The Italian tenor sings the world’s greatest Italian tenor arias, including the hit “Nessun dorma” – without question the most famous opera arias.
Verissimo meaning “very true” in Italian and is a play on the word “Verismo” – the late 19th century opera style from which these featured operas are taken. The style is known for its big passions, dramatic lyricism, lush orchestral sound and storylines about normal people in the throes of love, death, betrayal and revenge. Key composers of this style include Puccini, Mascagni, Cilea and Leoncavallo.

Inactive since Il Piccolo Marat (1921), on March 23, 1932 Mascagni reproposed Pinotta, reelaborated from his cantata In Filanda. The Author’s interventions in 1932 were undoubtedly important: the little chorus of Zeffiri that after the short prelude announces the idyll shows a harmonic restlessness hardly thinkable in a twenty-year-old Mascagni; and the same goes for the unusual effect in the finale, with the two voices whispering a fading “T’amo” on the silence of the orchestra. Also, the rich instrumental ensemble is much wider than the one thought for the cantata. For the symphonic poem with voice A Giacomo Leopardi Mascagni followed the great examples of Liszt, Smetana and Strauss: the poem gets its inspiration not only from the few verses sung by the soprano; wider fragments - quoted in limine on the score - supply the expressive suggestions to the orchestra interludes acting as “bridges” among the different episodes. So we might say that this A Giacomo Leopardi is not a cantata, but a downright symphonic poem where a few singable episodes occasionally emerge. Zanetto can be considered as a “little” opera not because of its short duration, of the orchestra ensemble including no brass or its only two characters (soprano and mezzosoprano en travesti), but because of its decidedly lyrical style and basic lack of action: the act is just a long encounter-conversation in a Renaissance Florence between a young minstrel and Silvia, a rich, bored lady who reciprocates his love but, being a courtesan, cannot allow herself such a feeling and must reject the young boy.

Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945) was one of those composers famous for a single work, the remainder of their oeuvre being practically unknown. His opera Iris is based on the libretto by Luigi Illica, who also wrote the libretti for Puccini operas such as La Bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. It was Illica who gave birth to the idea of an opera about Japan. Exotic subjects, i.e. those set in distant lands, were in vogue throughout Europe, and the Far East in particular was very present at the time. It was Mascagni’s express wish to write ‘original’ music to this specific material, something hitherto unheard-of. This recording with the choir and orchestra of the Berliner Operngruppe under Felix Krieger is a live recording of the Berlin premiere of the original version from the Konzerthaus Berlin. The Berliner Operngruppe celebrated its 10th anniversary.

The Messa di Gloria belongs to the period before Cavalleria Rusticana: the lack of a choral or a fugue as well as the simple, almost ingenuous tonalities reveal the dominance of the operatic style over the religious one. Only a careful listening can disclose in the operatic melodies of the Messa di Gloria some kind of references to church music. Echoes of Guglielmo Ratcliff can be heard in the Gratias, and the Incarnatus clearly recalls Turiddu’s “resta abbandonata” from Cavalleria. Before a modern audience the Messa, made of “pray, all love and passion”, as the composer described it, still retains its character. The lyrical element, vehement in the Gloria or tender in the Elevazione, is soaked with Mediterranean feelings, like in a deep and touching popular songs.

One would be hard pressed to find an opera more proudly Southern Italian than Cavalleria rusticana, set in Vizzini, a small mountain village in the Sicilian hinterland that was the birthplace of the story’s playwright, Giovanni Verga. Its enduring popularity makes it surprising indeed that the last studio recording dates to exactly 30 years ago (1990, Semyon Bychkov), preceded just a year earlier by Giuseppe Sinopoli’s critically acclaimed production dedicated to his father, who, like its protagonists and Verga, was Sicilian. This new interpretation is thus long overdue and joins a small but prestigious circle of recordings, with Carmine Gallone (1953, film), Tullio Serafin (1960), Herbert von Karajan (1965), James Levine (1978), Franco Zeffirelli (1982, film) and Georges Pretre (1983) predating Sinopoli. This new production of Cavalleria Rusticana brings together some of the most prominent artists on today’s international opera stages under conductor Filippo Arlia, a native of South Italy’s Calabria and youngest-ever Director of an Italian conservatory (Nocera Terinese’s ‘Tchaikovsky’ Conservatory). The recording’s soloists are no less impressive: tenor Piero Giuliacci (Turiddu, winner of the ‘Mascagni d’Oro’ 2013 and ‘Pavarotti d’Oro’ 2017); mezzo-soprano Alessandra Di Giorgio (Santuzza); baritone Domenico Balzani (Alfio); mezzo-soprano Irina Dolzhenko (Lucia); and soprano Giorgia Teodoro (Lola) who, like Arlia, calls Calabria home. This recording revives Mascagni’s voice in a new millennium with artists capable of honouring the verismo vocal color he pioneered, before an entire generation of opera composers followed suit.

The first performance of I Rantzau took place at the Pergola Theatre in Florence on 10th November 1892. It was a triumphal success right from the dress rehearsal; the ovations for the composer were so great that according to the reports of the time his wife Lina fainted with emotion. On the first evening, six pieces were encored. Born under such splending auspices, the opera continued its career almost into the new century, but inexplicably, in its complete version, it was no longer put forward for production. And we had to wait until the celebration of the centenary of the first performance for the first new production in modern times. What was the reason for its disappearance? Whatever answers might be given, today I Rantzau has to be considered an important and delicate stage in Mascagni’s creative work. Indeed, the opera marks the saturation of the so-called “realistic” phase of the composer’s work. It highlights the consolidation of the change from the idyllic naturalism tried out in the earlier Amico Fritz, to a true experimentalism which was to lead soon after that to the pessimistic tensions of the heavy Nordic romanticism of Guglielmo Ratcliff.

Melody Moore pays tribute to the legendary soprano Renata Tebaldi, presenting a selection of arias and scenes by Rossini, Verdi, Boito, Catalani, Puccini, Mascagni, Giordano, Cilea and Alessandro Scarlatti, documenting the most important stages in the career of “la voce d’angelo”. Moore performs these pieces together with the Transylvania State Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra under the baton of Lawrence Foster. Melody Moore and Lawrence Foster both have a vast Pentatone discography, including collective complete recordings of Verdi’s Otello (2017) and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and La Fanciulla del West (both 2021). The latter album was also the Pentatone debut of the Transylvania State Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra.

REVIEW:

Does Moore sound like Tebaldi? Not exactly: a track-by-track comparison reveals subtle differences in timbre and interpretation. But this is an act of homage, not impersonation, and Tebaldi’s repertoire certainly suits Moore’s voice and showcases her versatility, as she differentiates each heroine from the next.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Composers are often tasked with creating from a void, an emptiness. The blank page is an easel. The parts of a structure of a piece of music – melody, accompaniment, line, harmony, tension, and release – must take shape to reach the listener’s ear. Sometimes, instead of starting with an empty sheet of staff paper, a composer creates something which is pollinated by another source. Perhaps it is a folk song, a poem, a melody, or an even larger work, such as a full-length opera. New works are then realized. In the case of this two-cd set, an East South African folk tune receives new life as a romantic piano ballade. A sonnet of Petrarch resurfaces centuries later as a dramatic declaration of love, through a solo piano work. The repertoire on these discs traces Kristin Ditlow’s own growth as a pianist and musician. Each work marks a chapter of her development and artistry to the present. The song transcriptions are pieces that have been played countless times with vocal partners: the operatic works are works that she has coached or conducted. Her passionate pursuit of travel is also a thread which weaves throughout the discs: the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor spiritual arrangements are works that she became acquainted with as a high school choral accompanist: meeting her husband while on tour in China in 2012: the Mongolian Shepherd Song is her arrangement of a traditional folksong from the Chinese Mongolian community, a work introduced to her by her husband in China originally for erhu and pipa (traditional Chinese instruments) accompaniment but transcribed for violin and piano. Kristin Ditlow has spent five summers performing, teaching, and coaching in Hungary and the Bartók selections all harken back to those times in the Hungarian countryside. Pianist, coach and conductor Dr. Kristin Ditlow dedicates her musical career to collaboration and connection. She has been seen in concert throughout North America, Mainland China, and Western Europe as a soloist, collaborative pianist, and conductor. The set of music pieces in this album is representative of her “Passages” in her career.

A unique demonstration of massed instrumental playing, featuring no less than 48 violinists under the baton of Geoffrey Simon. Three of London's finest sections drive the concept of the violin ensemble to new heights in these innovative, hugely sonorous treatments of repertoire from Debussy to Gershwin. "Monti's Csardas of course sounds appropriately passionate: and when it gets going the 48 players clearly enjoy their own virtuosity: the result is exhilarating" (Gramophone) "Stand out track is Shostakovich's Romance from The Gadfly which demonstrates how an effective melody can benefit from an arrangement sympathetic to colorful harmonies" (Classic CD)