Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Starring Alessandro Corbelli, Giacomo Prestia, Marie Devellereau.

Musically active in his home region and subsequently in Munich, Rome, Paris, Turin Hanover and Düsseldorf, Steffani also enjoyed considerable success with opera in Hamburg and garnered academic esteem in London. At the court of the Elector of Mu-nich, he was a chamber musician and principal organist from his early youth until 1688. In Hanover at the court of Duke Ernest Augustus of Brunswick-Lüneburg he was then kapellmeister until 1710. Dubbed a “dramatic entertainment”, La lotta d’Ercole con Acheloo was about a third shorter as was the music, there was no subdivision into acts, the subject was mythologi-cal and the four characters were treated with almost equal importance. The precision-oriented recitatives and markedly confident arias – often in dance time- conform to the rhetoric and patterns governing the Italian style, although the instrumen-tal sections are also French in character – indeed, most of the Duke's orchestra were of French origin. This is readily apparent in the ouverture and especially in the three balli: in keeping with the structure of a divertissement, they are located between the drama sections which in turn recall the acts of the then-contemporary tragédie lyrique.

More than just the siege of a city on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, the Cretan war was an all-out war between the Muslim East and the Christian West lasting 24 years (1645-1669) involving the major players of the time: the Turkish Empire and her unquiet barbarian vassals from North Africa on one side and on the other a coalition consisting of the Republic of Venice, the Knights of Malta, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Papal States, France, Savoy and the Hapsburg Empire. The conflict brought the two major players - Venice and the Ottomans - to their economic knees. Lastly, a recent essay by Rumanian musicologist Nicolae Gheorghita had left us feeling perplexed that lack of evidence renders almost impossible an exact reconstruction of the musical repertoires in Crete under Venetian rule. However, quite a few clues emerged which enabled us to construct "an imaginary musical fresco", meaning a journey through the sounds of the Greek and Turkish traditions combined with the Venetian school of the mid-1600s. This ideal reconciliation of cultures and arts places such eminent figures of the western traditions as Francesco Cavalli and Giovanni Legrenzi alongside anonymous bare-bones Greek and Ottoman melodies which have come down to us orally or in transcriptions by Polish aristocrat Wojciech Bobowski, aka Ali Ufki Bey, or by the Moldavian prince Dimitrie Cantemir. It is worth remembering that without the pioneering work of these two Christian hostages, early music from the Ottoman court would today be ltitle more than a black hole.

Premiering to great success in 1825, the Naples based composer Nicola Vaccaj's Giulietta e Romeo (Romeo and Juliet) enjoyed a brief period of being actively performed before fading from active repertoire at least in it's entirety, arguably being overtaken by the better known Vicenzo Bellini's version. Interestingly enough, Bellini's score was based on a modified version of the same libretto used by Vaccaj but Bellini's greater public profile ensured that it would be his version that would become known. Oddly, as the years went by Vaccaj's version never left the memory of the best singers and a mongrelized version that borrowed from his score was added to Bellini's version, something that would otherwise happen rarely. This 1996 live concert performance recording that resurrects the entire intact version of Vaccaj's opera. With the Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana and Coro Lirio Marchigiano conducted by Tiziano Severini this restoring of the full opera as vaccaj had conceived it provides us a means to compare the various existing versions of this classic story

Classical Music

Audiences from the far east have always enjoyed opera. After the Japanese and the Koreans, who exported their musical glories since the 80s to Europe, now it is the turn of the Chinese, with a huge number of aspiring singers from that country studying at foreign Colleges of Music. Some twenty years ago, the name to conjure with was Warren Mok, a Hong Kong tenor tipped as Asia's answer to Pavarotti. Today, that moniker belongs to Chuanyue Wang an excellent tenor featured on this release, his very first. A grand slam in Chinese domestic vocal music competitions, Professor at the Central Conservatory of Music, San Francisco Opera signed singer, Chuanyue Wang has won first prizes in The International Vocal Competition of Seoul in Korea, the vocal competition Martini City of Mantova al Bibiena, the Chinese Culture Ministry's Wen Hua Competition, the 15th Young Singer CCTV Competition for Bel Canto, the Chinese Music Golden Bell Award, the 5th China International Voice Competition. Hewas also a participant in the Carlo Bergonzi Master Class, the Okazaki International Voice Master Class, the Brasov Opera House Training Program in Romania and the Schonberg Institute in Vienna.

L’incoronazione di Poppea is a milestone in the history of music and the high point of the early baroque. This recording avails itself of an international cast and period instrument ensemble including established performers and young talents from Italy, France, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Albania, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico, China, Mongolia and Korea. Conductor Federico Bardazzi has analyzed the expressive aspects of the score so that the music would bring out the nature of the characters and has worked on the variety of tone colour available in the basso continuo associated with the “affetti” throughout the opera and hence the association of particular instruments with the main characters. The instrumental arrangements are highly diversified, ranging from sopranino and guitar, through passages for strings only to exuberant tutti sections with percussion. A hallmark of Bardazzi's approach to performance of 17th century repertoire is the interaction of treble instruments with voices in choral numbers, duets, versified pieces and airs and also foregrounding those instruments in certain sections of the opera identified with a given character. The many tone colours of this broad palette valorize the instrumental writing in the vocal numbers, which is in keeping with the dictates of Monteverdi's seconda prattica.

The available information concerning Colombo, ossia La scoperta dell'America is dubious. Various hypotheses have been put forth in the last years, including the suggestion that the work is a fragment of an unfinished opera composed on a text by Felice Romani. The most recent research, however, seems to support the theory that the composition was originally conceived as a scenic cantata, that is, a cantata which was destined for the stage. This genre, quite in vogue in the first half of the century, usually served to celebrate a particular event (royal birthdays and weddings, state visits, illustrious funerals, various commemorations). For these occasions, the composer on hand would be called upon to provide his patron with an undemanding work designed to highlight the vocal prowess of one or more soloists, but without particular aesthetic aspirations, in light of its "disposable" nature. Colombo, cantata for baritone, chorus and orchestra, was first staged at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples on 25 April 1838. It was part of a larger spectacle including dances and operas scenes by various authors and starred the singer Paul Barroilhet, who had successfully impersonated many of Donizetti's roles. The poetry - perhaps attributable to Donizetti himself, who had been his own librettist on more than one occasion - are not unlike those typical of an opera libretto. They establish a veritable dialogue between the soloist (Christopher Columbus)and the chorus (the sailors of his ship), and are complete with stage directions aimed at an actual theatrical performance in costume (see, for example, the opening: "The sailors are lying on the ground and others are standing in great distress"; and toward the end: "Colombus runs to see the land, then kneels down and remains in this position, thanking the heavens, until the cabaletta"). The version reproduced in this release is based on the autograph manuscript of the cantata preserved today in the San Pietro a Maiella Conservatory Library in Naples.

Until the middle of the 1700s the bassoon suffered from a series of technical limitations that retarded it's appreciation until new improvements allowed the classical bassoon (to distinguish it, as we do today, from the baroque instrument) to emerge as a fundamental instrument of ever more complex orchestras. The Ensemble Devienne and bassoonist Massimo Martusciello's new Bongiovanni release features a program of bassoon chamber works by four composers, one from the Classical era (Devienne), an early-Romanti (Danzi) and two 20th c. modernists, Jean Fran�aix and Roberto Molinelli.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The eight-voice Mass in D major which Giacomo Antonio Perti wrote in 1683 may be considered a typical example of music used during a solemn celebration in the Bailica of San Petronio in Bologna. The Basilica was one of the most important institutions of its time, being known for its acoustics (which result from its vastness) and for its tastes and tendencies toward excellence: more than a hundred performers were employed during major occasions. During Perti’s long term as music master of San Petronio, the institution experienced its most mature period, enjoying performances by instrumentalists, singer and composers of the highest quality. Perti’s mass reflects the traits of the mature language of the Baroque. Sections of the mass are written in an imitative-counterpoint style, inc ertato style, and in solo style. This youthful work was later reworked by the composer. The performance on this album was recorded live in the Basilica of St. Petronio; the performers were placed in the choir stalls (which took up the entire presbytery) just as the composer had indicated in the original score.

Classical Music

puccini tebaldi; gianni poggi;manuel ausensi;nedda rovero;guilio neri;alberto albertini; nov. 1954 bacelona live la boheme

Classical Music

The libretto for La Romanziera e l’Uomo Nero was inspired by two plays performed in Paris in the 1820s: L’Homme Noir by Eugène Scribe and Jean-Henry Dupin in 1820 and Le Coiffeur et le Perruquier, also written by Scribe in collaboration with Mazères and Saint Laurent, in 1824. By basing the opera on these plays the composer created a divertissement of the Italian querelle genre, both classical and romantic.The libretto is a satyr of the sentimental-romantic daydreams which were so fashionable at that time and takes places in the poetic world of the young Antonina, who dreams of an ideal life with an non-existent “uomo nero”, the mystery man. La Romanziera e l’Uomo Nero is an “ambiguous” and complex work: it is ambiguous because it lacks a clear and decisive characterization in a comedic sense; that is to say, a clearly defined plot, complete with all the typical ingredients of a traditional opera buffa, and a precise outline and structure in this direction, from both a dramaturgical and musical point of view. It is complex because it is full of recollections and inventions, which are introduced and developed predominantly through a contrapuntal approach (all scenes invariably call for more than one soloist).

A one-act opera, Elvida is a short “dramatic action” which in effect “has nothing historical”, as is stated in the libretto’s “topic”, it didn’t take inspiration from any drama, short novel, or previous texts by others, inventing everything and almost preferring probabilities to the truth. Closely following the instructions received, Donizetti didn’t even compose a symphony or prelude and accepted the frugality of recitative; in the manuscript, he left no sign of the tenor’s aria, the one intended for Rubini, with which he counted on pleasing the public, because he hadn’t time to write it and therefore missed the opportunity, or maybe because (as was the practice with parody, of composers borrowing from their other works, and use of “trunk” or “suitcase” arias) he didn’t write anything new, leaving the famous Rubini to insert an aria he liked (which the composer obviously liked too). Nonetheless, the 29 year-old musician committed himself body and soul to the manner, the “Rossini-ism” and the style of his maestro Mayr; and in fact sketched a small, clear and accurate score, perfectly suited to the singers’ personalities and never forgot the art of writing, the proper arrangement of the parts, classical singing and melodic invention.

Paisiello wrote the music for Le gare generose to be premiered at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples in the spring of 1786. The near-total absence of gags and slapstick routines plus the constant tension experienced by Bastiano and Gelinda who are on the run from alleged debts under false identities, suggest this opera belongs to the semiserio genre. This opera features middle-class characters rather than the usual aristocrats. Paisiello’s score features the arsenal of comic devices he would later employ in La Scuffiara or La Molinara. Music closely reflects the action on stage: in the duet for Bastiano and Gelinda “Scopa, scopa, netta e spazza”, what the violins play resembles the broom sweeping while the couple quarrel; it also reflects the physical nature of the characters and the images in the sung text by employing humorous madrigal-like devices – thus phrasing that rises and falls depicts butterflies in the first aria for Berlicco or a bee in the aria for Gelinda. In the Andante con moto of Finale I when the couple pretend to work while eavesdropping on the conversation between Dull and Berlicco, the orchestral figures at the beginning are intended to resemble the actions “rassettar” and “scopettar”, after which the musical emphasis shifts from action to emotional state – in this case, growing anxiety. Although Gare generose is a strange combination of the comic and the serious, it was remarkably successful. The success of the opera lasted until 1800 on the European circuit and with 37 different stagings, Gare generose is Paisiello’s twelfth most-performed opera.

� A 2011 concert performance by Italian mezzosoprano Sonia Ganassi singing French arias of Bizet, Gounod, Massenet, and others. � Conductor Carla Delfrate leads the Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana. � Recipient of the Italian Abbiati prize in 1999, Ms. Ganassi has appeared in many of the world's major opera houses, and is scheduled to appear with the Vienna State Opera as Jane Seymour in Donizetti's Anna Bolena during the 2013/14 season.

Classical Music

The Messa di Gloria belongs to the period before Cavalleria Rusticana: the lack of a choral or a fugue as well as the simple, almost ingenuous tonalities reveal the dominance of the operatic style over the religious one. Only a careful listening can disclose in the operatic melodies of the Messa di Gloria some kind of references to church music. Echoes of Guglielmo Ratcliff can be heard in the Gratias, and the Incarnatus clearly recalls Turiddu’s “resta abbandonata” from Cavalleria. Before a modern audience the Messa, made of “pray, all love and passion”, as the composer described it, still retains its character. The lyrical element, vehement in the Gloria or tender in the Elevazione, is soaked with Mediterranean feelings, like in a deep and touching popular songs.