Il Sibilo was a weekly newspaper‚ published in Naples in the early 1840s. For one year the publishers had the circulation­boosting idea of having a fortnightly supplement of music and words to a song by a well­known composer. During the short­lived scheme 24 songs were published. The names of Donizetti‚ Pacini‚ Rossini‚ Ricci and Mercadante are familiar‚ but here are also songs by Lillo‚ Sarmiento‚ Cammarano and Crescentini. The rediscovery of this tiny corner of the bel canto repertory is the work of Jeremy Commons‚ who has written what amounts to a short book about the project in the accompanying notes. All the songs are of necessity quite brief (they had to fit on one page of the newspaper). To start with the least familiar‚ there are three by Luigi Cammarano‚ brother of the writer Salvatore‚ librettist of Lucia and Il trovatore. La zingarella is nothing like the fiery gypsies of Salvatore’s later work‚ but a sad little ditty about the waif­like girl searching for a home. Cardiddu ca vai is a Sicilian­style ballad about a goldfinch‚ while Mamma mia sopportà chiù non posso is a half­plaintive‚ half­comic lament by a girl writing to her mother about her capricious sweetheart. Nuccia Focile sings all three without too much exaggeration. She is also charming in a song by Pacini‚ Il pellegrino‚ about a pilgrim begging for shelter‚ and in a Donizetti setting of a verse from Metastasio’s Olimpiade‚ Che non mi disse un dì‚ in which there is a sudden whiff of the theatre. Among the other songs that Focile sings‚ the most startling is Luigi Ricci’s Na Fattura‚ a ‘spell’ in which the singer curses her faithless lover and hopes that he will choke on the first ‘muorzo’ (‘morsel’) that he chews at table. If it’s meant to be funny‚ it doesn’t sound like it. Donata D’Annunzio Lombardi joins Focile in a duet by Federico Ricci‚ Luigi’s brother‚ La solita conversazione degli amanti‚ which is one of seven items added to the main sequence. It’s a jolly little tune‚ the text of which is more or less just ‘Love me? Love me not?’. Lombardi sings two contrasting Donizetti songs‚ Sovra il remo‚ in which a sailor sings of the fate of his drowned love‚ and Se a te d’intorno‚ a song to the breeze‚ hoping that it will reach the heart of the lover. These tiny songs‚ with their ‘sheer harmonic and melodic invention’ (as Jeremy Commons notes)‚ have an intensity that is quite surprising. The admirable Ildebrando D’Arcangelo sings Basta così cor mio‚ words by Metastasio‚ music by the 80­year­old Girolamo Crescentini‚ who had been one of the stars of Italian opera in the 1790s. Crescentini was a castrato‚ but his song has none of the florid style associated with the brotherhood. D’Arcangelo also sings the one song by Mercadante‚ La preghiera; perhaps the most ‘modern’ music in the collection‚ it seems to look forward to Verdi’s baritone arias. Among the little gems assigned to Paul Charles Clarke is Sarmiento’s Lu Vasillo‚ with little kisses being blown by the lover‚ and Giuseppe Lillo’s Invan tentai di spegnere. Lillo was the composer of an opera about Catherine Howard‚ and his song is dedicated to one Lady Arabella Dudley. It sounds very much like an opera cabaletta. There is too much to detail in this fascinating anthology‚ sung and played with all the charm of an evening in some romantic Neapolitan palazzo. David Harper accompanies‚ no doubt with greater technical ability than many of the amateur musicians who originally bought Il Sibilo every other week to acquire its musical give­away.