Lyric Opera of Chicago, under the leadership of General Director John Mangum and the baton of Music Director Enrique Mazzola, presents the world premiere recording of The Listeners, a striking new opera by Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, based on an original story by Jordan Tannahill. Drawing on distinctly American preoccupations, the work unfolds within a community bound together by circumstance and belief, shaped by the unsettling presence of an unexplained 'hum' that blurs perception and reality. Through Mazzoli's richly textured orchestral writing and Vavrek's incisive dramaturgy, the opera becomes a powerful reflection on vulnerability, tenderness, rage and hope, all sung into existence with a haunting sense of optimism. At it's centre is Claire Devon, a high school math teacher portrayed with remarkable intensity by Nicole Heaston, whose collaboration with the composer shapes a character defined by curiosity, precision and uncompromising emotional depth. Her journey from isolation to reluctant authority exposes the human need for connection in a world where listening becomes both consolation and control, and where belief can quickly harden into collective illusion. Mazzoli's expansive score, driven by large orchestral forces and a distinctive electronic 'hum,' creates an immersive sonic landscape in which inner psychology and external reality continuously intersect, building towards a devastating reckoning in which voices reshape reality itself. Missy Mazzoli previously appeared on PENTATONE with Proving Up (2020); Lyric Opera of Chicago appeared with The Three Queens (2022) and Puccini: Heroines (2026), together with Enrique Mazzola.

He was still young, but already an experienced composer: after all, Attila was already his ninth opera. In March 1846, the 32-year-old Giuseppe Verdi premiered it in Venice. The experience gained from his previous works is evident in the musical quality in many places: Verdi masterfully commands the dramaturgy of the grandiose choral scenes, which also play a major role in key moments of the plot in this work. At the same time, the portrayal of the individual characters' inner conflicts becomes increasingly nuanced and musically tangible. The ancient subject of the murderous Hun king offers many opportunities to present these. Marcus Bosch, the Cappella Aquileia, the Czech Philharmonic Choir of Brno, and the hand-picked ensemble of soloists work together with their usual precision and add another jewel to the multi-award-winning series of Verdi's earlier and often less-noticed operas.

Today Street Scene is Kurt Weill's most frequently revived American stage work. A polystylistic blending of operatic arias and ensembles, musical comedy songs and dances, dramatic dialogue both unaccompanied and underscored, and extraordinary emotional drama, Street Scene is arguably Weill's breakthrough. Though Elmer Rice's play was set in the 1920s, the popular music references are pure 1940s style (Glenn Miller, Rodgers and Hammerstein). After the successful release of "Love Life" (Capriccio C5550) this recording fills up the meanwhile large Kurt-Weill-Catalogue of Capriccio, again with a powerful cast from Opera North.

Also available on Blu-ray

“The Tutto Verdi series, in its goal of being complete, makes it possible to not only hear but see performances of works one seldom encounters outside of Parma...One does not have to be a Verdi completist like me to find a lot to enjoy in Tutto Verdi. The rarities are worth knowing to expand your sense of the composer’s output. The seven operas with Nucci are fascinating on so many levels, not the least of which is that his younger colleagues respond to his work not by being in awe but by allowing themselves to dig deeper and bring their performances to a higher plain than they imagined they were capable of. What would Peppino say?” – Fred Plotkin, WQXR

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Giuseppe Verdi
TUTTO VERDI – The Operas, Vol. 3 (1855–1893)
(11-DVD Box Disc Set)

I Vespri Siciliani (Teatro Regio di Parma, 2010)
Simon Boccanegra (Teatro Regio di Parma, 2010)
Un Ballo in Maschera (Teatro Regio di Parma, 2011)
La Forza del Destino (Teatro Regio di Parma, 2011)
Don Carlo (Teatro Comunale di Modena, 2012)
Aida (Teatro Regio di Parma, 2012)
Otello (Salzburg Festival, 2008)
Falstaff (Teatro Regio di Parma, 2011)

Bonus:
- Introduction to each opera

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese
Running time: 20 hours 41 mins (operas) + 1 hour 27 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 11 (DVD 9)

Further to his two recitals (Italian Opera Arias and Gounod / Massenet Arias), Rolando Villazon's releases his 3rd recital on Virgin Classics, featuring opera arias in 4 languages: French, Italian, English & Russian. And sees Rolando Villazon's second collaboration with Michael Plasson, after their recording of Berlioz' choral works on EMI. Rolando Villazon in undoubtedly the revelation of the years 2004-2005, and has won wide acknowledgement world-wide, not to mention the 2005 Gramophone Award he has received this September for his Gounod / Massenet recital. Virgin Classic. 2006.

Gioachino Rossini
LA CAMBIALE DI MATRIMONIO

Tobia Mill – Paolo Bordogna
Fanny – Désirée Rancatore
Edoardo Milfort – Saimir Pirgu
Slook – Fabio Maria Capitanucci
Norton – Enrico Maria Marabelli
Clarina – Maria Gortsevskaya

Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento
Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli, conductor

Luigi Squarzina, stage director
Giovanni Agostinucci, sets and costumes

Filmed at Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, Italy, August 2006

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0 / Dolby Digital 5.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, Italian
Running time: 83 mins

Described as 'the great Verdian bass' (Le Figaro) and a 'Mefistofele who stood out over all the others' (Der Neue Merker), Carlo Colombara brings some of the most famous bass roles to life in this wide-ranging programme. Emotions range from the pride of Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen, through the terrors of Verdi's Attila, to the tender recollections of Rachmaninov's Aleko. Mephistopheles strides powerfully through both Gounod and Boito's operas, and Rossini's comic wit contrasts with the darkness of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.

In 1986 he won the prize for the best Italian singer in the G. B. Viotti Competition and the following year he won the As.Li.Co competition before making his début at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome in Ernani. His subsequent career has brought appearances in the most important theatres of the world, in Tokyo, London, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, New York, Zurich, Barcelona, where he now lives, Verona and elsewhere.

Featuring:
Carlo Colombara, bass
Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana • Gyorgy G. Rath
Bulgarian National Symphony Orchestra • Vladimir Ghiaurov
Prague Tchaikovsky Orchestra • Fabrizio Milani
Oscar Martos Hidalgo, director

Stephen Hartke's the Greater Good was commissioned by Glimmerglass Opera, and is a strikingly original contribution to the operatic repertory. Based on an iconic short story by Maupassant set during the immediate aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War.

In 1998, I reviewed the composer-led excerpts from John Adams’s collaboration with poet and activist June Jordon (1936–2002), I was looking at the ceiling and then I saw the sky. The title is a quote from a survivor of the 1994 Northridge earthquake in southern California. Here we have the whole work. In the earlier review, I assumed what was missing was connecting dialogue, a mistake corrected by one of Fanfare’s many frighteningly alert readers. In fact, the entire work is sung, and here the designation is “song play,” which seems to describe the form quite accurately. The work has much in common with pieces like Brecht-Weill’s Das kleine Mahagony or, more recently, the Rice-Lloyd Webber collaborations, Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, in that the songs operate more or less as commentary to the onstage action. Like the Brecht-based Weill works, there is a great deal of implied and explicit social criticism, something that five years into the Bush administration seems much less quaint now. The problems with the work remain. The cardboard characters and their largely clichéd interactions keep everything at arm’s length, something compounded by the tendency of the songs to comment on the action rather than embody it. In addition, for all of its cleverness, Adams’ pastiche score rarely rises to the kind of immediate melodic impact one finds in Weill, Sondheim, or LaChiusa.

The plot, taken from the John Adams Web site, is as follows: in mid-1990s Los Angeles, David, a preacher, sings about his many love affairs and his current girlfriend, Leila. Dewain is arrested by Mike, a homophobic cop, for stealing two bottles of beer while trying to reach his lover, Consuelo, who is afraid that her son has been arrested by the INS. Tiffany videotapes the arrest; she wonders why Mike is not more receptive to her advances. Dewain resists arrest and Mike has him charged with a felony, meaning he could go to jail for 45 years under the “Three Strikes” law. At his trial, David, his lawyer, tries to explain his client’s point of view. After questioning Tiffany, Rick begins to be attracted to her. David visits Dewain in jail, where Dewain tells him he’s decided to go to law school. Leila wonders if David will ever settle down. As act II opens, Leila and David are making out on the couch in David’s office in his church when an earthquake hits. Leila is knocked unconscious. Mike visits Tiffany’s house; she asks him why he hasn’t been more forward, and he has a crisis of sexual identity; Rick suddenly appears, and she asks him out instead. Dewain, in his cell, recounts how the walls split open and he could see the outside, but, realizing that he was better off working inside the system, he did not escape. Consuelo tells him she is going back to El Salvador to fight for political freedom; Dewain decides to stay in Los Angeles. Lying in David’s arms, Leila begins to recover.

At the time of the premiere, Peter Sellars, the original director, offered up the hope that the work would become the play of choice for high schools everywhere. That seems as unlikely now as it did then (should anyone care, the high school musical of choice, once the rights become available, will be William Finn’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), in part because of the sexual and sometimes heavy-handed political content as well as the sheer difficulty of the music. For all its flaws, the work gains enormously in stature when heard complete and, to set the show in context, it is a whole lot more interesting musically than Rent or any of the Andrew Lloyd Webber “rock operas.”

The performance is very fine. Darius de Haas, returning from the original cast, as David the preacher and Kimako Xavier Trotman as Dewain, the gang member, are the only Americans in the cast. It would be idle to pretend that anyone could replace Audra McDonald as Consuelo but Martina Mühlpointner is very good. If you listen closely, some of the singers have slight accents, occasionally making their words a fraction less distinct but, frankly, you have to listen for it and it makes no impact at all on the overall success of the enterprise. As before, the work is recorded like the musical that it is rather than in the defined space more commonly associated with classical music. Therefore, a discussion of recording quality is really beside the point. Extensive notes and a detailed synopsis cued to the individual numbers are included, but no text.

FANFARE: John Story

HOIBY A Pocket of Time. Pierrot. In the Wand of the Wind. Lady of the Harbor. The Lamb. Where the Music Comes From. To an Isle in the Water. Winter Hubris. Jabberwocky. Lied der Liebe. Nuits. I Was There. Autumn. Evening. The Darkling Thrush. Last Letter Home. Goodby, Goodby World. The Nightingale and the Lark • Julia Faulkner (sop); Andrew Garland (bar); Lee Hoiby (pn) • NAXOS 8.559375 (75: 12)

"With the exception of Robert Ward (still active at 92, last I heard), Lee Hoiby (now 83) is probably America’s oldest traditional neo-Romantic still composing. Although he has made valuable contributions to most musical genres, his songs, choral anthems, and operas represent his most distinguished efforts. Hoiby’s musical language places his best efforts in the stylistic vicinity of such composers as Samuel Barber and Ned Rorem, while his lesser efforts call to mind the music of Gian Carlo Menotti. But this is not to suggest that Hoiby doesn’t have a voice of his own; indeed, he does, although it is perhaps not such a strikingly individual one. Less pretentious than Rorem’s, Hoiby’s music is even more resolutely tonal and diatonic than that of his three confreres, and more consonant harmonically as well, although fluid modulations, chromatic and modal ambiguities, and well-placed dissonances keep things active and interesting.

Hoiby’s songs display a remarkably consistent sense of good taste: though many of his texts deal with intense, vulnerable emotions, rarely, if ever, does he cross the line into kitsch. In addition, his workmanship, sensitivity to language, and wide range of expression are on a par with Barber’s, placing them among the most sensitive and rewarding of American art songs.

Lee Hoiby’s songs are part of the vocal repertoires of most singers who include music of the 20th century on their programs. Listeners with a taste for neo-Romantic lyricism are strongly urged to sample this music if they are not already familiar with it, and Naxos’s budget price keeps the risk at a minimal level."

FANFARE: Walter Simmons

Also available on Blu-ray

Hector Berlioz
BENVENUTO CELLINI

Benvenuto Cellini – Burkhard Fritz
Teresa – Maija Kovalevska
Fieramosca – Laurent Naouri
Giacomo Balducci – Brindley Sherratt
Pope Clemens VII – Mikhail Petrenko
Ascanio – Kate Aldrich
Francesco – Xavier Mas
Bernardino – Roberto Tagliavini
Pompeo – Adam Plachetka
Innkeeper – Sung-Keun Park

Vienna State Opera Chorus
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Valery Gergiev, conductor

Philipp Stölzl, stage director and stage designer
Kathi Maurer, costume design
Duane Schuler, lighting design
Mara Kurotschka, choreographer

Filmed at the Großes Festspielhaus, Salzburg, 5, 10 and 15 August 2007.

Picture format: NTSC 19:9
Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0 / Dolby Surround 5.0 / DTS 5.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, French
Running time: 164 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

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BERLIOZ Benvenuto Cellini • Valery Gergiev, cond; Burkhard Fritz ( Cellini ); Maija Kovaleska ( Teresa ); Laurent Naouri ( Fieramosca ); Kate Aldrich ( Ascanio ); Brindley Sherratt ( Balducci ); Mikhail Petrenko ( Pope Clement VII ); Vienna State Op Ch; Vienna PO • NAXOS 2.110271 (DVD: 163:35) Live: Salzburg 8/5-10-15/2007


This is an eye-popping extravaganza in which stage business keeps pace with, and too often trumps, Berlioz’s most coruscatingly vibrant and scintillantly compelling score. Cellini appears in a helicopter at the rooftop porch of Balducci’s penthouse, framed against the New York skyline; robots help Teresa with her toilet (including shaving her armpits) as Maija Kovaleska delivers herself of her big aria with virtuosic aplomb; Ascanio, too, is a robot—Kate Aldrich deliciously does her “Tra-la-la” aria with head removed (at stage level); Pompeo is a pimp, and hookers are a significant portion of the Mardi Gras crowd; the wheedling Asian innkeeper brandishes an assault rifle; and so on. The animation of static moments—in terms of staging—is clever, entertaining, and often riveting. The Mardi Gras itself is a credibly incredible triumph of garish color, comic incident, choreographically turned hurlyburly, and drama. Even those who care little for Berlioz’s music will find themselves entranced by the spectacle, while those with some regard for the composer may be alternately delighted and appalled. Berlioz’s conception of the artist as a romantic hero is a major casualty. As Cellini, Burkhard Fritz is in heroic voice and magnificent swagger but portrays his man as a gangster; while, between Mardi Gras and his appearance at his atelier, the director has foisted upon him a gratuitous wound, allowing the camera to make much of his pained expressions and bloodied clothes. Why? Pompeo’s blustering aria, boasting his fencing prowess, has been transferred to Fieramosca, which makes no sense whatever as the latter is—and is played throughout to great comic effect by Laurent Naouri—a sneaking pantywaist. English subtitles render maîtres ciseleurs as “master engravers,” a literal translation that ignores Berlioz’s usage to mean master goldsmiths while making nonsense of the Dionysian hymn he lavished upon Cellini’s foundrymen. We never see the Perseus , the statue Cellini’s been commissioned to cast, instead, the mold he threatens to destroy as Pope Clement rebukes him is a picayune Winged Victory of Samothrace —another disturbing dissonance between Berlioz’s straightforward dramatic narrative and director Philipp Stölzl’s pointless, would-be-clever dinking. Within the often silly parameters just outlined, vocally and histrionically this production is beyond all praise. Valery Gergiev’s direction is surefire, though others—Sir Colin Davis, Sir Roger Norrington—have found deeper resonance through significant portions of the score, while the never less than virtuosic Vienna Philharmonic is massive where Berlioz is lean and sinewy. Nevertheless, one comes to the end stunned, thrilled, and viscerally moved. As the cast took richly deserved bows, I, alone in my hovel, stood and cheered! Naxos’s surround sound lets no detail of this teeming, overfull, overrich score escape, delivering all with overwhelming punch. Despite all caveats, highest recommendation.


FANFARE: Adrian Corleonis

RUSSIA / UKRAINE / UZBEKISTAN

The Places
Peter the Great founded St Petersburg in 1703 on Swedish territory, a provocation to Sweden, then the most powerful state in the region. Over a few years, he created a new city with an outlet to the Baltic, a city to challenge Moscow and force Russia to face Western Europe. Victory over the Swedes at Poltava in 1709 secured the city’s future. The tour takes in Odessa, in the Ukraine, an important naval base for Russia on the Black Sea, and concludes with a visit to Uzbekistan.

The Music
Mussorgsky was originally an army officer, ending his life in intermittent government service, as addiction to alcohol took its toll. At his death in 1881, at the age of 42, he left much unfinished. His Pictures at an Exhibition was written in 1874 as a set of piano pieces, a translation into music of paintings, designs, models and drawings by his friend Victor Hartmann, who had died the year before, heard here in the colourful orchestration by Ravel. Borodin had a successful career as an analytical chemist, a professor at the Medico-Surgical Academy. His activities as a scientist limited the attention he could give to music, so that a number of his compositions remained incomplete at his relatively early death at the age of 53 in 1887.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 60 mins
No. of DVDs: 1