Bongiovanni
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Massenet: Marie-Magdeleine (Live)
Massenet: Ève
La gioia della danza
Bach: Toccate e fughe
DON QUICHOTTE
Steffani: La lotta d'Hercole con Acheloo / Greco, Italian International Orchestra Baroque Ensemble
Candia 1669: Venetian, Greek, Ottoman & Sephardic Music at t
Nicola Vaccaj: Giulietta e Romeo
Cacciando per gustar: cacce e madrigali del Trecento Italian
Verdi, Mozart, Puccini: Arie da Opera / Chuanyue Wang
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.
Monteverdi: L'incoronazione Di Poppea / Bardazzi, Ensemble San Felice [2 CDs]
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.
Donizetti: Cristoforo Colombo And Chamber Works / Antonucci, Orchestra Giovanile Di Savona
Works for Bassoon & Strings
Organi Storici del Basso Friuli
Leoncavallo: Pagliacci (Recordings 1954)
Perti: Messa a 8 voice / Vartolo
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.
MUSIC AND LITURGY IN 14TH- CEN
Puccini: La Boheme / Tebaldi, Poggi, Ausensi, Neri, Rapalo
puccini tebaldi; gianni poggi;manuel ausensi;nedda rovero;guilio neri;alberto albertini; nov. 1954 bacelona live la boheme
Il mito dell'opera: Pier Miranda Ferraro
Donizetti: La Romanziera e L'uomo Nero
| 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). |
Donizetti: Elvida
| 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: Le gare generose / Stefano, Giovanni Paisiello Festival
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.
French Opera Arias
Cavalli: Il novello Giasone (Live)
Mascagni: Messa di Gloria / Ivanov, Candia, Callegari, The State Philharmonic Orchestra
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.
