Giacomo Puccini
148 products
Puccini: Soprano Arias
Dorothy Warenskjold - A Treasury Of Operatic Heroines
"A soprano star with one of the loveliest voices this reporter has ever heard," Henry Humphries, the late Cincinnati music critic once wrote of one of Dorothy Warenskjold's opera performances, declaring further, "she is a singer of finely grained musicianship, personality and temperament - one the Golden Age of Song would have been proud to call its own." Dorothy Warenskjold is a third generation Californian. She was born in Piedmont and received all her education and musical training in and around San Francisco. As James Schwabacher, tenor and founder of San Francisco Opera's Merola Program, recently remarked, "I have been constantly amazed at the consistency over the years of Dorothy's vocal technique which produces the pristine lyric quality uniquely hers." And nowhere is this more obviously shown than in the present choice of arias which span a period of nineteen years. These arias date from the young and budding prima donna's first major radio broadcast, through mid-career opera performances, up to the latest recorded arias. This consistency is a tribute not only to her training, but to her intelligent dedication to her art.
Puccini: Madama Butterfly Highlights / Leinsdorf, Moffo
Tosca
Puccini: La bohème
Madama Butterfly
Puccini: Tosca, S. 69 (Recorded 1961)
Puccini: Turandot
TOSCA: TEBALDI-DI STEFANO-TADD
Puccini, Catalani E Ponchielli - Per Orchestra / Muti
The Ponchielli Elegia sustains its length well up to passionate climaxes, rather like film music. The two Catalani items were both arranged from piano pieces, the Scherzo a charming dance, Contemplazione much more ambitious, leading to a tender and hushed reprise of the opening theme (track 3, 8'32''). The orchestration was evidently made for the Scala orchestra’s appearance at the Paris Exhibition of 1878.
Welcome as those compositions are, it is striking that the Puccini pieces are markedly more memorable, above all in their melodic writing. That is immediately apparent in the free-flowing Preludio sinfonico, and “La tregenda” (“Witches’ Sabbath”), the dance interlude from Puccini’s first opera, Le villi, is the most brilliant of his early inspirations.
The Capriccio sinfonico, the longest piece here, was written as a graduation exercise, very well orchestrated, with structure well controlled. A moment of revelation comes when the Allegro opens on the theme which Puccini later used for the opening of La boheme. Muti brings out the emotional warmth in all these works.
-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [9/1998]
TOSCA (DT.) - MARTINIS, SCHOCK
PUCCINI, G.: Boheme (La) [Opera] (1940, 1948)
TURANDOT (BLURAY)
Puccini: Tosca, S. 69 (Sung in German) [Recorded 1950]
Verdi / Puccini: Music For String Quartet
Puccini: La Fanciulla del West / Mehta, Royal Opera Hous Orchestra Covent Garden
Puccini’s late opera La fanciulla del West bristles with drama and intrigue in this newly remastered classic recording with Zubin Mehta conducting the Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House and starring Plácido Domingo, Sherrill Milnes and Carol Neblett. With its potent mixture of stark realism and gushing romanticism, this Wild West melodrama builds on the hard-edged style Puccini had used in Tosca, infusing it with Debussian harmonies and Straussian orchestral colours to produce his most distinctive and original opera. Featuring the stock in trade characters of a gun-toting heroine, a macho hero with a sensitive side, and a villainous Sheriff, Puccini eschews the signature lyricism of his earlier operas for a more seamless melodic style to produce a dramatic work of almost symphonic proportions. While critics of the time were somewhat bewildered by this subversive potboiler, modern audiences have warmed to this richly revealing opera which, unusually for Puccini, has a happy ending. This classic recording dating from 1977 is Gramophone magazine’s top choice for the opera and can now be enjoyed for the first time in full SA-CD hybrid multichannel sound. “Carol Neblett is a strong Minnie, vocally distinctive and well characterised, while Plácido Domingo and Sherrill Milnes make a good pair of suitors …. Zubin Mehta conducts with real sympathy for the idiom” (Gramophone). And the Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs (2003/4) enthused “Domingo sings heroically … but the crowning glory of a masterly set is the singing of Carol Neblett … Full atmospheric recording to match.” Although recorded in multi-channel sound, these memorable performances have previously been available only in the conventional two-channel stereo format. Using state of the art technology which avoids the need for re-mixing, PENTATONE’s engineers have remastered the original studio tapes to bring the performances to life as originally intended: in compelling and pristine multi-channel sound.''
LA BOHEME
Opera Explained - Puccini: Turandot
Puccini: Madama Butterfly
Jane Eaglen Sings Italian Opera Arias / Rizzi, Philharmonia
Classics Explained - An Introduction To Puccini: Tosca
written by Thomson Smillie and performed by David Timson.
Puccini: Turandot / Dessi, Malagnini, Chikviladze, Renzetti, Teatro Carlo Felice
Puccini: Le Villi
MADAMA BUTTERFLY
