Nuova Era 6871/73	Italia CDC 94
Violetta	Janet Perry	Miwako Matsumoto
Teodora	Adelaisa Tabiadon	Maria Parazzini
Bravo	Dino Di Domenico	William Johns
Pisani	Sergio Bertocchi	Antonio Savastano
Foscari	Stefano Antonucci	Paolo Washington
Conductor	Bruno Aprea	Gabriele Ferro

There is little question that the ladies in the Nuova Era recording are superior to those in the earlier one on Italia. But there probably is not as much to choose between the male singers in these two recordings. Still, I would clearly give the nod to the principals in the more recent Nuova Era recording conducted by Aprea.

Like the three operas preceding it, Il bravo has an atmosphere of its own: the underlying tension of Il giuramento, the intimacy of Le due illustri rivali, the Gothic cruelty of Elena da Feltre, and finally, the Venetian grandeur of Il bravo. Actually, Il bravo shows the French influence more than any other Italian opera of the 1830s or 1840s. There are a grandiose procession and march, an enormous party, a huge arson scene foreshadowing that in Meyerbeer's Le prophète, a benediction, a curse, and assasinations. All that is lacking is a lengthy formal ballet and the obligatory two extra acts. There also is a nightwatchman's chorus which succeeds admirably in depicting Venice as a police state. Other major "French" touches are the extent to which the chorus plays a part in the action, rather than merely commenting on it, and the insertion of an aria for Violetta, not as a bridge passage, not between Foscari's cavatina and cabaletta in Act I as Donizetti might have done, but between the first and second halves of the cabaletta.

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