Nicola Fago was a composer and a teacher (he was a teacher of counterpoint and composition at the Sant'Onofrio Conservatory and at the Pieta de'Turchini, where his pupils included composers such as Leonardo Leo, Francesco Feo and Nicolò Jommelli) and had a leading role in the musical life of Naples in the late 17th century and the first half of the 18th century, that period known as the 'Austrian Viceroyalty' spanning from Francesco Provenzale to Alessandro Scarlatti, leading composers of his era. Il Faraone sommerso is the only one of the six oratorios composed by Fago between 1705 and 1711 whose music has survived; it has been preserved in two manuscripts, both hand-copied: one is held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, bearing the date 1709; the other in the Library of the Florence Conservatoire, held in the Basevi collection. The libretto has not survived and the name of the librettist is unknown; he was most likely a high-ranking prelate who adapted one of the many librettos of 'sacred dramas' dedicated to the episode of the liberation of the Jewish people from Egyptian slavery through the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. Even the time of composition is currently merely a hypothesis: if the date of 1709, as recorded in the Bodleian Library manuscript, is indeed the date of composition, the work was probably commissioned from Fago by Cardinal Francesco Pignatelli (Senise, 6 February 1652 - Naples, 5 December 1734) - a figure linked to the curia of Taranto - as part of a cycle of oratorios on biblical themes to be performed in the chapel of his palace in Naples during Lent that year.

Written for the bass Luigi Lablache, the tenor Giovanni David and the soprano Josephine Fodor-Mainville, Amazilia premiered on 6 July 1825 at the Teatro San Carlo In Naples and was well received, although the local press reported a 'brilliant opening, which the rest of the performance did not quite live up to'. Restaged the following year at the San Carlo, Amazilia was definitively a 'highly praised score'. In the same year, outside the San Carlo, it was also performed in Palermo and Milan. Amazilia was subsequently performed in Rome, again in Naples and Palermo, in Messina and in Livorno, either in the one-act version or the two-act version, both of which were published in reductions for voice and piano in 1831. Amazilia remains an opera that Pacini must undeniably have considered significant: he even named one of his daughters Amazilia, and the opera enjoyed great popularity as a source of popular arias. Almost all the pieces can be found incorporated into operas by other composers, and Pacini himself consented to the grand rondo from Amazilia being sung within Gli Arabi nelle Gallie. This practice continued for a long time, ensuring the success of pieces from Amazilia well into the early 1850s, thanks in part to certain performers' fondness for specific arias from the opera. Zadir's cavatina, for example, became a signature piece for the tenor Mario de Candia, who incorporated it-adapted to his own needs-into operas such as Rossini's La donna del lago and Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia. A few decades earlier, to give another example, Lablache introduced Cabana's cavatina into some performances of Rossini's Mose in Egitto in Paris. The French press still had Pacini's melodies ringing in their ears when, a few years later, they accused Bellini of plagiarism, claiming he had copied passages from Amazilia, which may well have had some influence on works such as Norma (1831). Even in the 20th century, Beverly Sills inserted the cabaletta 'Parmi vederlo ahi misero' into the 1974 New York production of Rossini's Assedio di Corinto, unaware of the aria's origin.

The common denominator of nineteenth-century Italian music was the search for freedom and the need to rework the absolute principles that had dominated society and musical culture, seeking models that were opposed to traditional patterns. However, this revolution was often influenced by sentimentality and creative ferment from beyond the Alps. Italy experienced it's Romanticism by identifying it with the fervent aspirations of it's national Risorgimento; it's field of expression was music, particularly melodrama, a Romanticism that was popular rather than elitist. It is logical that these ideals were also expressed by the organ, which at that time, together with the marching band, was widespread in every locality, while the orchestra was still the privilege of a select few in the big cities. The romantic organ in Italy opened up to the influence of melodramatic compositions, faded shadows of the forms made famous by the great opera composers. At the same time, some musicians were making an admirable effort to break out of the geographical and cultural boundaries of a politically fragmented territory. However, the composers' desire to adhere to the stylistic features of organ builders, as opposed to the blatant operatic taste of the public frequenting sacred places, appears noteworthy. The quality and quantity of Italian organ creativity attested to the nobility of the musicians' endeavours, even in comparison with the European international music scene.

Giacomo Puccini composed 16 chamber songs for voice and piano over a very long period, from the early 1880s to 1919. These pieces thus virtually follow the evolution of his creative career, from his early neoclassical influences to the more dramatic and passionate atmospheres of his mature period. They are small, refined gems that anticipate and reflect the Maestro's operatic lyricism; indeed, one of the main reasons for interest in these pages lies in their very close relationship with some of the most famous moments in Puccini's melodrama.

Featuring Gezim Mishketa; Elisaveta Martyrosian; Enrica Fabbri; Filippo Adami; Maurizio Lo Piccolo; Omar Montanari; Daivde Rocca; Massimo Pagnoni; Asia D’Arcangelo; Fabio Vichi.

Orchestra Sinfonica Carlo Coccia
Fabrizio Dorsi/Rosetta Cucchi, directors

NTSC All Region; Stereo, Dolby 5.1
Subtitles: Italian, English, Japanese
Running time: 85 minutes

ARRIGHETTO, A SENTIMENTAL FARCE
Madama Beritola, finding two goats on an island, having lost two sons goes to the Lunigiana: there one of her sons is with her Master and he sleeps with his daughter and is put in prison. Cicilia rebelling against king Carlo and the son recognized by the mother, marries the Master’s daughter, and finding his brother, in grand style they return. (Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, second day, sixth novella). Thus begins the Story of the novella from which Angelo Anelli tells us he took his libretto. It is the eternal edifying topos He who suffers may hope. Often in the past this Lombard poet as others before him had considered Boccaccio’s novelle as a mine from which to “extract subjects” in alternative to the noble French theatre, at the time much in vogue for this use. Suffice one title as example: Griselda, an oppressed married woman whose virtue finally triumphs over fate, taken from Apostolo Zeno but rewritten by Anelli in 1793. Obviously the story is semi-serious, even larmoyante, a genre halfway between tragic, comic and pathetic which at that time had become a favorite with audiences. It is precisely what the author so eloquently wrote down on the title page of the score: a “sentimental farce”.

The works of Alessandro Stradella (1639-82) form a bridge between the music of late Renaissance southern Europe and early Enlightenment northern Europe. Stradella wrote in all available genres, including, of particular importance here, the serenata, or love-song. “Qual prodigio” is essentially a dispute between two male lovers and a lady about the best way of winning a lady’s heart, with comic flavor. “Lasciate ch’io respiri, ombre gradite” is a pastoral dialogue between an Arcadian shepherd and his nymph. The instrumental Sonata for 8 Strings, Trumpet and Bass Continuo lies between.

Semiramide in villa was Giovanni Paisiello's first attempt at the comic genre known in Italian as metamelodramma, which made fun of the extravagances of singers, composers and impresarios and of the absurdities of the system behind the staging of Italian operas. From the outset, comic opera had made audiences laugh by parodying its serious counterpart, particularly the librettos of Metastasio, featuring "half-character" roles, so called because they cover several styles, or trivial ones. Thus opera buffa always contained segments, albeit varying in length and extent of parody, deriving from its serious counterpart and the metamelodrama would take this connection between the genres even further with a whole act consisting of a rehearsal for an opera seria. The sole source for the music of "Semiramide in villa" is the composer's own autograph score housed in the library of the San Pietro a Majella College of Music in Naples in two separate volumes: the frontespiece of the first carries the indication "Originale di Giovanni Paisiello 1771 Roma" in an 18th century hand.

Following the runaway success of Cavalleria rusticana in 1890 at the age of 27, Mascagni did not rest on his laurels. In just a few years, he completed no less than five operas, including Iris, premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome in 1898. Mascagni might well have taken for his own Puccini's famous quip, “Against everything and everyone, make a work from melody”. And in Iris it is melodic invention which shows the composer's genius at its greatest. A melody by Mascagni is usually long, smooth and Italian-sounding; and Iris is full-on melody all the way, particularly in such crowd-pleasers as Jor's Serenade, the “Hymn of the Sun” or the duet in Act II “Oh come al tuo sottile corpo s'aggira”, which includes the famous “Piovra”. Furtheremore, with a little effort listeners can identify what would be the various musical “numbers”. In Iris, Mascagni is almost obsessively attentive to recitative and his exemplary flexibility at times recalls the sublime "conversation style" "invented" by Puccini. The present production was recorded live at the Teatro Goldoni, Livorno, in December of 2017.

Musicians and critics realized soon after it's 1829 Paris Opéra premiere that Rossini's Guillaume Tell was a far-reaching masterpiece. And yet some of the features that made it so unique have militated against it entering the standard repertory. The 1992 critical edition made a "complete" Guillaume Tell, even an ur-Tell possible, but still not many companies have performed the work without substantial cuts. The first complete DVD release of the work's original version finds the Rossini in Wildbad Festival, celebrating it's 25th anniversary, performing Tell for the first time in it's entirety.

A 2012 live recording of Baldassarre Galuppi's "Il Filosofo di Campagna". Born on an island in the Venice lagoon, Galuppi was an intensely prolific and highly esteemed composer of the Venetian Baroque era. His works included sacred music, sacred and profane cantatas, instrumental works, oratorios and operas, many of which are comic. Among the latter, of particular importance are those born of his collaboration with Carlo Goldoni. The deeply 'Venetian' aspects of Goldoni and Galuppi together created a body of 18th century comic opera of which Il Filosofo di Campagna (The Country Philosopher) is arguably Galuppi's best known. With the Ensemble Barocco della Filarmonica del Veneto led by Fabrizio da Ros and a pan-European cast of young singers mount a lively production.