Saving the imagination. This was one of the secrets of good composition (“sparing the imagination and conducting a piece with a few ideas”) according to Donizetti. Indeed, this economy of invention proved especially effective in chamber music, particularly in its noblest formation: the string quartet. This second box marks a further step towards the recording of the complete opera released by the strings of the Mitja Quartet.

The Mitja Quartet was founded in 2008 by four musicians from Naples, Cosenza, Potenza and La Serena (Chile). The ensemble was formed in the most prestigious academies in Europe (the Fiesole Music School, the European Academy of the Quartet of Florence, the W. Stauffer Academy of Cremona, the Pro Quartet Academy of Paris, the Jeunesse Musicale Deutschland of Weikersheim, the International Piano Academy Incontri col Maestro di Imola), studying with internationally renowned musicians and ensembles, such as the Artemis Quartet, the Alban Berg Quartet, the Casals Quartet, the Kuss Quartet, the Cremona Quartet, Antonello Farulli , Andrea Nannoni and Alfred Brendel.

Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore is a melodrama giocoso in two acts and has remained one of the world’s most popular and often performed operas. Nemorino is in love with Adina, who is indifferent, but eventually falls for him, helped by the huckster Dr Dulcamara’s elixir (in reality, cheap red wine). This performance restores cuts and is heard in full, as Donizetti intended, played on original instruments of the time at the original pitch. This allows one to hear more fully how he turned a traditional opera buffa into a masterpiece of characterization and theatrical power.

Star tenor Javier Camarena makes his Pentatone debut with Signor Gaetano, together with Gli Originali under the baton of Italian opera specialist Riccardo Frizza, presenting a carefully-curated exploration of Donizetti’s greatest tenor arias. Besides famous excerpts from L’elisir d’amore, Don Pasquale and Roberto Devereux, this project focuses on hidden gems from rarely-recorded works such as Betly, Maria de Rudenz and Il giovedì grasso. Camarena and Frizza’s exceptional sense of style is enhanced by the period instrument playing of Gli Originali. The recording took place at the Teatro Donizetti in the composer’s hometown Bergamo, as part of the yearly Donizetti Festival, of which Frizza is the musical director.

Javier Camarena is one of the most in-demand tenors of his generation, and one of the world’s leading bel canto specialists. Riccardo Frizza frequents major opera houses, was awarded the Best Conductor prize at the International Opera XXI Awards, and returns to Pentatone after having featured on The Three Queens (Donizetti) with Sondra Radvanovsky and Lyric Opera Chicago (2022). Gli Originali was founded within the context of the Bergamo Donizetti Festival, and aims to revive the sound world of early nineteenth-century opera with period instruments and a historically-informed approach.

In this release, clarinetist Aldo Botta wanted to give his contribution in the popularization of solo clarinet pieces. It is a tribute to international renowned artists as well as others lesser-known, who have composed little musical masterpieces from both past and present literature. Some of them are from our own time, artists who are currently working on astonishing musical productions as clarinetists, performers and teachers. Their compositions – here available for the listener – all have a single common characteristic, which is the desire to convey the love for a very noble instrument: the clarinet.

A New Yorker Notable Recording of 2022!

On her second solo album Lisette Oropesa has combined two of her greatest loves, the French language and Italian bel canto. This recording with the Dresdner Philharmonie under the baton of Corrado Rovaris showcases the variety of lesser-known and more popular works by Rossini and Donizetti, featuring arias that contain coloratura, lyricism, drama, heightened emotion, and even comedy. Star soprano Lisette Oropesa made her Pentatone debut with Ombra Compagna, Mozart Concert Arias in 2021, and sung the title heroine in a complete recording of Verdi’s La Traviata, also released on the label in 2022. The Dresdner Philharmonie was involved in that same recording, and has also participated in several other recordings released by Pentatone, such as Weber’s Der Freischütz (2019), Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, Puccini’s Il Tabarro (both 2020) and Beethoven’s Fidelio (2021). Conductor Corrado Rovaris particularly excels in bel canto and verismo repertoire, and makes his Pentatone debut.

REVIEW:

Oropesa's very first notes here, from Le Siège de Corinthe, are warm and pleading, the tone round and full–and utterly beautiful. As the voice rises, it doesn’t lose texture. The coloratura is close to flawless, as is her pitch. The roulades and runs are so fierce in the Rossini selections that, let’s face it, a touch of hesitation is to be expected and it is just that–a touch.

This is very difficult music–just think of how few recital CDs have included these two scenes. The necessary legato, the sadness, the darkening of the tone, and the purposeful use of vibrato are rare indeed; there is a true musician in the house.

Mathilde’s aria from Guillaume Tell is sure-fire. She manages it beautifully, the start of each phrase knowing full well the direction in which it’s going, the breath control natural. “Salut à la France” is divine: carefree, joyous, full of perfect downward scales and staccatos, and capped with a fine E-flat.

More than anything else, you come away from this recital with the realization that Oropesa and, indeed, the Dresden Philharmonic and conductor Corrado Rovaris, have fashioned a warmhearted, stylistically impeccable look at French bel canto, frequently overlooked. There’s nothing hackneyed here, and no ear fatigue listening to a high solo voice for 65 minutes...what a fine disc!

-- ClassicsToday (Robert Levine)

Donizetti went to Paris for the crowning achievement of his career. He composed a set of highly inspired songs and duets based on French and Italian texts, three of which were transcribed for piano by Franz Liszt in 1838.

One of the prolific Gaetano Donizetti’s lesser-produced masterworks, Poliuto, originally banned from production in Italy in the late 1830s only to return a decade in a French translation, is a story of religious persecution, punishment and marital faithfulness. This live, Antonino Votti conducted 1960 La Scala, Milan performance’s eye-watering, jealousy-inducing cast features Maria Callas, Ettore Bastianini in the vocal prime of his foreshortened career, Franco Corelli and Nicola Zaccaria. Returning to the active catalog, this release is a direct transfer from the master tapes.

Classical Music

Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor

Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor (1957)

Classical Music

Gaetano Donizetti's La Favorite was rather laborious in the making: it started out as a re-working of L'Ange de Nisida, to which the composer added parts taken from some other operas of his. The work, which was premiered at the Opéra of Paris, is set in 14th-century Castile and tells the story of the hapless love between Fernand, who has second thoughts about taking holy orders and leaves the monastery of Santiago de Compostela, and Leonor, the mistress of king Alphonse XI. It is an intimate drama, where history and politics are but the backdrop to the protagonists' passions and torments. Fabio Luisi's conducting is both measured in balancing the orchestral sounds, and personal, varied and vigorous. The orchestra is crystal-clear, neat in its accompaniment, neither subject to the voices nor prevaricating. Veronica Simeoni (Leonor), Celso Albelo (Fernand) and Mattia Olivieri (Alphonse) give excellent vocal and acting performances.

Donizetti: Emilia di Liverpool (Recorded 1957)

• Gaetano Donizetti's Ugo, conte di Parigi, premièred at La Scala i1832 with, among other storied names in the history of Italian opera, Giuditta Pasta, the creator of Bellini's Norma. • The Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Donizetti is led here by conductor Gaetano Fogliani, currently teaching orchestral conducting at the Conservatory G. Tartini in Trieste. • “A vigorous, intense opera, broad and ornate, dramatic and intricate, full of alliances and clashes” – Piero Mioli

Classical Music