Selections from the star tenor's early recital recordings, including music of Verdi, Puccini, Bizet, and more.

Be welcome, twilight hour! With these words, the song of the same name by Johannes Brahms welcomes the twilight. The special light and the mood that comes with it create space for a soulful experience that goes beyond earthly boundaries. Here we are already moving in the midst of it, there. between. We, Sofia Pavone and Hedayet Jonas Djeddikar, invite you there with us - for years we have been united in our work by a great passion for the art form of song. Interesting for us and very close to our own experience is the preoccupation with the concept of "in-between" - as German-Italians and German-Persians we each live between two cultures; this draws our attention especially to how many different kinds of in -between exist. Between day and night. / Between dream and reality. / Between life and death. / Between worlds. / Between you and me. What exactly is this in-between? Space? Time? Possibility? What lies outside the in-between seems limited, but within this dimension there is freedom, dissolution of boundaries and departure. In-between states, in-between worlds and in-between tones have always served as inspiration for artists in their confrontation with themselves, time, love and death: themes that can be found again in the art song, which combines linguistic-literary and musical means, and which show how, for poets and composers alike, the in-between is expressed in different ways.

In addition to many non-operatic compositions, he composed in all about a dozen operas, and didn’t lack for success in his lifetime, but today it is Francesca di Rimini almost alone for which Riccardo Zandonai (1883-1944) is best remembered internationally. This June, 1959 La Scala performance of a work with much to recommend in it has been considered by some in the critical establishment as the best Francesca on record. Conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni, the cast is headlined by the dynamic, moving and volatile Magda Olivero – still with us at 104 years old! - in the title role.

Classical Music