Teatro la Fenice New Year‘s Concert 2023 / Harding, Teatro la Fenice Orchestra & Chorus
C Major Entertainment
DVD
$16.49$32.99Save 50%Mar 15, 2024
The Teatro La Fenice opened in 1792 and is one of the most renowned and most beautiful theaters in the world. Since nearly 20 years it has celebrated the traditional New Year‘s concert every year, which became immediately vast popularity in Italy and abroad making it one of the best-known and desired New Year's events. The orchestra of Teatro La Fenice, conducted by Daniel Harding, presents a colourful array of arias and orchestral pieces. As soloists soprano Federica Lombardi and tenor Freddie De Tommaso sing famous arias as Casta Diva and Nessun dorma among others from the operas Carmen, La traviata, La bohème, Turandot, William Tell and La clemenza di Tito. On top Jacopo Tissi, now principal of the Dutch National Ballet, is dancing a scene from Tchaikovsky´s ballet The Sleeping Beauty in this thrilling and exhilarating concert.
Thomas Jensen Legacy, Vol. 7 / Jensen, Tivoli Concert Orchestra, Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Danacord
CD
$18.99Jan 21, 2022
A magical evening at the Tivoli Gardens! This new compilation features live and studio recordings of light orchestral waltzes and polkas, including the greatest hits of the Danish 'Waltz King', HC Lumbye. Several studio recordings from the 1940s receive their first release on album. Album 2 features a previously unpublished live concert broadcast direct from the Tivoli Gardens, where the people of Copenhagen have enjoyed relaxation and entertainment ever since 1843. Thomas Jensen directs the Tivoli orchestra with the same authority he brought to his classic recordings of Nielsen and Sibelius.
Ryan Chan, the First Prize Winner in the 2024 National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance, sponsored by the American Guild of Organists, is featured on his debut release on the Pro Organo label, entitled "Paris Milieu." His all French program spans 3 centuries, with standard organ literature and virtuosic organ transcriptions, performed upon the new Juget-Sinclair pipe organ in the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Richmond, Virginia USA.
Teatro La Fenice has a tradition of opera production that goes back to 1792. This collection brings all of the live atmosphere and drama of six operatic masterpieces from a theatre that has seen more than it's fair share of historic premieres. This set includes the 19th-century romance of Bizet's Les pecheurs de perles, the intense drama of Verdi's Luisa Miller, Britten's hauntingly understated Death In Venice, Massenet's tragic tale of love and redemption in Thaïs, Wagner's final opera Parsifal and Korngold's Die tote Stadt, one of the great operatic successes of the 1920s. An entire century's worth of opera can be seen and heard in these acclaimed productions from Venice's legendary venue.
Bizet: Djamileh; Vasco de Gama; Cantates; Musique chorale; M
Bru Zane
CD
$44.99Mar 14, 2025
No, Georges Bizet was not only the composer of Carmen, the French opera most frequently performed around the world. In a career spanning less than twenty years, he produced works in every genre: orchestral music, piano pieces, cantatas, operas, songs and more besides. He showed an early mastery of orchestration, and was soon able to give free rein to his taste for orientalism and folklore. This portrait offers a chance to discover works that were never performed during his lifetime, indeed some which had to wait until 2024 for their premiere. Of particular note is the 'ode-symphony' Vasco de Gama, which illustrates the Romantic taste for vast historical epics, and Le Retour de Virginie, a cantata for the Prix de Rome presented by the composer to his teacher in 1855. Piano music and melodies remind us that Bizet was also a sought-after salon composer, whose talent posterity has consecrated in songs like La Coccinelle and Les Adieux de l'hôtesse arabe.
Berlioz, Biarent, Gounod: La chanson du vent / van Dieren, Mizumoto
Cyprés Records
CD
$20.99Jan 28, 2022
The recording of this Chanson du vent is a celebration of Adolphe Biarent. This greatly neglected composer emerged from the shadows thanks to three album releases by Cypres. The cycle of Huit mélodiesfor mezzo-soprano completes this process aiming as it does to highlight an exceptional musical personality through world premiere recordings. Such an action can only work when based upon the total dedication of thoroughly committed performers who enhance a program inspired by the musical Orientalism, or artistic fascination with Middle Eastern, North African, and Turkish cultures, in vogue at that time.
SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce a revelatory new perspective on Georges Bizet's much-loved L'Arlesienne with the re-issue of his complete stage music for Alphonse Daudet's play and a new dramatization of Daudet's original short story by Jon Tolansky. First staged in 1872, L'Arlesienne is, as Tolansky remarks in his illuminating notes, an "evocative and poignant tale about broken love set in a small Provençal community". One that inspired Bizet "to compose some of the most heartrendingly poignant tones he ever created". More familiar in the two Suites extracted from the theatrical score, L'Arlesienne is heard here in it's original, complete version, reconstructed by Dominique Riffaud in a rare, 1985 recording by Orfeon Donostiarra and Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse conducted by Michel Plasson. A bonus track features a new adaptation of Daudet's short story, dramatized and narrated by Tolansky, and illustrated by musical excerpts from Bizet's incidental music. The Minuetto from L'Arlesienne was featured on SOMM's Favourite Orchestral Classics by the Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and Iain Sutherland (ARIADNE 5012), hailed "an exquisite collection" by Classical Music Daily, while two pieces from Carmen were given a mischievous jazz treatment on the Art Deco Trio's Classical Changes (SOMMCD 0663), declared by Gramophone as "exemplary". A noted, widely published and broadcast music commentator and documentary maker, Jon Tolansky's previous SOMM collaborations include Mahler Pioneers (SOMM Ariadne 5022-2), hailed as "a major addition to the catalogue" by OperaWire, and the International Classical Music Award-nominated Serge Koussevitzky Conducts the London Philharmonic - Live (SOMM Ariadne 5017-2). More recently his exclusive interview with Ian Partridge was featured in the Gramophone Editor's Choice release of the tenor's Schubert songs accompanied by his sister, Jennifer Partridge, Stimme Der Liebe (SOMMCD 0670).
Organist Lukas Hasler presents Gold, a radiant debut album featuring his own transcriptions and arrangements for organ. What began five years ago with a fascination for Mozart's G major Sonata in Edvard Grieg's two-piano version grew into an artistic journey into the transformative world of transcription. Hasler discovered in the organ an instrument capable not only of recreating orchestral and pianistic textures, but of reshaping them into something entirely new. To capture this vision, he turned to the iconic Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna, whose expressive possibilities and glowing acoustics inspired both the selection of repertoire and the album's title. Gold offers a rich spectrum of colours and styles, from the jubilant brilliance of Bach's Sinfonia (in Dupré's vibrant transcription) to the tender intimacy of Schumann's Romance, recorded here for the first time on organ. Hasler brings theatrical flair to Lemare's arrangement of Carmen Fantasy, profound stillness to Beethoven's "Moonlight" Adagio, and symphonic vitality to Bruckner's Nullte Scherzo, while Mozart's G major Sonata - filtered through Grieg's imagination and Hasler's own artistry - bridges Classical clarity and Romantic warmth. Rachmaninoff's stormy Prelude, Lefébure-Wély's sparkling Boléro, and the playful, genre-bending Vienna Calling complete a programme that celebrates invention, personality, and the golden richness of the Viennese organ sound.
The preserved “miraculous harp:” 475 years of orchestra history – and a whole century is there to be listened to. This CD box is an invitation to a musical journey through time with one of the world’s best orchestras! Not only that, it is one of the world’s oldest, founded in 1548 and active without a break ever since. The former Hofkapelle, the court orchestra of Saxony, now proudly bears the name Sachsische Staatskapelle Dresden. “Kapellkonzerte“ since the beginning of sound recordings under conductors like: Fritz Busch, Richard Strauss, Karl Böhm, Joseph Keilberth, Kurt Sanderling, Otmar Suitner, Herbert Blomstedt, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Bernard Haitink, Fabio Luisi, Christian Thielemann and many more
Bizet, Chabrier, Milhaud & Ravel: Paris est une fete
Fuga Libera
CD
$20.99Jul 05, 2024
From the Second Empire to the Roaring Twenties, Alexandra Soumm, the Orchestre de chambre Pelleas and Benjamin Levy paint a ruffled, nostalgic and swaying portrait of the City of Light, spanning seventy years of music. This recording, a testament to the musical and human affinities forged over many years between these performers, is also a return to the sources of creative fount, with the first recording of Tzigane in the new «Ravel Edition» and the first recording of the orchestration of Emmanuel Chabrier's Bourree fantasque according to the sketches left unfinished by the composer. From the crinolines of Georges Bizet's adolescence to the wisps of cigar smoke in the dreamy Brazil of Le Boeuf sur le toit, let's immerse ourselves in an era when Paris set the tempo for cosmopolitan, carefree celebrations.
Camille Saint-Saens was only fifteen years old when he composed his first symphony in 1850, which is known as his Symphony No. 0 - his official Symphony No. 1 would not arrive for another three years. Gounod was thirty-seven years old when his La nonne sanglante was removed from the repertoire of the Paris Opera by a new director; he swiftly restored his spirits by composing a symphony for the Societe des Jeunes Artistes in March 1855. Bizet, aged seventeen, began work on his Symphony in C major that same year. Gounod's symphony clearly influenced Bizet's work, as Bizet had just completed a transcription of it for piano four hands. This recording marks the beginning of a collaboration between the Alpha Classics label, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and it's music director Kazuki Yamada, a great lover of the French symphonic repertoire and also music director of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra and the Seiji Ozawa International Academy.
This captivating new release from PENTATONE celebrates the glittering world of 19th-century opera and the timeless beauty of the golden age of bel canto. Featuring music by Gaetano Donizetti, Gioacchino Rossini, Georges Bizet, Leo Delibes, and Giuseppe Verdi, the album showcases soprano Erin Morley and tenor Lawrence Brownlee two of today's most exciting voices joined by the Munchner Rundfunkorchester under the baton of conductor Ivan Repusic. Together, they bring fresh brilliance to the French and Italian repertoire with performances that balance vocal agility, lyrical finesse, and emotional power. This carefully curated collection of operatic gems highlights iconic duets and arias that continue to resonate with modern audiences through their passion, beauty, and dramatic flair. It marks an exciting PENTATONE debut for both Lawrence Brownlee and Ivan Repusic, while Erin Morley returns following her acclaimed performance in the label's recording of Handel's Alcina (2024). The Munchner Rundfunkorchester also makes a welcome return, having previously appeared on PENTATONE's release of Gordon Getty's Plump Jack (2012).
To mark the 150th anniversary of Bizet's death and the premiere of his immensely popular Carmen, Alpha Classics and Le Palazzetto Bru Zane now pay tribute to Celestine Galli-Marie, the singer who created the title role. A remarkable actress and singer, she created sixteen roles in fifteen years at the Opera-Comique, including Ambroise Thomas' iconic Mignon and Jacques Offenbach's Fantasio. Eva Zaicik is delighted to take on the roles created by such a colourful artist: 'Celestine embodied a certain idea of artistic and feminine rebellion. Her voice, charisma and unique theatrical approach brought to life characters who were free, complex and often struggled with the norms of their time.' Supported superbly by Pierre Dumoussaud and the Orchestre National de Lille, the French mezzo not only brilliantly embodies characters created by Bizet, Massenet, Offenbach and Thomas but also breathes new life into arias by Paladilhe, Poise, Deffes, Masse, Guiraud, Cohen and Grisar.
When opera singers go from their standard repertoire into something new, from the stage to the recording studio or simply from one performance to another, the results may be better or worse, a great achievement or a great disappointment. None of which ever troubled Ettore Bastianini, whose renowned confidence in his own vocal and mental powers would not allow for those all too human failings which other performers may suffer in such circumstances. His authenticity and renown had their origins on stage of course, yet once he had taken that experience into the recording studio, a return to live performance often brought gains in authority and expressive power. The present series of previously unreleased recordings proves this admirably and they are all the more remarkable because they are certainly not the sort of material with which Bastianini felt most at home, (that was always a thoroughly Romantic repertoire, hence dominated by Verdi).
This was something I'd had in mind for a long time..." says pianist Alexandre Tharaud, "to put together an album for the sheer pleasure of it, in collaboration with dear friends and paying tribute to the wonders of the piano duet repertoire." The aptly named 4 Hands offers 18 tracks, each just a few minutes in length, each featuring Tharaud sharing a piano keyboard with a different partner. The repertoire ranges wide - from Bach to Glass by way of such composers as Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Fauré, Satie, Debussy, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, and Piazzolla. 15 of Tharaud's fellow performers are celebrated pianists - among them the late Nicholas Angelich, Mariam Batsashvili, Bertrand Chamayou, David Fray, Víkingur Ólafsson, and Beatrice Rana. The other three, all stars in their musical fields, are shown in a new, pianistic light: cellist Gautier Capuçon, countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and singer-songwriter Juliette. "The piano duet is one of life's miracles," continues Tharaud. "First and foremost, it is the most intimate way of playing chamber music... It was a joy to record this album... If hearing these pieces prompts people to buy some sheet music and enjoy playing duets together - just as we did in the recording studio - then I will have achieved my aim.
Maria Callas is credited with changing the history of opera. Known as La Divina, she continues to fascinate as a supreme artist, but also as a woman and an icon of style. Her interpretations were as compelling for their dramatic truth as for their musical integrity. Her voice, with it's extraordinary range, was as distinctive as her infallible sense for a phrase. A magnetic presence, she brought operatic heroines to vivid life, magically shaping and colouring her tone, and making insightful use of the text of the libretto.
2014 Maria Callas remastered series reissue. With this Abbey Road 24-bit 96kHz remaster, engineers returned to the original master tapes, bringing new clarity & brilliance to her legendary studio recordings. Towards the end of Callas's career, there were many rumours that she was planning to perform Carmen on stage. This was never to be, but Carmen became her penultimate complete recording of an opera - and her only complete recording of a French opera. With Georges Pretre, one of her favored conductors, and the ever-stylish Nicolai Gedda as her Don Jose', she captured every facet of the role. As Gramophone said when the set was first released: 'Hers is a Carmen to haunt you. '
Bizet's opera Carmen was first produced at the Opera-Comique in Paris in 1875. The French genre of opera-comique had arisen in the eighteenth century as a Gallic counterpart of the Italian opera buff, injecting an air of contemporary realism into operatic form. The success of operetta in the nineteenth century offered a challenge to the form, which retained the characteristic of the German Singspiel, spoken dialogue taking the place of the recitative of opera serial or French grand opera, but increasingly lacked power or conviction. Carmen, in it's original version with spoken dialogue, derived largely from Prosper Mérimée's novel on which the opera was based. Created something of a scandal, and opened the way to a new form of opera. While nineteenth century French audiences at the Opera-Comique might find in Micaela a recognizable character, Carmen, a vicious outcast from decent society, was not the ideal heroine for popular family entertainment.
