"•The particularity of this edition of Donizetti’s masterpiece is in its reconstruction of the 1845 Saint Petersburg version. Along with some key transpositions, this 2010 performance presents the alternative finale adopted at the same time. • Bass-baritone Lorenzo Regazzo is an acclaimed “bel canto” and “coloratura” singer and renowned Mozart and Rossini interpreter. Giovanni Battista Rigon is considered “one of the best Rossini conductors...spirited...never tiring” (Il Corriere della Sera)."

Bohuslav Martinu's opera The Greek Passion, here in the 1961 version, is based on the novel The re-crucified Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis. The opera develops the Christian doctrine of "love thy neighbour" ad absurdum, as a group of refugees are driven out of a little Greek village just as the village is putting on a Passion play for Holy Week. The opera is a pessimistic plea for humanity, made in the awareness that humanity must always wrestle anew with it's own egoism. Director Simon Stone "creates a modern parable, somehow both contemporary and timeless." (The Times) For the last of his 16 operas, Martinu developed a tonal language which combined his early musical experiences with elements of Greek folklore, Greek Orthodox liturgy and dance music. Maxime Pascal, the 2014 winner of the Salzburg Festival's annual Young Conductors Award and at the podium of the Wiener Philharmoniker for the first time, "unfolds a musical and dramatic intensity that makes your hair stand on end, both in the tender outbursts and the violent ones. A maestro of his time." (Le Figaro) "A highlight of this year's Salzburg Festival" The Times The Greek Passion elected "BEST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR 2023" OPER! Awards 2024 "This opulence and the playing of the overall grippingly coherent ensemble hits one to the core." Neue Musikzeitung

Rued Langgaard's remarkable opera 'Antikrist' confronts the decline and fall of Western civilisation, critiquing modern lifestyles and ways of thinking, which resonates with our times more than ever before. Never performed in the composer's lifetime, 'Antikrist' blends Romantic and contemporary styles to create a score that is both seductive and opulent, while the lack of a conventional plot creates space for an ironic and sarcastic exposé of contemporary civilisation's weaknesses. This spectacular Deutsche Oper Berlin production was acclaimed in 'The New York Times' as a 'riotously colourful, boldly stylised staging [in] a near-breathless swirl'.

Monteverdi’s great opera is a celebration of unwavering devotion, conveyed in some of the composer’s most poignant, heart-breaking music. After two brutal decades of war, the weary Ulysses is washed up on the rocky shore of his home island of Ithaca. There, he discovers the hordes of depraved admirers who have beseiged his faithful wife Penelope in his 20-year absence – and launches into battle to win back her love. Monteverdi’s opera is a celebration of unwavering devotion, conveyed in some of the composer’s most poignant, heartbreaking music. John Eliot Gardiner leads an exemplary cast of world-class singers alongside the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in this live recording from The National Forum of Music in Wroclaw, Poland – part of their critically acclaimed Monteverdi 450 tour in 2017.

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REVIEWS:

Faced with lots of recitative and practically no arias, singers and players abandon themselves to intense arioso, jazzy cross-rhythms between poetry and continuo, and take-no-prisoners dissonances. Furio Zanasi, Lucile Richardot, and Hana Blažiková bring a depth of acting almost without rival.

– BBC Music Magazine

Recitatives flicker and spark with detail. Instrumental textures are spare and speeds swift, and there’s a welcome sense of narrative drive. Text is king, but it’s the rhetoric of the English Baroque Soloists that really counts. Zanasi is a smooth, patrician Uliss. There are more classically beautiful accounts of Il ritorno d’Ulisse available, but perhaps none with quite so much life.

– Gramophone

Featuring the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, this new release includes compositions by Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725). La Gloria di Primavera, the work featured on this album, has been called a “feast of vocal invention, supplemented by wondrous instrumental writing…” The performances on this album were recorded live in Berkeley, California, at First Congregational Church in October of 2015.

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden are continuing their internationally acclaimed Bruckner cycle with the Symphony No. 5. For Anton Bruckner, his Fifth Symphony was a glorious confrontation with the music of the past – from a personal, biographical angle, but also as a departure from the composition techniques he preferred up to this point. Not for nothing is this tremendous opus magnum regarded as Bruckner’s “contrapuntal masterpiece”. In this universally lauded performance, Christian Thielemann, already the leading Bruckner interpreter of our times, has once again proven himself to be a “magician of the Bruckner sound”. (Kurier)

Anton Bruckner
SYMPHONY NO. 5
(Blu-ray Disc Version)

Dresden Staatskapelle
Christian Thielemann, conductor

Recorded live at the Semperoper, Saxon State Opera, Dresden, 2013

Picture format: 1080i High Definition
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, German, French
Running time: 89 mins
No. of Discs: 1 (BD 25)

Also available on Blu-ray

Giuseppe Verdi
LA TRAVIATA

Violetta Valéry – Svetla Vassileva
Flora Bervoix – Daniela Pini
Annina – Antonella Trevisan
Alfredo Germont – Massimo Giordano
Giorgio Germont – Vladimir Stoyanov
Gastone – Gianluca Floris
Barone Douphol – Armando Gabba
Marchese d’Obigny – Filippo Polinelli
Dottore Grenvil – Roberto Tagliavini
Giuseppe – Iorio Zennaro
Un domestico di Flora – Roberto Scandura
Un commissionario – Matteo Mazzoli

Parma Teatro Regio Chorus and Orchestra
(chorus master: Martino Faggiani)
Yuri Temirkanov, conductor

Karl-Ernst Herrmann and Ursel Hermann, stage directors
Karl-Ernst Herrmann, set, costume, and lighting designer

Recorded live at the Teatro Regio di Parma, 9, 13, 15 October 2007

Bonus:
- Introduction to La Traviata

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: 133 mins (opera) + 11 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 1

The places visited include St Petersburg, Peter the Great's new westward-looking capital, and the traditional capital, Moscow. In Ukraine we see Odessa with the famous Potemkin Steps and something of the surrounding countryside of a region that for long offered holiday resorts to those living in Moscow or St Petersburg.