"Santa voce al cuor mi suona" is the larghetto 'cantabile' to the duetto in the Act 3 Finale of Donizetti's opera 'Marino Faliero'. Margherita Roberti as Elena and Agostino Ferrin as Doge Marino Faliero sing with raw emotional conviction. The opera was an enormous success at the premiere in 1835 in Paris -- despite what Bellini and later writers would have us believe -- and is one of the composer's most important masterpieces. 'Marino Faliero' is a more experimental opera than the ravishing 'I Puritani', and it looks forward to the world of Verdi and verismo in its strikingly abrupt, nihilistic, spoken finale. The finales to 'Marino Faliero' and 'Maria di Rohan' contain all the DNA the Italian operatic tradition needed to produce the thunderous veristic catastrophe of 'Tosca'.
F. Buloz wrote in 'La Revue des Deux Mondes' (p 341) about the final (public) dress rehearsal on Wed., March 11th, 1835, the evening before the official premier, and attended by a particularly 'élégamment moderne' audience of subscribers:
"Vainly the season advanced, in vain the meadows began to green, and all the sounds of spring to awaken in the grass; Donizetti was there with his score that he brought us from Naples. Immediately Julie Grisi, Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini, these indefatigable artists, who were always ready to sing like birds on their nests, set to work again, so that at the end of a month we heard the most charming opera that had ever been written for us, and that the Théâtre Italien, dying to be soon reborn happily, throws us, like the swan, a fresh and melancholy farewell song. Now, if this habit of inviting subscribers to general rehearsals was, above all, an act of politeness, I would willingly take it for a skillful trickery of the directors; for it is evident that yesterday’s performance contributed miraculously to the noble success of 'Faliero'.
The second act is undoubtedly the best of the work. Ivanoff’s song, at the beginning, is of a happy melody, and bears the imprint of that sadness which the lagoons of Venice exhale like a vapor. Next comes Rubini’s cavatine, a charming composition whose andante delights you with a simple and touching and widely developed phrase on the cellos, and whose end delights you by its lively cabaletta, one of Donizetti’s most original. Until now we had regarded the execution of Niobe’s cavatina as such a marvel, that it seemed to us impossible for Rubini himself ever to go beyond the limits he had laid down. The aria in 'Faliero' gave him the opportunity of rising still higher, and from now on we shall abstain from any prevision for this astonishing man, for it would be madness to attempt to calculate the flight of such a prodigious organ. Rubini sang the andante with a deep feeling and adorable melancholy then, when all his tears had flowed, his hatred awoke, his anger burst out. Then he is tall, impetuous, terrible. This really is Faliero’s nephew, insulted in the honor of the Doge’s wife. It was thus that this blood, still warm under the skin of an old man, was to boil in a heart of twenty years. We knew that Rubini was today the greatest tragedian of our time, as he is the most divine singer; At the performance of 'Faliero', the public confirmed our judgment in the most striking manner. Rubini’s expression is always natural and profound. He does not make any gesture; his eyes do not roll in their orbit, his hands do not twist in frightful convulsions, and yet he does what no one else can do: he moves and delights, and the applause bursts in you long before your hands pass it on to him. Fernando is wounded to death, and comes to expire, as in the French play, under his uncle’s eyes. Only here, in place of M. Delavigne’s emphatic declamations, Donizetti has placed a simple and grandiose song, which Lablache seizes, and which he throws into the hall with all the power of his magnificent voice.
The third act belongs entirely to Giulia Grisi. The aria Helena sings after the condemnation of her husband, is happily invented, and Donizetti has forsaken his ordinary formulas. This andante, with a sorrowful and plaintive expression, entwined between two rapid and vehement phrases, is highly effective. Ms Grisi sings it with a deep feeling, an admirable dramatic expression, and this voice, which she mastered with so much art in the first act, during her duet with Rubini, gives all its vibrations to it, and moves you as much as she delighted you. During the whole of the last scene she has kept herself at the height of her most beautiful inspirations; it must be said that Lablache marvelously assisted her. After the fall of the curtain, all the voices of the hall called for Donizetti, and when he appeared, rang with bursts of applause, in which all the lodges took part, for this time they were deserved."
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Thumbnail: Marino Faliero taking leave of his wife, Angiolina. painting by John Rogers Herbert, 1838.
