Also available on Blu-ray

Simply superb in every way - unmissable.

A penniless poet, a young seamstress, and a lost key: Puccini’s passionate opera tells the story of a captivating romance set against the background of 19th-century Paris. The luscious score, with its soaring melodies and rich orchestration, brings to life the relationships between Rodolfo, Mimì and their friends, the painter Marcello and fiery Musetta. Acclaimed director Richard Jones stages a fresh and intelligent new production of one of the world’s most popular operas, conducted by The Royal Opera’s Music Director, Antonio Pappano. Extra features on this release include Antonio Pappano speaking about the music as well as a Cast Gallery. ‘‘A startlingly new production’’ (The Independent) ‘‘…fresh, beautiful, and intelligent’’ (The Daily Telegraph) ‘‘Car is so good at the sudden bursts of lyricism’’ (The Art Desk)

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REVIEWS:

Pappano is always terrific in Puccini. His pacing and attention to orchestral detail are superb and he draws highly sympathetic playing from his orchestra. Car is a lovely Mimì, with a simple charm to her Act I aria that immediately makes you love her.

– Gramophone

Simply superb in every way - unmissable.

– MusicWeb International

120 years after it's very first performance, which took place at Teatro Regio di Torino, La Boheme returns to the tradition-steeped Italian opera house. With director Alex Olle from La Fura dels Baus and music director Gianandrea Noseda the Teatro Regio presents a spectacular, up-to-date anniversary production. For Alex Olle, directing the opera for the first time, "La Boheme allows the young generation to get rid of everything that prevents them from flying, feeding only on their own vitality; the real hunger of the protagonists is the hunger for life. My production is set in a modern city outskirt. It is there where, in my opinion, the intellectual matrix of the future happens; in ugly, disreputable and poor places which are authentic. In this kind of environment, where life and art - as they did in Romanticism - belong to the survivors." "A triumphant youthful Boheme", in which the singers excel due to their naturalness. Giorgio Berrugi sings his Rodolfo "with a luminous timbre, in refined nuances" (La Stampa), perfectly matching "Irina Lungu's full-bodied Mimi" (The London Times). All in all, "this is theatre, this is life, this is passion" (Corriere della sera)

Puccini: Manon Lescaut

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Also available on standard DVD

Giacomo Puccini wrote what was supposed to be his last opera at a time where, riddled with disease and old age as he was, he felt like his own turmoil was reflected in the outside world: itself staggering, unsteady, overwhelmed and smashed by the chaos of European diplomacy. In spite of these obstacles, he persevered and worked until the very end of his life on this opera that he left unfinished but that proved to be a “way out” for him in many ways. Drawn from an ancient Persian epic from the 13th century, Turandot was indeed an excuse to escape into a new dramatic universe, one made of unexpected sounds and symbols. Here, in a world removed both geographically and chronologically from his own reality, he gave into the seductive powers of exoticism and eroticism, just as his own heroin Princess Turandot abandons herself to the mysteries of love and forgiveness. After twenty years of absence, Puccini’s Turandot was revived on the stage of the Teatro Real in a new production by American stage director Robert Wilson. One of the most important theatre and visual artist of our times, the director who gave life to Philip Glass’s Einstein of the Beach and who reinvented Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande hadn’t worked on a Puccini opera in twenty-five years, since his ground-breaking Madama Butterfly commissioned by the Paris Opera in 1993. This new encounter between his powerful visual universe and Puccini’s evocative music was bound to be an outstanding event. Carried out by a brilliant cast of singers, dominated by Irene Theorin as Turandot, Gregory Kunde as Calaf and Yolanda Auyanet as Liù, this magnificent production is conducted by the Teatro Real’s associate musical director Nicola Luisotti - and has been met with universal acclaim.

When Il trittico premiered at New York's Metropolitan Opera in December 1918, Gianni Schicchi became an immediate hit. The libretto is based on an incident mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy. The action in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi takes place in Buoso Donati’s bedroom in 13th-century Florence, immediately after his death, as his greedy relatives feign grief and search for his will. The mood shifts to anger when the relatives discover that they have been disinherited. They seek out the clever and resourceful Schicchi to make a counterfeit will. Schicchi, however, turns their scheme against them, bequeathing most of the dead man’s fortune to himself while the relatives, all parties to the crime of forgery, are forced to sit by silently. The aria O mio babbino caro is one of Puccini's most popular arias for soprano. Bruno de Simone plays the character of Gianni Schicchi. As Italy's finest basso buffo, he is perfect for this role. Puccini completed the score on 20 April, 1918, eight months before the scheduled premiere. At that performance it was presented as the third part of a trilogy of newly written one-act operas by Puccini billed as Il trittico (The Triptych); the first two were Il tabarro (The Cloak) and Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica). Il tabarro was a dark tragedy and Suor Angelica a sweet one, so by closing with Gianni Schicchi Puccini rounded off the night with a high-spirited comic farce. Critical reaction at the time judged that Gianni Schicchi was “an uproarious delight”, and it was the most favorably received of the three.

Tracks:
1. MOFFO, ANNA - AH TARDAI TROPPO- O LUCE DI QUEST' ANIMA
2. MOFFO, ANNA - JE VEUX VIVRE DANS LE REVE
3. MOFFO, ANNA - QUAL PRODIGIO- NON FU SOGNO
4. MOFFO, ANNA - E STRANO!- AH FORS'E LUI CHE L'ANIMA- SEMPRE
5. MOFFO, ANNA - QUAL FIAMMA AVEA NEL GUARDO
6. MOFFO, ANNA - DEPUIS LE JOUR
7. MOFFO, ANNA - VISSI D'ARTE
8. MOFFO, ANNA - SENZA MAMMA
9. MOFFO, ANNA - UN BEL DI VEDREMO
10. MOFFO, ANNA - EINER WIRD KOMMEN
11. MOFFO, ANNA - GAR OFT HAB' ICH GEHORT
12. MOFFO, ANNA - MEIN HERR MARQUIS
13. MOFFO, ANNA - DU SOLLST DER KAISER MEINER SEELE SEIN
14. MOFFO, ANNA - LOVE IS WHERE YOU FIND IT

Puccini began to compose Manon Lescaut in 1889. It was an act of supreme bravado as only five years previously Massenet had premiered Manon, based on the same novel by Abbé Prévost. The story is set in France and Louisiana in the early 18th century and focuses on – in a way different to Massenet – the fortunes and tragedy of the hero, the Chevalier des Grieux, and his lover, Manon. Its ceaseless melodic beauty and drama were recognized immediately and the first night was an overwhelming triumph, with Puccini effectively anointed as Verdi’s successor and Italy’s greatest operatic composer. Ninety years after its 1893 premiere in Turin, the work was staged by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The 1983 production was conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli, making his British operatic debut to such remarkable effect that The Times referred to him as ‘Europe’s most spectacular new opera star’. The cast included three of the greatest exponents of their roles; Plácido Domingo as the romantic hero whose performance ‘was a cause for drop-jawed wonder’ (The Spectator), the radiant Kiri Te Kanawa as Manon and Thomas Allen as her brother, Lescaut. Director Götz Friedrich’s largely traditional staging proved a major theatrical success.

Oksana Dyka’s dramatic and dazzling voice sparkles in this collection of favorites from treasured operas by Puccini and Verdi, led by “the singer’s dream collaborator” Constantine Orbelian. Born in Ukraine, Oksana Dyka graduated at Kiev Conservatory in 2004, and from 2003 to 2007 she was the main soloist at Ukraine National Opera of Kiev. In 2003 she won third prize of the Marseilles International Opera competition, which landed her the part of Tosca at National Opera of Montpellier in March 2005.
 Also in 2005, Oksana was highly acclaimed as Tosca at Estonian National Opera in Tallinn and at Dalhalla Opera Festival in Sweden (same production), and she made her debut as Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello at Estonian National Opera.

Located between chamber music and orchestra, the Carinthian-based ensemble minui has dedicated itself to the musical possibilities for large chamber music ensembles with elegance and finesse since its founding in 2016. While simple reductions of large orchestral works were initially on the program, opera music gradually became the great passion of ensemble minui. In the arrangements of clarinettist Stefan Potzmann, the nine versatile orchestral musicians offer listeners with their second album recording stylish new perspectives on three large-scale opera works, reduced to what is essential for them: the music!