Pierre Audi's Monteverdi Cycle Box Set

Includes:

L'INCORONAZIONE DI POPPEA
Cynthia Haymon, Brigitte Balleys, Michael Chance, Claron McFadden, Heidi Grant Murphy, Ning Liang
Les Talens Lyriques / Christophe Rousset

IL RITORNO D'ULISSE IN PATRIA
Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Graciela Araya, Toby Spence, Jaco Huijpen, Christopher Gillet, Brian Asawa
Baroque Ensemble / Glen Wilson

L'ORFEO
John Mark Ainsley, Juanita Lascarro, Michael Chance, David Cordier, Mario Luperi, Brigitte Balleys
Tragicomedia and Concerto Palatino / Stephen Stubbs

PLUS BONUS DISC:
IL COMBATTIMENTO DI TANCREDI E CLORINDA
Lorna Anderson, Maarten Koningsberger, Adrian Martin
ASKO Ensemble / David Porcelijn

Picture format: NTSC 16:9 Anamorphic
Sound format: DTS Surround / LPCM Stereo
Region code: 0 (All Regions)
Menu Language: English
Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch
Running time: 9 hours 30 minutes

Extras:
Each opera has an insightful introduction, directed by Roeland Hazendonk, featuring interviews with Pierre Audi, the musical director and members of the cast.

* Opus Arte is proud to present Pierre Audi's profound and refined productions of Monteverdi's opera masterpieces from the Amsterdam Muziektheater as a complete 9.5 hours box set, which explores the depths of human emotions in compelling music drama. The brilliant cast of the beautifully styled, evocative L'Orfeo, under the sophisticated musical direction of Stephen Stubbs, includes John Mark Ainsley, Michael Chance and David Cordier. Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria features Anthony Rolfe Johnson and Graciela Araya, both commanding and very moving under Glen Wilson's transparent and inspired musical direction. In L'incoronazione di Poppea Christophe Rousset and the musicians of his Les Talens Lyriques lead an all-star cast, including Brigitte Balleys, Cynthia Haymon, Claron McFadden and Dominique Visse, together reaching great heights in a highly evocative production. As a bonus disc, this box set includes the previously unreleased Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, starring Lorna Anderson and Maarten Koningberger, with the ASKO Ensemble led boldly by David Porcelijn.

R E V I E W S

"Strikingly staged, beautifully sung." -- New York Times

"A masterpiece of controlled timing and patience." -- Gramophone

"This is opera as music drama, and an experience not to be missed." -- New York Post

For many, the Christmas holiday season would be incomplete without the resounding drum roll and trumpet fanfare that opens Bach's "Oratorium auf die Heilige Weynacht" ("Oratorio for the holy Christmas"). Ever since it was first performed by the Thomaskantor between Christmas Day in 1734 and Epiphany 1735 in Leipzig's two main churches of St. Thomas and St. Nikolai, Bach's six part musical masterpiece has become a cornerstone of the city's identity and musical heritage. The performance presented here, led by Bach's 17th successor Gotthold Schwarz together with the Thomanerchor and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, features a lineup of renowned soloists, enabling one to experience the festive grandeur of what many consider the epitome of Christmas music in it's original setting. "Gotthold Schwarz transforms this into a Christmas Oratorio that is far more than a sum of it's parts... his musical rhetoric avoids cheap gimmicks and vain showmanship." (Peter Korfmacher, LVZ)

Country boy Nemorino is determined to win the haughty Adina's heart, but she refuses to give him the time of day. Can Doctor Dulcamara's so-called 'elixir of love' work it's magic? Conductor Sesto Quatrini makes his house debut, as does soprano Nadine Sierra in the role of Adina. She is joined by Liparit Avetisyan, Boris Pinkhasovich and the incomparable Bryn Terfel as the genial wheeler-dealer Doctor Dulcamara.

Le nozze di Figaro is Lorenzo Da Ponte's and Mozart's first of their three jointly created operas about attempts at interpersonal relationships: a turbulent comedy with erotic entanglements, which was not a harmless comedy even in Mozart's day. Director Martin Kusej moves the drama of love and jealousy to a mafia-like urban milieu where conflicts are fought out with pistols. Young French conductor Raphael Pichon, "original sound expert" (Der Tagesspiegel) and for the first time on the podium of the Wiener Philharmoniker, leads a young ensemble of singers around clan boss Almaviva ("vocally flawlessly brilliant: Andre Schuen", Hamburger Abendblatt). "Kusej's staging is musical, Pichon's conducting theatrical; the two work together to a degree that is far more rare than it should be. Every detail has been carefully thought through, and the symbiosis is breathtaking." (Financial Times) "Martin Kusej's new Figaro is slick, dark and grimly entertaining." (Financial Times) "One will rarely, if ever, hear 'Le nozze di Figaro' so well balanced on stage, with such a homogeneous ensemble of such class, with such a precise Mozart sound." (Frankfurter Rundschau)

Part of Royal Opera's Britten centenary celebrations � 'Susan Bullock is an awe-inspiring Gloriana... Toby Spence, as Essex, has regained all his pristine vocal lustre' The Independent � 'Director Richard Jones... staging... is both moving and surprising... ' The Daily Telegraph � Extra features: Inside Rehearsals, Gloriana Behind the Scenes, cast gallery.

The present album is another in a series of albums featuring works by Andrzej Dziadekfor large instrumental and vocal-instrumental forces. Like the previous release in the series, it demonstrates a wide range of the composer's achievements in these genres. The album includes Poem for orchestra (1987), Concerto for violin and orchestra (1992), and Symphony No. 2 'Te Deum' (2000-2002). Arranged in chronological order, they give a cross-section of the com-poser's attainments achievements over a period of fifteen years. This is how the composer describes his music: "The style of my compositions is the consequence of my faith in the power of expression in music's fundamental elements: melody, rhythm, harmony. This is not to say that the impact of the music should be easy." Dziadek treats musical tradition as his source and has respect for it's refinement and identity. An ironic mix of styles and playing games with listeners are alien to him. In his distanced, intimate utterance, the composer builds a dialogue with long-gone conventions, evoking their various aspects with reverence.

Rusalka is one of the most beautiful Czech operatic works; extremely atmospheric, with an original fairy-tale libretto. It is characterized by the subtlety of the means of musical expression (especially the masterful instrumentation), perfection of the formal structure, as well as the nobility and originality of the melodic invention. Fascinated by the beauty of Antonin Dvorak's work, the Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz succeeded with a serious challenge - they conventionally integrated an entirely classical opera performance in a revitalized space of a modern city center, with it's difficult history, stretched out - what the replica of the Old Town Theatre Bridge suggests - between the two reluctant worlds, like the fairy-tale love of the title nymph and prince. The result is this breathtaking performance.

Blu-ray pressing. Paul Anka is known as the last great crooner. On this live release, Anka promotes his successful Rock Swings project by performing many of the tracks live alongside his own classics including 'Diana', 'My Way', 'New York New York', 'Put Your Head on My Shoulder' and more.

Love and duty collide and nations clash in Verdi's political drama, starring Elena Stikhina. In this new production, director Robert Carsen situates Verdi's large-scale drama within a contemporary world, framing it's power struggles and toxic jealousies in the apparatus of a modern, totalitarian state. Antonio Pappano conducts Verdi's glorious, monumental score.

The music of J.S. Bach's "St. John Passion", which the composer wrote for Holy Week in 1724, immediately after his appointment as cantor of St. Thomas's Church in Leipzig, still retains all its freshness and vitality nearly 300 years later, and is a true Baroque delight. The two main choruses "Herr, unser Herrscher" and "Ruht wohl, ihr heiligen Gebeine" form the beginning and culmination of a large-scale orchestral and vocal structure in which Bach reveals his absolute mastery of polyphony. Inwardly reflective chorales are as much interwoven into the events of the Passion as the haunting arias which comment on the biblical texts of the Gospel of St. John. Throughout this solemn Passion oratorio, there is a constant emphasis on Baroque musical magnificence. What makes this live recording of the concert version in March, 2015 so special? The fresh voices of the young and excellent vocal soloists, the regularly praised "astonishing three-dimensionality" and "crystalline clarity" of the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks under the direction of Peter Dijkstra and, of course, the renowned period instrument ensemble Concerto Köln.

To mark the centenary of the celebrated French cellist Paul Tortelier (born 21st March 1914), the BBC drew from their archives a selection of films and documents that spanned his whole career and testified to the exceptional rapport he enjoyed with Britain. The program “Paul Tortelier at the BBC” is here reproduced, and offers a portrait of one of the truly great cellists. (ICA Classics)

The 24 Caprices, as mentioned above, did not provoke any particular reaction in the European musical world when they were first published. At the moment, there are no known reviews in foreign press. It was only with Paganini’s European tour from 1828 to 1834 that they came back into the limelight and attracted the attention of young musicians such as Schumann and Liszt. Through the enthusiastic reception and transcriptions of these composers, they ended up exerting more influence abroad than in Italy, offering stimuli and suggestions above all to pianists, before and even more than to violinists (also because on the violin it would have been very difficult to go further, or even simply emulate what Paganini had written). Schumann transcribed and adapted as many as twelve of them for the piano, in the two collections Op. 3 (1832) and Op. 10 (1833); not content with this, in his last days he also wanted to add a piano accompaniment to the violin original.

Liszt also used five Paganini caprices for his Six Études d’exécution transcendante d’après Paganini. These piano etudes, published for the first time in 1838, were then revised by the author and reprinted in a second, drastically simplified version in 1851; the first edition was so difficult that only very few people were able to play it. Much more than the concertos for violin and orchestra - which are relatively traditional in terms of both formal arrangement and harmonic structure - it was the Caprices that received the greatest tribute from the Romantic musicians, who saw in them the sign and manifestation of a new and original will, of a force destined to upset the tranquil progress of musical things, wreaking havoc and introducing chaos into the order. In the Caprices the virtuoso and the composer go hand in hand from beginning to end; and in this inseparable unity of musical and instrumental suggestions they retain the deepest motivations for their lasting influence on the musical events of the nineteenth century.

Please note: this is a recording of spoken theatre with incidental music, not opera.

Mary, Queen of Scots, is taken prisoner and sentenced to death by her cousin Elizabeth, the Queen of England. But Mary remains a figure of light even inside her prison cell. She is able to count on her loyal followers. The result is an intrigue woven into the male-dominated fabric of politics and religion in which the protagonists are caught between love and the desire for power: a blame game couched in impressively clear language. “One of the best is Anne Lenk’s stylish and focused staging of Mary Stuart at Deutsches Theater Berlin. The cast is uniformly superb.” (New York Times) “Every one of the eight members of the ensemble that is involved in Anne Lenk’s detailed and timeless production rises to the challenge of the text. A powerful piece of conversational theatre.” (rbb inforadio)

Our world is wounded. All around us we see the cracks. And yet the world is beautiful and blessed in so many ways. This extraordinary work begins from the Beatitudes and responds with new poetry that sheds light on who among us might be in need of blessing. These texts, ancient and new, are woven into a colorful tapestry of music inspired by a variety of traditions, highlighting the universality of the human experience. TUVAYHUN creates an opportunity for performers and listeners alike to inspire and be inspired, to be blessed, and be a blessing.

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

Also available on standard DVD

Giuseppe Verdi
SIMON BOCCANEGRA

Simon Boccanegra – Leo Nucci
Jacopo Fiesco – Roberto Scandiuzzi
Paolo Albiani – Simone Piazzola
Pietro – Paolo Pecchioli
Amelia (Maria Boccanegra) – Tamar Iveri
Gabriele Adorno – Francesco Meli
Un capitano dei balestrieri – Luca Casalin
Un’ancella di Amelia – Olena Kharachko

Parma Teatro Regio Chorus and Orchestra
(chorus master: Martino Faggiani)
Daniele Callegari, conductor

Giorgio Gallione, staging
Marina Bianchi, stage director
Guido Fiorato, set and costume designer
Bruno Ciulli, lighting designer

Recorded live from the Teatro Regio di Parma, 23, 25, and 28 March 2010

Bonus:
- Introduction to Simon Boccanegra

Picture format: 1080i High Definition
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese
Running time: 137 mins (opera) + 11 mins (bonus)
No. of Discs: 1