Classical Music

PONCHIELLI UDOVICH; F. LBAO; A. PROTTI; N. SCOTT; MIGNON DUNN; CARLO FELICECILLARIO LIVE 1960 LA GIOCONDA

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France.

Umberto Giordano’s four-act opera La cena delle beffe is adapted from a 1909 play of the same title by Sem Benelli, who also wrote the libretto for the opera. Set in Florence, the opera follows the rivalry between Giannetto Malespini and Neri Chiaramantesi, and ends with Neri’s descent into insanity. Featuring the Orchestra Sinfonica di Piacenza conducted by Gian Paolo Sanzogno, this recording was taken live at the Teatro Giordano, Foggia, December 1988.

Edmea (1886) is Catalani’s third theatrical opera. After the success of Dejanice (1883), Catalani started to look for a new libretto. Unable to convince Boito, attracted into Verdi’s orbit, he made do with Antonio Ghislanzoni, who had been resting for at least fifteen years on the laurels from the triumph of Aida. The poet gave the maestro the ready-made libretto of Edmea, which had bene written already for Salvatore Auteri Mazocchi and not set to the music. The libretto, drawn from a drama by Alexandre Dumas Jr., The Danicheff, is an unlikely story conceived in function of a prima donna in a state of lunacy, according to an operatic tradition revived in those years by Thomas heroine of Ophelia in Hamlet. Edmea is undoubtedly an attempt of the musician to please his audience with a relatively easy listening product, with emphasizing the vocal score, pushing it toward the extreme notes; in particular the tenor’s part is not only sharp but also kept more than due in the theatrical zone of the register passage. The main interest of the opera is in the orchestra, often splendidly used with very subtle sensibility for aims that exceed by far a mere elaborated support to singing. The orchestra language is always careful, present, alive and consistent, elegant and varied with languors and succen excitements. The musician from Lucca show his unmistakable expressive signature and succeeds to make himself unforgettable.

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Italian composer Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948) is best known for his comic operas, and his works based on plays by Carlo Goldoni, one of which is featured on this recording. Il campiello is a three-act opera based on the comedy of the same name penned for the Venietian Carnival by playwright, Carlo Goldoni. The work is influenced by Mozart, and is referred to as a commedia lirica. This recording is performed by the Orchestra Regionale Filarmonia Veneta, under the direction of Stefano Romani.

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This is not simply a recording of Norma as staged in January 2018 at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa. Its real value is that it is the superb conclusion to the career of Mariella Devia, one of the finest Belcanto singers of our time, which makes the present recording an ideal artistic testament that pinpoints Mariella Devia's total eminence at the end of a long, hard-won career. That career began officially 45 years earlier as Lucia di Lammermoor at the Toti Dal Monte Competition in Treviso in 1973- a role in which Devia would become the standard by which others would by judged. At the beginning of her career, Devia had to emigrate to the USA. Thrown in at the deep end, Mariella Devia’s professionalism proved that this emerging young Italian was a force to be reckoned with. She got her Italian break in 1984 with Rossini’s Adelaide di Borgogna. Mariella Devia took the step toward Norma in 2013 in Bologna. She proved not only that she could carry the role from start to finish with no hint of loss in consistency but that her class was intact throughout. Her one-of-a-kind Norma achieved impact mainly through her singing, and her approach to expression prized the intimate and the subtly incisive over all-out hyperbole. Over the next five years, she consolidated the role even as she cut back on public appearances, performing it more than any other part. The results heard on the present recording speak for themselves.

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Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

To understand La leggenda di Sakuntala means remembering that it is more of a mysterium than an ordinary opera, which is why, after seeing a performance in Bologna, Fritz Reiner pronounced it "the Italian Parsifal". Of course, the religious atmosphere pervading Sakuntala is pagan - which is hardly surprising, given it's setting - and it's subject is not redemption but the power of love. Alfano used the poem by Kalidasa (5th century BC), also admired by Goethe and Wagner. Those musicologists who claim it is only of modest quality cannot even begin to appreciate the genius it required to combine conciseness with first-rate words and music in a score for orchestra and choir that is a model of it's kind. The most impressive aspect of this masterpiece is the way it employs motifs and themes with the same profundity and refinement found in Wagner's own approach and in it's development by Strauss. The melodies which the characters sing are almost always slow, somewhere between the ecstatic and the dreamlike, while the atmosphere varies from the solemnly oriental to the ethereal. This release is the first official recording of the work.

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Considered an outlier in the history of the twentieth century operatic theater for her comparatively small discography, the Romanian soprano Virginia Zeani was nonetheless internationally acclaimed for her performances during a career of over twenty years, with her extraordinary stage presence and strikingly golden coloratura voice. The third CD of the collection "Il Mito dell'Opera" is dedicated to Zeani and features the arias from the roles that were a prominent part of her repertoire. From her signature role, Violetta of La Boheme which marked her 1948 debut through the Verdi heroines which allow the full bloom of Zeani's acting and singing abilities this collection is a valuable addition to the operatic diaspora providing vivid insight into the singer who influenced many of the generation that followed including Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Angela Gheorghiu among others and was deeply respected by her peers which included Maria Callas and Dame Joan Sutherland.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music