cambridge Opera Journal, Mark Everist referred to ''L'Ange'' as one of "the most spectacular casualties of the collapse of music drama at the Théâtre de la Renaissance".
Reworked as La favorite Donizetti managed to retrieve the score of ''L'Ange de Nisida'' from Joly's company and reworked it as
La favorite (now more commonly known by its Italian title,
La favorita) in September 1840 for a December premiere in Italy. To circumvent the Italian censors Donizetti agreed to plot modifications;
La favorite is about a medieval King of Castile. The presence and influence of ''L'Ange'' is evident in Donizetti's autograph score of
La favorite, which features "large chunks cut up and interleaved" in which new character names and text for
La favorite overwrite the old. The final page was used as the final page of
La favorite; therefore, both operas bear the same finish date on the last page. Donizetti's contract for
La favorite demanded a 1 December 1840 premiere, leaving him little time for dramatic changes. In his 1965 biography
Donizetti, Ashbrook surmises that this tight deadline gave rise to the legend that Donizetti actually composed the last act of
La favorite in a single night. In fact, the libretto of ''L'Ange
and the autograph score of La favorite
make clear that the final act of La favorite
was completed long before Donizetti began the rest of it in September—Donizetti lifted it from L'Ange
with the exception of two solo passages. He brought in librettist Eugène Scribe to oversee the new text, which also required the approval of starring mezzo-soprano Rosine Stoltz. The finished product was an amalgamation of the unfinished Adelaide
, the never-performed L'Ange de Nisida
, and new material worked into the score by Donizetti and into the libretto by Scribe. La favorite'' premiered on 2 December 1840. Ashbrook has compared the surviving autograph scores of ''L'Ange de Nisida
and La favorite
to determine precisely how much material it provided for the latter. While the events in L'Ange
are set in 1470 in Nisida and Naples, La favorite
is set in Santiago de Compostela and Castile, both in Spain, prior to 1350. Donizetti made fundamental changes to the first half of La favorite
and little remains of L'Ange''. The central conflict of the story involving the marriage and subsequent death is essentially the same from one opera to the other, and some of the character names are also similar or identical. A transcription of the libretto is kept at the Fondazione Donizetti library in
Bergamo, and was printed in a 2002 issue of the Italian-language journal for The Donizetti Society. ==2018 premiere==