PUCCINI, G.: Madama Butterfly (DNO, 2003) (NTSC)

Also available on Blu-ray

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REVIEWS:

The Azerbaijani soprano Dinara Alieva, a Bolshoi soloist since 2010, is better known for her Russian – rather than Italian – repertoire, but sings most prettily as Magda. There’s a rich darkness to her voice, especially in Doretta’s Dream, but there is also an attractive lighter quality later on which is very appealing. Her acting isn’t a strength, regularly outshone by Alexandra Hutton’s sparky performance as her feisty maid Lisette. Charles Castronovo’s Ruggero moons around with puppy-dog eyes and matinee-idol good looks – a perfect role for his lyric tenor. Alvaro Zambrano provides a good contrast, a vibrant Prunier, if lacking a true legato. He and Hutton work well as the comic pair who reunite before the leading couple part as the opera closes. Roberto Rizzi Brignoli occasionally indulges Puccini’s score with a little too much rubato but draws rich playing from the Berlin strings. An understated, stylish production, which could win round some of Rondine’s critics.

– Gramophone

This, Puccini’s stepchild opera—once called “the day off of a genius”—used to be a rarity. Against all better judgment, however, it is popping up everywhere nowadays, including, as we can see from this video from March of last year, the Deutsche Oper, Berlin. This makes six available DVDs of this opera, while, say, the likes of Das Liebesverbot must languish on audio only. Injustice, I say.

Perhaps the public is growing fond of saccharine music attached to a plot that has elements of La traviata without the depth and some rollicking moments stolen from Die Fledermaus. Or perhaps it’s becoming popular because it’s short and the audience can be home for the 11 o’clock news.

Until this performance arrived, finding the best DVD was easy—it was from the Met and starred Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu. Beautifully sung and stunning to look at, one could overlook Gheorghiu’s relentless artificiality. But here we have a performance that lands the “best sung” award.

As our heroine, Magda, Azerbaijani soprano Dinara Alieva, when not singing in Russia, has been working mostly in German and Austrian opera houses. She is remarkable: perhaps not the finest of actresses, and with a technique that does not include using the breath properly, she owns a voice that is luscious in ways that we don’t hear lately.

With a warm, throbbing vibrato, she sounds to be an ideal Verdi and Puccini soprano; a full lyric with big, secure top notes (videos of her Traviata are on YouTube, as is a performance of her singing “Casta Diva”—both seem unfinished products, but the sheer sound is grand and memorable). The “Sogno di Doretta” is gorgeous, pianissimo high C and all. We can hope that she will become a true interpreter of the major roles. Her Magda is not girlish and flirty, as she is usually interpreted, but a woman of a certain age who makes up her own mind. This reading, probably the director’s, makes perfect sense.

At her side, as Ruggero, is the fine American tenor Charles Castronovo. He’s a singer who does everything right: the voice is handsome and well-produced, he sings off the text, he acts well, presenting a character naïve in the extreme early on, and shattered and incredulous by Magda’s rejection of him. As the opera’s “fun” couple, Lisette (Magda’s maid) and Prunier (a local poet), Alexandra Hutton and Alvaro Zambrano, sing marvelously and with spectacular energy, although their attempts to walk away with the show occasionally border on severe overacting. Stephen Bronk exhibits a solid bass voice to the thankless role of Rambaldo, Magda’s man-about-town.

The director is Rolando Villazon—yes, that one—and he brims over with ideas. Updating the opera to the “Roaring ’20s” allows for stunning flapper costumes by Brigitte Reiffenstuel, and in the sets by Johannes Leiacker there are not only references to surreal artists like René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, and Man Ray, but also a very permissive nude Venus by Titian as a backdrop for Act 1. The second-act cabaret scene is appropriately tacky and jumpy; in the last act, by the sea-shore, we encounter the same nude, but as a Magritte-like cut-out in sky blue against the blue sky. It works.

What doesn’t work, and gets in the way, are three male figures in white fencing attire (including masks) who interact, pose, and prance about; they hold up empty picture frames/mirrors to Magda, they writhe about in physical pain when Ruggero is in emotional pain in the last act. Are they the ghosts of Magda’s ex-lovers? A comment on the emptiness of her life? Or are they just there to keep us busy? I get the feeling the symbolism simply wasn’t clearly thought through—and is far too heavy for this piece of operatic, day-old meringue.

Roberto Rizzi Brignoli leads the Berlin forces with such enthusiasm that the performance is absolutely worth watching and the opera practically seems chic. Bravi to all, and now can we move them all into something more substantial?

– ClassicsToday (Robert Levine)

Subtitles: English, French, German
Audio Format: PCM Stereo - DTS 5.0

LICIA ALBANESE - PUCCINI, MOZA

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

BOHEME

It is an event that attracts thousands of music lovers to Verona every summer: the opera season in the ancient Roman Arena. Nearly 22,000 spectators regularly fill the amphitheater for the performances. The dream couple of opera, Sonya Yoncheva and Vittorio Grigolo, returns to the breathtaking open-air stage, to perform Giacomo Puccini's Tosca. Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva is "one of the best Toscas currently singing" and Vittorio Grigolo "the most Italian Cavaradossi we know. With lots of wonderful melting, elegant and nonchalant full of triumphant greatness a triumph all along the line" (Online Merker). The captivating staging by Argentine director Hugo de Ana, who masterfully exploits the amphitheatre's vast space by placing huge elements on the stage that are reminiscent of or borrowed from the locations of the action, makes the opera a "spectacle of monumental opulence" (Online Merker). "A Tosca to relish!" (Artesnews. It) "standing ovation Tosca at the Arena di Verona" (Operalife).

Puccini's "Messa di Gloria" is one of the most popular settings of the Latin Mass, and is also featured on many concert programmes in the Puccini Year of 2024. The musical quality, energy and freshness of this youthful work ensured it's ever-growing popularity after it's rediscovery in the early 1950s. The composer even went on to quote some of the melodies in his famous operas, notably "Manon Lescaut". The "Messa di Gloria" was most recently performed on June 27, 2024 in the Herz-Jesu-Kirche in Munich by the Bavarian Radio Chorus and the Munchner Rundfunkorchester under it's chief conductor Ivan Repusic. To mark the 100th anniversary of the death of the great Italian composer, BR-KLASSIK is now presenting the live recording of this outstanding concert on CD. Giacomo Puccini wrote his "Messa a quattro voci con orchestra" ("Mass for Four Voices with Orchestra") between 1878 and 1880 as the final thesis of his music studies in his hometown of Lucca. The first preparatory work was done when he was just eighteen, and the young composer was only 21 when the work was first performed on July 12, 1880. The Mass remained unpublished during his lifetime but became immensely popular after it's rediscovery in the early 1950s. However, in the first printed edition and in later performances it was inaccurately described as a "Messa di Gloria", a term that in fact refers to a (usually shorter) composition consisting only of Kyrie and Gloria; Puccini's Mass is in fact a full work, the complete setting of the Latin Ordinary with Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus/Benedictus and Agnus Dei. Puccini had begun his work on the Credo as early as 1878. In the "Messa di Gloria", the choir takes centre stage with increasingly beautiful melodies; the solo parts for tenor and baritone are sung by Tomislav Muzek and George Petean. The approximately 45-minute-long work is complemented on this CD by Puccini's orchestral works "Preludio sinfonico" and "Crisantemi" - the latter in an arrangement for string orchestra by Lucas Drew. (Studio recordings from February 2023.)

It is an event that attracts thousands of music lovers to Verona every summer: the opera season in the ancient Roman Arena. Nearly 22,000 spectators regularly fill the amphitheater for the performances. The dream couple of opera, Sonya Yoncheva and Vittorio Grigolo, returns to the breathtaking open-air stage, to perform Giacomo Puccini's Tosca. Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva is "one of the best Toscas currently singing" and Vittorio Grigolo "the most Italian Cavaradossi we know. With lots of wonderful melting, elegant and nonchalant full of triumphant greatness a triumph all along the line" (Online Merker). The captivating staging by Argentine director Hugo de Ana, who masterfully exploits the amphitheatre's vast space by placing huge elements on the stage that are reminiscent of or borrowed from the locations of the action, makes the opera a "spectacle of monumental opulence" (Online Merker). "A Tosca to relish!" (Artesnews. It) "standing ovation Tosca at the Arena di Verona" (Operalife).

Suor Angelica is one of the three one-act operas that comprise Puccini's Il Trittico. Of the three, it's the most lyrical and tragic; it also features an all female cast. Set in a 17th-century convent near Florence, it tells the tragic tale of a noblewoman who is forced to become a nun to repent the sin of having had a child outside wedlock, thus causing a huge scandal in her social circle. The baby is immediately taken from her, and Angelica is left with no news about him, nor her family, for seven long years. Although seemingly adjusted to the convent's daily routine - she has become an expert in herbal remedies - Angelica is desperate to hear from her family, but when an aunt finally visits her, Suor Angelica is coldly informed that her son died from an incurable disease two years earlier. The aria Senza mamma (Without Mama) is the tragic peak of both this moment and the whole opera. In her distress, Angelica resolves there is only one option left to be reunited with her child: she proceeds to prepare some poison and drink it. On the verge of death she asks for forgiveness, which the Virgin Mary grants her, appearing with a young boy by her side. "Anna Maria Chiuri, who plays the character of the Princess, has a beautifully projected and even contralto voice, a monumental fraseggio which well suits the character's elusiveness... Valerio Galli directs the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino with great self assurance. The performance is excellent, the sound is homogeneous, round and sparkling with energy. Suor Angelica's intimate religious sense flows naturally into the colors and shades of the finale. " (Connessiallopera. It)

The Giacomo Puccini opera Suor Angelica is presented on this new release by MYTO Historical. Recorded on December 23, 1951, this recording features the Wiener Symphoniker conducted by Wilhelm Loibner. Sena Jurinac and Hilde Rossel-Majdan, two of the greatest Mozart singers of the 20th century, are joined by Ilona Steingruber to headline this outstanding cast.

Olga Busuioc's 'performance of sustained dramatic intensity and vocal brilliance... brings direction and shape to the Miskimmon "concept"' (The Arts Desk), in a Festival-premiere Butterfly revived from the 2016 tour. The Guardian lauds her reading's 'perception of clarity... dispassionate... yet full of heart... sensuously and expertly played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the eagerly responsive baton of Omer Meir Wellber' with praise for Guerrero's 'Pinkerton, sung with soaring, willful, preening grace' and a 'Sharpless, richly and sympathetically portrayed by Micael Sumuel'. 'Elizabeth DeShong's Suzuki was more striking - a rock of sanity and compassion, with a voice of superb authority' and 'the chorus under it's new master Nicholas Jenkins sounded luminous in it's humming serenade' (Telegraph)

Olga Busuioc's 'performance of sustained dramatic intensity and vocal brilliance... brings direction and shape to the Miskimmon "concept"' (The Arts Desk), in a Festival-premiere Butterfly revived from the 2016 tour. The Guardian lauds her reading's 'perception of clarity... dispassionate... yet full of heart... sensuously and expertly played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the eagerly responsive baton of Omer Meir Wellber' with praise for Guerrero's 'Pinkerton, sung with soaring, willful, preening grace' and a 'Sharpless, richly and sympathetically portrayed by Micael Sumuel'. 'Elizabeth DeShong's Suzuki was more striking - a rock of sanity and compassion, with a voice of superb authority' and 'the chorus under it's new master Nicholas Jenkins sounded luminous in it's humming serenade' (Telegraph)