Saverio Mercadante was a highly successful composer in his day. He studied at the Naples Conservatory, where he caught the eye of Rossini. In his long life he wrote nearly 60 operas, and he was still composing at the time of his death in 1870. From the point of view of posterity it was his misfortune, when he was emerging as the leading composer of opera in Italy, to be overtaken by Verdi. His preference was for serious subjects, although this recording from 2007 shows that he was also at home with lighter material.

Cervantes’s novel spawned a large number of operas, the best-known being Massenet’s Don Quichotte. However, Mercadante deals with the knight’s hopeless love for Dulcinea only in passing, instead focusing on the event previously treated by Mendelssohn in Die Hochzeit des Camacho. Bernardo wishes his daughter to marry the wealthy Camacho; but through the intervention of Don Quixote, Chiteria instead marries her beloved Basilio. Mercadante spent some years in Portugal and Spain: the opera was premiered in Cadiz in 1830.

There is some local colour – guitar strumming is evoked in Chiteria’s cavatina, in the chorus welcoming Quixote and in the finale – but the style is essentially Rossinian. The Overture includes a Rossini crescendo, and Sancho Panza’s cavatina is clearly indebted to Figaro’s ‘Largo al factotum’. There are well-turned buffo duets for Quixote and Sancho, and for Sancho and Basilio. And as well as writing gratefully for the voice, Mercadante has an ear for effective scoring. Chiteria’s ‘Ero felice’ is introduced by flute and clarinet in octaves before the oboe takes over; the oboe also complements a restless figure in the violins in Quixote’s ‘Perdon ti chiedo’.

In the Overture, the brass are overprominent and the violins rather scrawny, but Antonino Fogliani gets delightfully pointed playing from the woodwind. Ugo Guagliardo’s rich bass is ideal for Quixote’s dignified melancholy, and Laura Catrani follows her heartfelt accompanied recitative with a faultless cantabile and cabaletta. Domenico Colaianni and Hans Ever Mogollon are equally idiomatic. Applause is included, with some of it unfairly tepid. The Italian libretto is available online. This one’s well worth investigating.