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- Les pêcheurs de perles dates from 1863 and represents much more than a mere operatic exercise written by a twenty-five-year-old composer. Pêcheurs is, as a matter of fact, the only other Bizet opera, beside Carmen, to have remained in the repertoire. This opera contains memorable passages, which have ensured its long-lasting success and which many great singers (beginning with Caruso) have recorded and performed: for example the aria of Nadir Je crois entendre encore; the beautiful aria of Léïla Comme autrefois, dans la nuit sombre and, above all, the superb duet between Léïla and Nadir Ton cour n'a pas compris le mien. This Venetian production features an extraordinary Annick Massis as Léïla and the refined staging of Pier Luigi Pizzi.
- Bellini, unlike many of his colleagues - among them Donizetti - did not have to endure the disappointments and difficulties of rising from the ranks. His Bianca e Gernando, in 1826, was well received at Naples's Teatro San Carlo, and one year later, at the age of twenty-six, the composer triumphed at Milan's La Scala with Il Pirata. Norma is not only the high point of Bellini's artistic parabola but also the quintessence of Italian belcanto. The present DVD, filmed at the Sferisterio Opera Festival of Macerata in August 2007, features, in the title role, the famous Greek soprano Dimitra Theodossiou, one of today's best interpreters of Norma.
- Gioconda is rarely performed, except for the famous Dance of the Hours, which became popular also thanks to Walt Disney's Fantasia. This co-production of Arena di Verona, Barcelona's Teatro Eliseo and Madrid's Teatro Real, directed by Pier Luigi Pizzi, is quite stunning. In the cast are Andrea Gruber, Carlo Colombara, Marco Berti, Ildiko Komlosi, Elisabetta Fiorillo and, debuting in the Dance of the Hours, Roberto Bolle, star of La Scala who has appeared in the most important theatres of the world. This music, on which Ponchielli worked for twenty-six years, seems to prefigure Puccini while, at the same time, echoing Verdi. To date Gioconda is one of the works most loved by audiences.
- Singers of great renown were called upon for the first performance of Ercole sul Termodonte by Antonio Vivaldi in Rome, "in the hall of Signor Federico Capranica", on 27th January 1723. An exclusively male singing cast, as was the custom on Roman stages, to tell the tale of the battle between Hercules, accompanied by the heroes Theseus, Telamon and Alceste, and the Amazons led by Antiope. The story, which is based on the ninth of the legendary labours of Hercules, and which concludes with the traditional happy ending here decreed by Diana, who proclaims the nuptial unions of Hippolyte with Theseus, prince of Athens, and of Martesia with Telamon, king of Ithaca, was arranged by the "regular canon of La Carità of Venice" Don Giacomo Francesco Bussani, on a libretto that had already been performed in 1678 at the San Salvatore theatre in Venice. The opera was successful, winning appreciation and at the same time astonishment through its introduction of many passages written in a new "manner", with an exciting, incisive rhythmic gait. This style so excited the Romans that from then on they demanded it almost exclusively in melodramas. After the success of 1723, however, Ercole did not circulate widely and at a certain point the score was thought to have been lost. It has only recently been reassembled thanks to the precious rediscovery of some thirty arias and two duets in various archives, and has been reconstructed in its recitative passages by Alessandro Ciccolini. The daring direction of John Pascoe for the Spoleto Festival presents a statuary Hercules appearing on stage completely naked. On the podium, conducting the Complesso Barocco, an expert of the stature of Alan Curtis.
- The plot of La cambiale di matrimonio; which Rossini composed when he was just eighteen years old; revolves around the farcical attempts of Tobia Mill; a rich English merchant; to combine business with pleasure by forcing his daughter; the lovely Fanny ("the merchandise") to marry Slook; his rich colonial correspondent.
- The Mantua Orfeo is the culmination of a long process that saw the gradual acceptance of pastoral fables, comedies, and tragedies in imitation of classical models, offering special musical elements to delight the listener. The novelty lay not only in the type of drama involved, but also in the manner of song, which favoured the accompanied monody. Solo voice singing, so extolled and theorized within the intense conceptual debates of Giovanni Bardi's Florentine academy, likely derives from a yearning for classicism, and for a recovery of Greek theatre - but is made contemporary through the principle of the comprehensibility of speech, which had many advocates. The "Tale of Orpheus" was written as a musical opera; the libretto by Alessandro Striggio assumes a knowledge of Rinuccini's tale. Whether openly or in more concealed fashion, Monteverdi makes use of topoi or practices in common use during his day: trumpet flourishes as signals, a narrative in dactylic rhythm, and dissonant intervals to emphasize struggle or grief. These are immediately recognizable even to a "common" public. At the same time though, he introduces complete innovations not only in the expository elements of profane song, but also in its other aspects: the exhaustive attention given to the collocation of words, the vibrant quality of the rhythmic pulse, bold dissonances, the harmonies chosen, and the wavelike melodic line.
- Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders his king and takes the throne for himself.
- Director Pier Luigi Pizzi drew inspiration from Georges Rodenbach's short novel, "Bruges - La Morte" which narrates the bizarre and sinister experience of a man who, having lost his wife, is mesmerized and hypnotized by the atmosphere of the city of Bruges to the point that he believes to recognize his beloved one in a woman met in the streets. He is so obsessed by this incredible event to think that he can bring the past back, but despite the two women's amazing likeness, the unique sensitivity and the feelings of the wife that he had loved for ten years are gone forever. Rodenbach turns the city of Bruges in a sinister and foggy stage where mysterious events take place. The urban spaces and the dead woman are deeply linked, the city itself amplifies death as it mirrors the main character's feelings, his agony, his tireless quest for an impossible love. This quest will lead him to death, in the cold, dead Venetian waters. Erich W. Korngold was very touched by this novel and composed an opera imbued with romantic and lyrical elements, that enhance the sense of self destruction and doom of the protagonist, describing through music his sudden mood swings. The reference to water is very important as it mirrors the characters' feelings and the strict analogy with Venice. Venice is the connecting element between this production and last year's Death in Venice by Benjamin Britten. These two titles are deeply linked and form one unique path. For that opera too Pizzi had used fog and mist on stage as to evoke a sense of ghost silence and desolation. Water and fog are therefore essential ingredients, and always recurring on the stage set.
- It was customary for Rossini to modify his scores and develop second and third versions for theatres that wanted to stage his operas. The Maometto II here recorded corresponds only in part to the original score (Naples, 1820), which is the version generally performed nowadays; it is, instead, the revision made for Venice's Teatro La Fenice staged on 26th December 1822 as opening title of the 1823 Carnival season, the same season which, on February 3rd, would also see the debut of Semiramide. For Venice Rossini tried to soften the monolithic character of his Neapolitan score, introducing an opening symphony, making changes - some of them quite substantial - to the score and, especially, giving the plot a happy ending. The title role is sung by the young Italian bass Lorenzo Regazzo, internationally renowned; Claudio Scimone, on the podium, is responsible for the revision of the score.
- La Sonnambula was first performed with enormous success at the Teatro Carcano, Milan on 6th March 1831 with Giuditta Pasta and Giambattista Rubini in the roles of Amina and Elvino, the most well-known and ideal singers for the parts at the time. Bellini was full of praise for their performance and declared them "two angels who could transport the audience into a state bordering on distraction". La Sonnambula is an idillic, classical and intense melodramma with an extremely fine, lyrical musicality and tense with pure "canto", suspended between Arcadia and Romanticism. It is a combination of tender and melancholic sentiments and of tragic and moving passion, in a natural uncontaminated and innocent atmosphere and humanity which clearly represent the artistic experience of the composer. The charming staging by Hugo de Ana, at the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari goes back to January 2007. Through fascinating tableaux vivants, references to 17th century Romantic painting and refined visual projections, it is a tribute to Luchino Visconti. Visconti produced the memorabile performance of Sonnambula in March at the Scala di Milano with the magnificant Maria Callas.
- For La forza del destino, Verdi created one of his most famous melodies, the "fate" motif that permeates the whole of the score. Music and action alternate in masterly fashion between large-scale crowd scenes and intimate interiority, in that way illustrating Verdi's real theme: the manner in which fallible human beings are destroyed by a cruel fate.
- The creation of Daphne was laborious, especially from the poetic point of view (due to the modest talent of the librettist, Joseph Gregor), but on 15th October 1938 the opera was finally premièred at Dresden's Staatstheater. On the podium was the young conductor Karl Böhm. This opera is a masterpiece of early 20th-century vocal music. Structured in a single act, Daphne is a very consistent work with a rich musical vein. Strauss's orchestration appears, as always, remarkably refined. Vocal writing is demanding for all the main characters, but especially so for the protagonist, here finely interpreted by a magnificent June Anderson. Soon available also in DVD.
- The opera was based on the play Kabale und Liebe by Friedrich von Schiller and features a Great cast of singers including Marcelo Álvarez, Leo Nucci, Fiorenca Cedolins and Giorgio Surian.
- Baldassarre Galuppi was considered the leading exponent of Venetian comic opera, if not the absolute creator. Though he was shortly forgotten after his death, opera buffa gave him international fame, and it's only recently that his serious operas have begun to receive serious attention. Composed according to tradition, with the use of new arias displaying various affetti (fury, contrast, outrage) as well as others borrowed from contemporary operas, this dramma per musica is a consistent work, where music and text are one, and the seven characters and their emotions are strongly portrayed. The opera takes place in Olimpia during the games, and focuses on a complicated love intrigue. Megacle and Aristea are in love, but the maid is also loved by Megacle's friend Licida. Megacle owes his life to Licida, and therefore to honour this friendhip he is forced to win his beloved's hand for him. The situation gets more complicated, tragedy seems to darken the horizon, but the final happy ending settles things. Pietro Metastasio wrote the libretto in Vienna in 1733, and many musicians put it in music: among the most famous Vivaldi, Pergolesi and Paisiello.
- Most of Schubert's operas were written without a specific commission, in the hope that, once completed, some theatre might find them interesting simply by virtue of their musical value. This unrealistic optimism proved almost always wrong and Schubert suffered bitter disappointments, very often working for nothing. Begun on 20th September 1821, Alfonso und Estrella was completed on 27th February 1822 but was first staged, on the initiative of Franz Liszt, only in 1854, after Schubert's death. Alfonso und Estrella has the characteristic climate of a romantische Oper. If it is true that Schubert lacks the sense of theatre which is typical of the best operatic composers of his day (for example Weber), the power of his creativity and beauty of many arias cannot be denied.
- In recent years not only music festivals but also important opera theatres have turned their attention towards the neglected masterpieces of the lyrical repertoire. Thus also Venice's Teatro La Fenice, in a commendable effort, staged this Pia de' Tolomei by Donizetti, with some of the best singers available today for this type of repertoire. Initial response to this opera, which was performed for the first time in 1837, was ambiguous, so much so that Donizetti re-worked it as many as three times. The version here recorded is that of the critical edition recently published by Ricordi, with the tragic finale originally conceived by the composer. The listener will undoubtedly wonder, once more, at Donizetti's wealth of melodic inspiration, especially when it comes to the character of Pia, wonderfully interpreted, here, by Patrizia Ciofi.