VERDI Luisa Miller • Donato Renzetti, cond; Fiorenza Cedolins (Luisa); Marcelo Alvarez (Rodolfo); Leo Nucci (Miller); Giorgio Surian (Count Walter); Rafal Siwek (Wurm); Francesca Franci (Federica); Katerina Nikolic (Laura); Teatro Regio Parma O & Ch • C MAJOR 722904 (Blu-ray: 147: 00 + 10:00 bonus) Live: Parma 2007

& Introduction to Luisa Miller

Some commentators say Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Luisa Miller represents a transition in his work from the use of traditional musical forms seen early in his career to the more innovative style of his great middle period works beginning with Rigoletto and continuing with Il Trovatore and La traviata. That very well may be true, but another trend I can attest to is that with this opera Verdi’s music is getting noticeably better. Perhaps it is not consistently better throughout the opera, but certainly notable in the ensemble pieces, the finales of acts I and II and the extended duet which ends the last act. The arias for both tenor and soprano are also well conceived, if not as catchy as “Caro nome” or “La donna è mobile.” Verdi’s Luisa overture is one of the best from his pen until La traviata comes along. All of this fine music unfortunately is a bit wasted on another of Frederich Schiller’s rather dreary romantic tragedies, but the opera has proved popular enough to remain in the repertoire of houses both big and small, particularly on the continent of Europe,

The story is of the love between peasant Luisa and Rodolfo, son of the local count (although Luisa doesn’t know that at first). Their match is opposed by both fathers, who know it means trouble, and by the Count’s principal retainer, Wurm, who wants the girl for himself. Miller père challenges the Count after he insults Luisa, and Miller is thrown in jail. Wurm tells Luisa that in order to free her father she must write a letter denying her love of Rodolfo and saying she is in love with Wurm himself. She does so under duress and the father is freed, but Rodolfo takes the letter seriously amiss. He shows up at the Miller house to confront Luisa, who is honor bound not to explain her actions. Rodolfo, in despair, gives them both poison, so they can expire slowly together while singing a love duet. Rodolfo still has enough strength left to get the Wurm before he dies himself. Oh, and there’s a stray Countess around somewhere that Rodolfo is supposed to marry who gets to sing in a set piece or two.

The Parma production seen here from 2007 is a pretty good one. It is one of the sets in the Tutto Verdi project, and one of the better I have seen in that series. Tutto Verdi aims to record all of Verdi’s operas and his Requiem on high definition Blu-ray disc for release this year to honor the composer’s 200th birthday. Stage Director Denis Krief has done a clever job of providing stylized yet evocative sets of time and place which can be changed quite quickly and easily, sometimes in full view of the audience. The Millers’ humble village domicile, with wooden walls contrasts with a backdrop of geometric shapes meant to represent the Count’s much grander quarters. Video projections of swaying trees mark one or two of the outdoor scenes. Krief also uses the costumes to emphasize the difference between peasants and aristocrats so crucial to the story line. All the denizens of the Count’s estates seem to be wearing plush finery while the peasants are dressed as . . . well, peasants. Stage action is blocked quite naturally and the video direction provides a good account of it. Although a bit stylized, the whole production has a traditional feel which I enjoy.

Unlike some other Verdi operas, this one requires six solid principal singers to be performed really successfully. Here we get five, which is above average for the Tutto Verdi series, at least in the early operas. Only the bass of Giorgio Surian as the Count really disappoints. His heavy vibrato has developed a beat which he doesn’t control, and it disfigures any attempts at lyrical singing, even noticeable in the ensembles. It is refreshing to hear a really first class tenor like Marcelo Alvarez singing here. I have always liked Argentinean Alverez’s voice, he adds a touch of vocal class to any role, and here his dramatic involvement nearly matches his fine singing. Almost the same can be said of Fiorenza Cedolins in the lead soprano role of Luisa. Her voice is just a bit heavy for the lyric agility Verdi asks for in Luisa, but Cedolins still outsings a bevy of other sopranos cast in these early Tutto Verdi productions and her high range is very enjoyable. She can also act, and if she and Alvarez are a bit more than callow youths, they still provide a properly satisfying couple in their duets together. Then we come to 65-year-old Leo Nucci, who has been a staple in several of these C Major sets. Nucci performs quite well here as Miller, and for once he is not asked to sing more than his aging stamina allows. Mezzo Francesca Franci sings the Countess and bass-baritone Rafal Siwek the role of Wurm to round out the principal singers. Both perform well, although Siwek’s vocal tone sounds too similar to the other lower voices in some of the duets and ensembles. Donato Renzetti leads the Parma orchestra members in one of their better outings, and we video viewers actually get to watch them playing during the Overture for a change.

There are several sets of Luisa Miller available on DVD; I have only seen the one from Venice, recorded in 2006. That set features another strong soprano performance by Darina Takova; she rivals Cedolins on this set but only the Count of Alexander Vinogradov tops the group of male leads seen and heard here. The Venice production is also quite traditional, but I like the Parma sets and costumes better. In an earlier review Fanfare colleague Bob Rose recommends the 1979 Met production with Scotto, Domingo, Milnes, and Morris, which I have not seen, but despite the strong cast, that video technology is nearly 35 years old, and this C Major set is in breathtaking Blu-ray video and high definition sound. It is better than satisfactory, it is quite good, and I recommend it.

FANFARE: Bill White    

“ ... [Davis] on fine form here with the Bergen Philharmonic. The opening to the Corsaire holds no terrors for them ... The lesser-known overtures reveal their virtues well. Davis, abetted by an excellent recording, responds vividly to Berlioz’s pioneering orchestral textures...” - John Warrack – International Record Review – February 2013

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The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis here perform seven dazzling orchestral overtures by Hector Berlioz, a composer who excelled in blending literary and musical elements into highly energetic and personal creations.

The overtures are widely varied in mood, as are the operas from which they were drawn. Berlioz wrote his first large-scale instrumental composition, the Overture to Les Francs-juges, in 1826, the year in which he enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire. Even though the opera itself was never performed, Berlioz remained proudly affectionate of the overture, which was played all over Germany and Holland in its early days. His second opera, Benvenuto Cellini, followed in 1838; its music gave rise both to the opera’s overture and to the concert overture Le Carnaval romain which depicts its subject in brilliant colour through breathtakingly vibrant orchestration.

The comic opera Béatrice et Bénédict took its inspiration from Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing. The overture draws on an intense solo scene for Béatrice and adds elements of the cheerful banter that make up the story of the title characters’ playful courtship.

When Berlioz visited the Hungarian capital Pest in 1846, it was suggested to him that one way of winning the hearts of the audiences there would be to make an arrangement of the beloved Rákóczy March, which up until that point had been known only as a piano piece. Berlioz agreed, and on the very night before he left for Pest, he put together his own orchestral version of the piece. It was a resounding success when performed at his first concert, to the extent that Berlioz promptly included it in the large work on which he was working at the time: La Damnation de Faust.

Le Roi Lear, Le Corsaire, and Waverley have one thing in common: all are independent concert pieces that have been given the title overture as in many respects they do resemble opera overtures – but none is in actual fact connected to an opera. The composer here took his inspiration from literary works. Le Roi Lear, for instance, is a remarkable tone portrait of Shakespeare’s deranged king, full of energy and anger, while Le Corsaire may be loosely based on Byron’s The Corsair. Berlioz based Waverley on a novel of the same name by Sir Walter Scott, and the score bears a quotation in English: ‘Dreams of love and Lady’s charms, give place to honour and to arms.’ The contrast expressed so well in this simple quotation is equally evident in the music itself. Here the ‘dreams of love’ unfold in a long cello melody, which is repeated with richer orchestrations, before leading into the vigorous musical depiction of ‘honour and arms’. - Chandos

With Carlo Rizzi, Gordan Nikolic and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra Amsterdam, one of the most sought-after conductors, one of the best violinists and an absolutely top-notch orchestra got together for a TACET production. What an honour to be able to work with such artists! We have tried to apply the precision and painstaking detail from chamber music to this project as well. Carlo Rizzi brings out typically Ravellian details that frequently have the effect of being levelled out, e.g. the composed overtones. There will be some surprises in store for one listener or another. In all honesty: do you know what the saxophones in Bolero play a few bars before the end? Or when the first harp plays and when the second harp plays in La Valse? Not least, this production should offer something to the many old-fashioned crazy audiophiles, our beloved public, who still prefer a carefully produced sound carrier to a blurred or squeaky You Tube download. Whether the result is really worth more than merely another line in the table "Recordings of the Great Orchestral Works of Ravel" - that is up to the critics to decide. It's your turn! (Of course the recording is also being issued as an LP and in TACET Real Surround Sound.). Andreas Spreer

This recording includes an amazing vocal performance of Orlin Anastasov, recorded at the very impressive medieval stronghold of Tsaverets (Bulgaria). As Benjamin Lumley wrote in his memoirs, perhaps no other opera by Verdi was received more enthusiastically or won the composer more laurels than Attila.

After her triumphant Schumann recording, rising violin star Lena Neudauer returns to tackle the incredibly demanding violin works of Maurice Ravel. Accompanied by Paul Rivinius on piano and alongside guest cellist Julian Steckel, Neudauer presents rare and popular works alike, creating a true image of a master.

Also available on Blu-ray

Giuseppe Verdi ALZIRA

Alvaro – Francesco Facini
Gusmano – Thomas Gazheli
Ovando – Joshua Lindsay
Zamoro – Ferdinand von Bothmer
Ataliba – Yasushi Hirano
Alzira – Junko Saito
Zuma – Anna Lucia Nardi
Otumbo – Joe Tsuchizaki

Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento
(chorus master: Marco Medved)
Istituto Corale ed Orchestrale di Dobbiaco
Gustav Kuhn, conductor

Andreas Leisner, scenic concept

Recorded live at the Grand Hotel Centro Culturale, Dobbiaco, 13 and 15 September 2012, in a concert performance from the Alto Adige Festival

Bonus:
- Introduction to Alzira

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese
Running time: 107 mins (opera) + 10 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 1

Ravel orchestrated his piano pieces Alborada del gracioso and Pavane pour une infante défunte to great effect; the former gains in suggestive colour, and the latter evokes nostalgic pathos. Another orchestrated work is the Menuet antique, which is redolent of old French dance forms Rapsodie espagnole, Ravel’s first major orchestral work, shimmers with expectancy and bursts into Spanish dance rhythms, themes he pursued in Pièce en forme de habanera. His earliest orchestral work, the ‘fairy overture’ Shéhérazade, is all that remains of a planned opera based on The Thousand and One Nights. The famous Boléro, an ‘orchestrated crescendo’ of undimmed power, has proved one of the most popular works in all classical music.

This is an audio-only (i.e., with no video content) Blu-ray disc playable only on Blu-ray players.

Also available on standard CD

RAVEL Alborada del gracioso. Pavane pour une infante défunte. Rapsodie espagnole. Pièce en forme de habanera. Shéhérazade: Ouverture de féerie. Menuet antique. Boléro • Leonard Slatkin, cond; Lyon Natl O • NAXOS 8.572887 (67:37); NAXOS NBD0030 (Blu-ray audio: 67:38)


In the last issue, I found myself enormously impressed by Slatkin’s Berlioz Symphonie fantastique , so when I received his latest CD labeled Ravel Orchestral Works 1, I was expecting him to do as right by one French composer as he did by another. That must sound pretty silly, I know, but in the event, Slatkin doesn’t disappoint. He now presides over a French orchestra, but to listen to these performances, you wouldn’t know that it wasn’t the Philharmonic of London, Berlin, or New York. That’s very high praise for both the Lyon National Orchestra and for what Slatkin has achieved with the ensemble in so short a time. But it doesn’t necessarily make his Ravel special or more desirable than that by other conductors and orchestras.


Unlike Debussy, whose orchestral output is fairly limited, Ravel actually wrote a good deal of original music for orchestra, but no small volume of it is bound up in his early vocal and choral works, and is therefore not usually included in complete collections of scores that are exclusively for orchestra. But then any collection of Ravel’s purely orchestral works, which were originally conceived for orchestra, are mainly ballet and choreographed scores that can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and only one of them is on this disc— Boléro . But what of the other famous pieces included here?


Alborada del gracioso is the fourth movement from Miroirs , originally a suite for solo piano. It and two other numbers from the five-movement suite were subsequently orchestrated by Ravel himself. Pavane pour une infante défunte is a student piece Ravel wrote for solo piano in 1899 while under the tutelage of Fauré at the Paris Conservatory. Ravel orchestrated the Pavane himself, but not until 1910. Rapsodie espagnole was originally composed as a piece for piano duet in 1907, then orchestrated a year later. Ravel probably projected this to be an orchestral work from the start, but wanted to take his time working out the orchestration. Pièce en forme de habanera is, and was, as far as Ravel was concerned, a wordless vocalise for voice and piano. It exists in a number of instrumental arrangements—the present one is adapted for violin—none of which is by Ravel. Shéhérazade: Ouverture de féerie , like the Rapsodie espagnole , was originally sketched for piano, but intended for orchestra. It was destined to become the overture to an opera by the same name which Ravel worked on in 1898 but never completed. Menuet antique is another piece composed for solo piano, this one in 1895. Ravel did get around to orchestrating it himself, but not until 1929. And finally, Boléro . This is the one piece on Volume 1 of Slatkin’s Ravel survey, which, as far as we know, went straight to its orchestral form without passing through a piano version. Interestingly though, it made a backward migration to piano when Ravel subsequently produced two keyboard arrangements, one for two pianos and one for piano four-hands. The piece was commissioned by the famous dancer, Ida Rubinstein—she who played the saint in Debussy’s The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian and scandalized the Parisian archdiocese. It was bad enough to cast a woman in the role of a male saint, but a Jewish woman, and a lesbian to boot, went too far.


It seems that Ravel’s Boléro caused a flap of its own, but it wasn’t an ecclesiastical one. The work was wildly successful from its very first performance at the Paris Opéra in 1928. But not long after, Ravel and Toscanini got into a dispute over the conductor’s tempo when he led the New York Philharmonic in the piece in Paris during the orchestra’s European tour. The two men exchanged heated words backstage, Ravel criticizing Toscanini for taking the piece too fast and not following his indicated tempo. Toscanini is alleged to have replied, “When I play it at your tempo, it’s not effective.” To which Ravel shot back, “Then don’t play it.” I’m afraid I’m with Toscanini on this one. For me, Boléro can’t be played too fast, the faster the better. Much as I take pleasure in most of Ravel’s music and can appreciate Boléro ’s mechanics, it’s one of those few works, like Orff’s Carmina Burana , that induces in me a feeling of revulsion. So, by all means, get it over with as quickly as possible.


Those who prefer their Boléro drawn out will no doubt like Slatkin’s reading of it, but Ravel might have the opposite complaint he voiced to Toscanini. The score is marked 72 to the quarter note. I tested the current performance against my metronome and found that Slatkin begins at 67 and gradually speeds up, finally reaching 72 about 30 seconds from the end. But this is not what Ravel wanted; he was clear that he wanted a steady beat maintained throughout.


As indicated at the outset, this is a finely performed program of Ravel favorites. The Lyon orchestra has the full measure of this music in its DNA, producing the veritable kaleidoscope of colors, both bright and pastel, that Ravel calls for. And unless you’re a Boléro fanatic, I wouldn’t be too hard on Slatkin for his slight deviation from the composer’s explicit instructions. A conductor’s job, after all, is to offer an interpretation. The recording, too, is quite good, though not as dynamic as the Berlioz Fantastique I reviewed from this same source. I’m inclined to recommend this release, but as a nicety rather than a necessity, to those in the market for a new sampler of Ravel favorites.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Also available on Blu-ray

Giovanna d'Arco is based on Friedrich Schiller's tragedy The Maid of Orleans and deals with the life of Joan of Arc. But Verdi and his librettist Temistocle Solera departed from both Schiller and historical fact by turning Joan's father into the opera's powerful antagonist. Ever since its first performance in Milan in 1845, Giovanna d'Arco has been admired and loved for its emotionally affecting arias and thrilling choral writing.

Giuseppe Verdi
GIOVANNA D’ARCO

Carlo VII – Evan Bowers
Giacomo – Renato Bruson
Giovanna – Svetla Vassileva
Delil – Luigi Petroni
Talbot – Maurizio Lo Piccolo

Parma Teatro Regio Chorus and Orchestra
(chorus master: Martino Faggiani)
Bruno Bartoletti, conductor

Gabriele Lavia, stage director
Alessandro Camera, set designer
Andrea Viotti, costume designer
Andrea Borelli, lighting designer

Recorded live from the Teatro Regio di Parma, 2008

Bonus:
- Introduction to Giovanna d’Arco

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
Booklet notes: English, German, French
Running time: 128 mins (opera) + 10 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

Also available on Blu-ray

Based on a Romantic tragedy by Zacharias Werner, Attila is set in the 5th century AD. The opera takes as its starting point Attila’s plans to storm Rome with his army of Huns and the Roman’s attempts to prevent him. As with Nabucco and I Lombardi, Verdi spiced up the action with a number of patriotic choruses, guaranteeing that – against the background of the Italian movement for unification – the opera was a great success.

Giuseppe Verdi
ATTILA

Attila – Giovanni Battista Parodi
Ezio – Sebastian Catana
Odabella – Susanna Branchini
Foresto – Roberto de Biasio
Aldino – Cristiano Cremonini
Leone – Zyian Atfeh

Parma Teatro Regio Chorus and Orchestra
(chorus master: Martino Faggiani)
Andrea Battistoni, conductor

Pier Francesco Maestrini, stage director
Carlo Salvi, set and costume designer
Bruno Ciulli, lighting designer

Recorded live from the Teatro Verdi di Busseto, 2010

Bonus:
- Introduction to Attila

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
Booklet notes: English, French, German
Running time: 118 mins (opera) + 10 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

R E V I E W:

VERDI Attila • Andrea Battistoni, cond; Giovanni Battista Parodi ( Attila ); Sebastian Catana ( Ezio ); Susanna Branchini ( Odabella ); Roberto De Biasio ( Foresto ); Cristiano Cremonini ( Uldino ); Zyian Atfeh ( Leone ); Teatro Regio di Parma O & Ch • C MAJOR 721608 (DVD); 721704 (Blu-ray) (118:00 + 10:00) Live: Busseto 10/2010


Attila (1846) was Verdi’s ninth opera, preceding Macbeth by almost exactly one year. It had a slow start, but became quite popular through the 1860s, after which interest in it began to diminish. Though not again a repertory piece, it has had a number of modern revivals and there are a number of recordings of it.


Its libretto is a bit confused, almost certainly because the writer of the first part, Temistocle Solera, departed for Spain before he had finished and Francesco Maria Piave was recruited to finish it. Solera and Piave had almost opposing ideas of what an opera libretto was and so, what some have called the “oratorio” style of Solera ends in the more enclosed style of Piave. Its two principal characters, however, Attila and Odabella, his captive, wife, and assassin, are drawn with some force.


Briefly, the Huns arrive at the gates of Rome and Odabella, whose father the Huns have killed, is brought in and announces how brave she is and Attila, impressed, strikes off her chains and gives her his sword. The Roman general Ezio arrives and offers Attila the entire empire if he will just leave Rome alone. Attila refuses and we meet Foresto, who is leading a band of refugees from the Huns. This is the easy part, and it’s all in the prologue. After framing the situation and the characters, we might expect that there would be a series of actions which might cause something to happen. What we get is a series of arias and duets, with occasional choral support, in which the principals either talk about what they are going to do or bemoan the fact that things have gone badly. This dramatic stasis is brought to an end only just before the final curtain, when Odabella kills Attila. That leaves the music.


This is good Verdi. If it doesn’t have the edge of, say, Traviata , or the power of Otello , there are many good moments. Yet, one of the interesting things about it is that it is fairly even all the way through. Though each of the principals gets at least one big musical moment, there is none that overpowers the others, though Ezio’s lament over Rome comes close.


This production comes from the Teatro Verdi in Busseto, Verdi’s hometown. The theater was opened in 1868, but Verdi apparently never set foot in it. Though he gave money to finish its construction, he called it “small, indecent, and almost unusable.” Nonetheless, Toscanini conducted many of Verdi’s operas in it, and Riccardo Muti and Plácido Domingo have also led Verdi there. It has been thoroughly restored and is a shining jewel, with one huge drawback. It is absolutely tiny. Its main floor and three balconies can seat in total 300 people. How Franco Zeffirelli managed to put Aida into it in 2002, I cannot imagine.


As one can imagine, the space constraints on the stage are considerable, and the director, Pierfrancesco Maestrini, has opted for one high-tech solution, a bare stage with a bit of a hump on one side and films projected onto the screen at the back. For some reason, though, Attila makes his first entrance descending from the flies on a platter. There is almost no space to move around much and the singers mostly just stand, or recline on the helpful hump. Maestrini has one bizarre convention in the arias with cabalettas, during which the singer rushes off the stage after the first verse only to rush on again for the second. Oddly, perhaps just because the director cannot do much on this stage, he is forced to let the singers be singers.


It sounds as if I did not like this production, but that is not the case, for the singing is well done. If this is a sample of the current state of singing in provincial Italian opera houses, then opera in Italy is in good shape, indeed. Susanna Branchini is a fine and spirited Odabella and she always gets the fires going (and she has a lot of fires to keep going, which may be why she and not Attila is on the cover). The Attila of Giovanni Battista Parodi is good without being particularly exciting. Ezio has almost nothing to do, but his aria, “Dagl’immortali vertici,” is a fine one and Sebastian Catana was generously applauded. The conductor, Andrea Battistoni, kept the small orchestra moving along, though I wished there could have been a bit more energy now and then. All of this said, there was an evenness about this production that I appreciated.


This DVD is one part of a project called “Tutto Verdi,” apparently centered in Parma, to publish visual recordings of all of Verdi’s operas by the end of this (Verdi) year. It is of at least passing interest, therefore, to ask how many operas Verdi actually wrote. The surveys by Roger Parker and Julian Budden insist there are 28: The “Tutto Verdi” project asserts there are only 26. The disagreement comes over the status of Stiffelio , which Verdi reworked as Aroldo , and Jérusalem , his reworking for Paris of I lombardi . The project has apparently decided not to include Aroldo and Jérusalem (for both of which ArkivMusic tells me there is a DVD). As near as I can tell, of the 26, four have previously been reviewed here ( Ernani , James Miller, 29:6; Macbeth , Raymond Tuttle, 31:2; Otello , James A. Altena, 34:1; and Forza , Bill White, 35:6).


As I write, there are two other DVDs of Attila available, under Santi (Kultur) and Muti (Opus Arte), and one coming, under Sangiorgi (Dynamic). I have seen none of these. Of the CD versions, I rather like that under Muti (EMI), where Samuel Ramey brings Attila into his own. (NB: This is not the same performance as in Muti’s DVD.)


FANFARE: Alan Swanson

Francis Poulenc is perhaps the composer whose works come the closest to embodying the French esprit, a multivalent term referring to a special blend of brilliance, sensuousness, aestheticism, and above all Frenchness. This is music that is mirthful as well as serious, entertaining and demanding, and superficial as well as profound. It was thus that Francis Poulenc composed, he who called himself »Poulenc-Janus« in an allusion to the Roman god who had two faces and could simultaneously look this way and that. Poulenc’s music is often stamped by this ambiguity, and his chamber music for winds is the ideal repertoire for the cpo debut of an aspiring young ensemble from Denmark: the Ensemble MidtVest. This ensemble is formed by eleven musicians, enthusiasts as well as individualists, who are graduates of leading European and American musical institutions of higher learning, and some of them have repeatedly been honored with prizes. The ensemble was founded in 2002 and has earned a fine reputation for its creative programs, high artistic level, and constant questioning of the conventional concert form. Its core formation for string quartet, wind quintet, and piano promotes flexibility, variation, and rich color in the combination of instruments. The Ensemble MidtVest performs as a duo as well as a sonorous nonet. It is one of the five »basis ensembles« in Denmark.

- CPO

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

Also available on standard DVD

From the innovative and gorgeous "Tutto Verdi" project comes a chance to catch all the high points! "Tutto Verdi" includes arias from 20 Verdi operas. The selections hail from the best-known and loved productions like Aida, La Traviata and Rigoletto as well as lesser-known beauties, all in HD.

Giuseppe Verdi
TUTTO VERDI - The Complete Operas
(Highlights)
(Blu-ray Disc Version)

excerpts from:
Oberto
Un Giorno di Regno
Nabucco
I Lombardi alla prima crociata
Ernani
I due Foscari
Giovanna d’Arco
Attila
Macbeth
Il Corsaro
Luisa Miller
Rigoletto
Il Trovatore
La Traviata
I Vespri Siciliani
Simon Boccanegra
Un Ball in Maschera
La Forza del Destino
Falstaff

with:
Anna Caterina Antonacci
Barbara Bargnesi
Silvia Dalla Benetta
Daniela Dessì
Norma Fantini
Tamar Iveri
Nino Machaidze
Susan Neves
Dimitra Theodossiou
Sylvie Valayre
Svetla Vassileva
Marcelo Alvarez
Marco Berti
Francesco Demuro
Antonio Gandia
Carlo Guelfi
Ambrogio Maestri
Francesco Meli
Leo Nucci
Luca Salsi
Roberto Scandiuzzi
Vladimir Stoyanov

Parma Teatro Regio Chorus and Orchestra

Recorded live from the Teatro Regio di Parma

Picture format: 1080i High Definition
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Italian, English
Running time: 94 mins
No. of Discs: 1 (BD 25)

Also available on Blu-ray

From the innovative and gorgeous "Tutto Verdi" project comes a chance to catch all the high points! "Tutto Verdi" includes arias from 20 Verdi operas. The selections hail from the best-known and loved productions like Aida, La Traviata and Rigoletto as well as lesser-known beauties, all in HD.

Giuseppe Verdi
TUTTO VERDI - The Complete Operas
(Highlights)

excerpts from:
Oberto
Un Giorno di Regno
Nabucco
I Lombardi alla prima crociata
Ernani
I due Foscari
Giovanna d’Arco
Attila
Macbeth
Il Corsaro
Luisa Miller
Rigoletto
Il Trovatore
La Traviata
I Vespri Siciliani
Simon Boccanegra
Un Ball in Maschera
La Forza del Destino
Falstaff

with:
Anna Caterina Antonacci
Barbara Bargnesi
Silvia Dalla Benetta
Daniela Dessì
Norma Fantini
Tamar Iveri
Nino Machaidze
Susan Neves
Dimitra Theodossiou
Sylvie Valayre
Svetla Vassileva
Marcelo Alvarez
Marco Berti
Francesco Demuro
Antonio Gandia
Carlo Guelfi
Ambrogio Maestri
Francesco Meli
Leo Nucci
Luca Salsi
Roberto Scandiuzzi
Vladimir Stoyanov

Parma Teatro Regio Chorus and Orchestra

Recorded live from the Teatro Regio di Parma

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Italian, English
Running time: 94 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

The early 1870s saw Saint-Saëns driven by a constant desire to surpass himself, which led to several powerful compositions, including the Cello Concerto No. 1. His creative decisions—the expressive treatment of the solo part, the thematic concentration, the concise orchestral developments, the juxtaposition of contrasts, the lack of a traditional orchestral introduction, and the merging of the usual three movements into one—place this concerto in a class of its own.

When German cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen—a colleague of Tchaikovsky’s at the Moscow Conservatory who took part in the premieres of three of the latter’s string quartets—received the Variations on a Rococo Theme in 1877, which he had commissioned from Tchaikovsky, he immediately took it on tour.

Quickly realizing how deeply moving audiences found the third variation, “Andante” (they frequently applauded it), Fitzenhagen decided to rework the score by moving this variation to the end and rewriting certain transitions. Tchaikovsky was unaware of this until the work was published in 1889.

Although outraged, the composer let the publication stand, and Tchaikovsky’s original version would not be heard again before 1941; indeed, most cellists did not start playing the original version until the late 1970s.

Immensely influential, the remarkable Symphonie fantastique was composed while Hector Berlioz was suffering an intense and unreciprocated passion for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson. Its autobiographical tale describes a young musician’s opium-poisoned nightmares of jealous despair and fatal justice following the murder of his beloved. Berlioz wrote a second movement cornet solo into a subsequent revision of the score, here included as an optional extra. He wed his sweetheart actress but, recuperating in Nice, wrote Le corsaire after the final break-up of their marriage.

"Berlioz, to me, in terms of sheer orchestral invention, anticipates Mahler. If anything, he even surpasses him. So these are some of the things that characterise Berlioz: the extremes, the dynamics, the sound, the colours of the orchestra. Ravel was more about homogenisation. And I mean that in an entirely positive sense, because he’s taking the orchestral palette and really thinking very carefully about the essence of instrumental sonorities and how they go together." – Leonard Slatkin