Il Crociato in Egitto - Naxos Music Library

As I am of the opinion that Der Freischütz is the first modern
German music, so Il Crociato in Egitto is the first of the modern Italian:
or rather I would correct myself and say, that of all living composers,
Meyerbeer is the one who most happily combines the easy, flowing and
expressive melodies of Italy, with the severer beauties, the grander
accompaniments of the German school.
While Il Crociato marked a transition from Rossini to middle-period
Romanticism, it still retained elements of the older, Classical school.
Meyerbeer reverted, surprisingly, to keyboard-accompanied recitative. More
importantly, it was the last major opera in which the principal role would be
written for a castrato, indeed for the last of the great castrati, Giovanni Battista
Velluti, for whom Rossini, 11 years earlier, had written Aureliano in Palmira.
Roles specifically written for the castrato voice were very soon taken over by
men sopranos, but the actual writing – that is for a male rather than a female
protagonist – was considerably different. The part, as constructed by
Meyerbeer for Velluti, lies uncomfortably for a mezzo voice, and explains why
so much of the original Velluti music was to disappear so soon.
The Palmide of that first performance was Enrichetta Méric-Lalande,
Donizetti’s first Lucrezia Borgia, Bellini’s first Alaide in La Straniera
and Imogene in Il Pirata, with Brigida Lorenzani as Felicia and Gaetano
Crivelli as Adriano.
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