In January 1973, the Theater Bern put Rossini's early opera buffa "L'equivoco stravagante" on the program in a German text version created for Bern, thus creating a veritable theatrical sensation. The work was performed fifteen times and even had to be included in the 1973/74 schedule - unusual for a municipal theater that did not maintain a so-called repertory business like large opera houses. Responsible for the great success, which caused surprise throughout the German-speaking world, was a perfectly coordinated ensemble under the direction of the phenomenal general music director EWALD KÖRNER. The performance was recorded in stereo by Swiss Radio DRS in the Bern studio after the season. It is thanks to this circumstance that the "Berner version" of the rather lesser-known buffa can now be presented on 2 albums, thanks to the research of RELIEF, in excellent sound quality, with an exemplary booklet and the libretto of the Berner performance.

Thanks to its overture, La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie) is one of Rossini’s best-known operas. In the19th century it was one of the composer’s most performed works. And yet for decades after 1883, it was not performed. It was only in the 1930s that interest in this opera was awoken once again. Rossini’s 150th birthday in 1942 led Riccardo Zandonai, then Director of the Music Conservatory in Pesaro, Rossini's birthplace, to take on this opera and edit it. His tasks were essentially to shorten a very long opera and to split the content over three, rather than two, acts.

La gazza ladra or, in this recording, Die diebische Elster is principally a crime story. The subject matter of the opera is a robbery that may have actually taken place in France. We might have doubts about this because the theme of the innocent, accused, condemned, and possibly executed serving girl is so widely known that it can almost be taken for an urban myth. It is not, however, simply about crime. The opera portrays specific details of pre-trial and court proceedings correctly and in exact detail. This makes the original title "Avviso ai giudici” (Judges Take Note) even clearer. Thanks to its timely references and precise libretto, this opera is by far more realistic than other operas from the pen of this composer.

The French baritone Florian Sempey has established himself as a key player on today’s operatic scene. For his first solo recital, Rossini was the obvious choice, first of all because he has already performed the title role in Il barbiere di Siviglia in the leading opera houses, from Paris to London, and of course by way of Orange and Pesaro. But there is another reason: ‘Rossini was the first composer’s name I heard in my life. At my grandparents’ house, there was a bust above the piano, on a little rococo display stand’ – the bust that appears on the cover of this album. ‘Rossini’s music is a challenge for singers and also a great and very strict technical training for them. It calls for the highest standards and degree of precision.

This program presents arias in French and Italian, mingling the most famous (including Figaro’s ‘Sono il factotum’) with rarities such as Germano’s aria from La scala di seta and Don Parmenione’s from L’occasione fa il ladro. It also includes magnificent duets with two dream partners, Karine Deshayes and Nahuel Di Pierro. And who better to conduct the Orchestre de l’Opéra National Bordeaux Aquitaine than the accomplished Rossinian Marc Minkowski, who gives this music an inimitable sparkle?

Rossini, at the moment when he decided to retire and to compose no more operas, Guillaume Tell being his last, was immensely popular with his audiences. This was clearly due to his operas, although some measure of it was certainly earned by their overtures to these operas, for they had rapidly entered the symphonic repertoire. Even today, the greatest conductors and orchestras cannot resist the pleasure of performing this music, in which a unique sense of humor is combined with a taste for virtuosity for its own sake. Opera overtures by many composers were performed in concerts at the end of the 18th century, although Rossini's overtures also benefited from being transcribed for wind ensemble; these transcriptions were made by William Legrand and Wenzl Sedlak during Rossini’s lifetime.

ROSSINI Le Comte Ory • Brad Cohen, cond; Huw Rhys-Evans ( Ory ); Luca Salsi ( Raimbaud ); Wojtek Gierlach ( Tutor ); Linda Gerrard ( Countess ); Gloria Montanari ( Ragonde ); Luisa Islam-Ali-Zade ( Isolier ); Sofia Soloviy ( Alice ); Czech P Ch & C Soloists • NAXOS 8.660207 (2 CDs: 127:35) Live: Bad Wildbad 7/12,16,19/2002


The tale that Rossini reused the music from Il viaggio a Reims to create the opera Le Comte Ory is true, but not to the extent that many believe. True, six of Viaggo ’s nine numbers have found their way into Ory , although with some rescoring, but they comprise only half of Ory ’s music. Fortunately the Gran Pezzo Concertato à 14 Voci was used, although in Ory it is reduced to seven soloists plus chorus. The effect is undiminished. If you have never heard it, make it a Rossini-must!


Le Comte Ory lacks an overture, which may be a reason the work does not have better name recognition in the Rossini canon. People who may have never heard or seen many of Rossini’s operas most likely know of the works by title from the popularity of their overtures. Ory should be better known. It is a good opera; the story, with its disguises and intrigues is well written and fun, and Rossini’s music is on a par with the best of his better-known scores. One melodious, engaging number after another, considerable ensemble work, and not much recitative make Ory an opera begging to be popular.


The story has some historical basis. The legend of Count Ory, a womanizer along the lines of Don Juan, dates back to the Crusades. In the late 18th century, Pierre-Antoine de la Place collected the Ory tales and popularized the story of the Count and his men invading a convent and impregnating the nuns. The story was dramatized by Eugène Scribe and Charles-Gaspard De-lestre-Poirson as a one-act playlet presented at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in 1816. In this work, the Crusaders return just in the knick of time to prevent Ory and his men from bedding the nuns. For an opera libretto, Scribe and De-lestre-Poirson have Ory disguising himself, first as a hermit and then as a nun, as he attempts to enter Countess Adèle’s Castle and ultimately enter Adèle herself. It is reminiscent of Almaviva’s attempts to see Rosina, although Rosina is complicit in the deceptions and welcomes Almaviva’s attentions, which significantly sets her apart from Adèle. Another difference is Almaviva’s success, whereas Ory’s every attempt is thwarted.


There have been relatively few recordings of Le Comte Ory . EMI had a mono offering in the early 1950s that was briefly available on CD. Stereo offerings (all DDD) include a studio recording by John Eliot Gardiner on Philips (1989), a live recording featuring Juan Diego Flórez conducted by Jesús López-Cobos (DG, 2004), and now this Naxos from the 2002 Rossini in Wildbad Festival. Naxos has issued several of the Rossini in Wildbad productions. With the exception of La cenerentola , the offerings have been some of Rossini’s lesser known and less frequently recorded operas. If you have been collecting them, be sure to add this Ory to your library. I enjoyed it every bit as much as the Philips and DG recordings. In the role of Ory, Flórez brings the most star-power, but John Aler (Philips) and Huw Rhys-Evans (Naxos) both deliver solid performances. I found the sound of the Naxos to be clearer and more focused than the DG, especially during crescendos and fortes, although more stage noise is audible during the Wildbad performances—not enough to be distracting. The studio performance on Philips lacks some of the spontaneity of this Naxos.


I like all three of the stereo sets (I have not heard the EMI mono). Each has its strengths and any weaknesses are negligible and subject to personal preferences. If I had to pick only one (a very hard choice), I found this Naxos imminently likable. The performance is exuberant, the cast sounds like they are having a great time with Ory , and the Naxos sound and balances are excellent. The album unfortunately does not have a libretto and a French-only libretto is available at www.naxos.com/libretti/660207.htm. A compensating factor is Naxos’s reasonable price, although many of the once higher priced albums are returning at reduced prices.


FANFARE: David L. Kirk

Marina Rebeka is one of the most successful sopranos of her generation. To mark the occasion of the upcoming Rossini year of 2018, she and the Munchner Rundfunkorchester, conducted by Marco Armiliato, have recorded an album of highly dramatic opera arias that is now being released by BR-KLASSIK. The album "Amor fatale" offers the opportunity to reacquaint oneself with the great soprano arias from Rossini's less well-known but musically convincing tragic operas, in a fine interpretation.The concept album entitled "Amor fatal" focuses on powerful female roles from the operas Otello, Armida, La donna del lago (The Lady of the Lake), Maometto II, Semiramide (Semiramis), Moïse et Pharaon (Moses and Pharaoh) and Guillaume Tell (William Tell). The women are obliged to choose between love and duty, and frequently have to subordinate their personal fate to that of their family, nation or homeland.The Latvian soprano has quite some experience with roles in Rossini, above all from his great tragic operas: the role of Anna Erisso from Maometto II, which she performed in 2008 at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, the composer’s birthplace, marked the very start of her career. She went on to attract international attention in 2009 when she debuted at the Salzburg Festival, as Anaï in Moïse et Pharaon. For her album she has worked through Rossini's original handwritten manuscripts and included this in her performance; she also developed her own coloratura, which not only suits her voice both musically and technically, but also best corresponds to the specific stage events and emotions encountered in her respective operatic roles.

The comic-heroic romp Matilde di Shabran was Rossini’s last commission for the theatres of Rome, the city where he’d had great successes such as Il barbiere di Siviglia. Rossini took advantage of the agile, sparkling style of librettist Jacopo Ferretti to create a narrative in which the ferocious Corradino, a declared misogynist, is introduced to the resourceful Matilde, who succeeds in melting his iron heart and winning his love. This premiere recording revives the original 1821 Rome version, which was conducted at the last minute by Paganini, and caused brawling in the streets between Rossini’s admirers and detractors.

 

REVIEW:

 

This splendid recording of the original Rome version of Matilde, recorded at the 2019 Rossini Wildbad Festival in Germany, relishes the almost comic tale of the melodramatic medieval tyrant Corradino conquered by love, or rather Matilde, with a score packed with some of Rossini’s most accomplished music.

 

Michele Angelini is magnificent as the villain, everything that you hope for in a Rossini tenor—fleet of voice in his runs and trills and with gravity-defying head notes. Sara Blanch’s Matilde matches him note for note. Their Act I duet ‘Ch’io fugga ha già timore…’ is a thrilling lesson in Rossini singing. There’s good work from the rest of the cast, notably the contralto Victoria Yarovaya as Edoardo, who Corradino has unjustly imprisoned and turns tragedy into comedy. Equally pleasing is the Passionart Orchestra conducted by José Miguel Pérez-Sierra. All scrupulously Rossinian including the celebrated horn solo at the beginning of Act II.

 

– BBC Music Magazine

Sony Classical announces a further batch of complete recordings from the CBS/Sony and RCA Victor catalogues. The newest installment of this popular series features some unusual repertoire as well as documents of the New York Metropolitan Opera in its postwar heyday. Rossini is represented in this collection by his two best-loved comic operas. The 1980 Cologne recording of La Cenerentola, conducted by Gabriele Ferro “with a mixture of ease and ebullience”, features Enzo Dara “as an amusing Magnifico, the young Francisco Araiza ardent and fresh-voiced as the Prince, and Lucia Valentini Terrani – the leading Cenerentola of her time – giving a reading that is ripe, meaningful and suitably virtuosic in its lustrous, dark-grained way” (Gramophone).

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REVIEW:

With an almost contralto quality to her mezzo, Lucia Valentini Terrani brings dignity as well as accomplishment to Rossini’s’ Cinderella, supported by a choice cast and conductor plus period instrument forces.

– BBC Music Magazine

The great writer Stendahl wrote of Il viaggio a Reims that “this opera is a feast”. The plot is a contemporary farce tailor-made for a particular occasion – the coronation festivities of Charles X – though Rossini valued the music so highly that he preserved at least part of the score three years later in the opera Comte Ory. This sparkling work is heard complete for the first time and in accordance with the critical edition.

Review:

Wildbad’s Antonino Fogliani leads a staging that doesn’t hang fire for a moment. The piano-accompanied recitatives are vividly delivered; the performance has a vividness and theatrical ‘carry’ that confirm that Il viaggio is indeed ‘a feast’.

– Gramophone

Rossini’s Neapolitan theatrical debut in 1815 won him overnight esteem as well as the favor of the Bourbon dynasty, ensuring lucrative contracts and commissions. The following year he composed Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo, an allegorical cantata on the theme of the wedding between the sea goddess Thetis and the hero Peleus. Written to celebrate a royal marriage, it is an intensely theatrical work in which Rossini drew on some of the greatest contemporary singers, specialists in the ornamented bel canto style, and created a staged spectacular with chorus and a wealth of colorful orchestration.

Gioachino Rossini
LA CAMBIALE DI MATRIMONIO

Tobia Mill – Paolo Bordogna
Fanny – Désirée Rancatore
Edoardo Milfort – Saimir Pirgu
Slook – Fabio Maria Capitanucci
Norton – Enrico Maria Marabelli
Clarina – Maria Gortsevskaya

Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento
Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli, conductor

Luigi Squarzina, stage director
Giovanni Agostinucci, sets and costumes

Filmed at Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, Italy, August 2006

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0 / Dolby Digital 5.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, Italian
Running time: 83 mins

Gioachino Rossini’s ambitious younger years saw his composing entirely focused on well-defined projects. In later years he developed musical ideas with or without poetry to hand, and the ‘Sins of Old Age’ heard here bring together genre songs and character pieces on both religious and domestic subjects. These include premiere recordings of album leaves that became scattered worldwide, including one sent by ‘pantelegraphe,’ the first ever ‘fax’ transmission device. Alessandro Marangoni studied piano with Maria Tipo. A winner of several national and international awards, including the prestigious ‘Amici di Milano’ International Prize, he has appeared throughout Europe, America, and China, as a soloist and as a chamber musician. He is joined here by soprano Laura Giordano, tenor Alessandro Luciano, and baritone Bruno Taddia.

Spectacular rarities from perhaps the most thrilling bel canto tenor of our time, in his first ever aria collection with orchestra. A unique voice that offers even tone and timbre from top to bottom, thrilling and chesty high notes, as well as uncanny flexibility, precision and intonation. Sympathetic and sonorous collaboration from Maestro Constantine Orbelian's Kaunas City Symphony.
'Brownlee...sings his...arias with an ease, purity and polish that could hardly be bettered.' - Seattle Times

Also available on Blu-ray

Based on a play by Carlo Goldoni, Rossini’s La Gazzetta revolves around a man who strangely tries to find a husband for his daughter by placing an ad in the newspaper. The Opera Royal de Wallonie closed its 2014 season with this opera buffa. This production was directed by Stefano Mazzonis di Pralafera, and includes for the first time a Rossini quintet, which was discovered in 2012 and has been given its rightful place in Act One. Subtitles are available for this production in Italian, English, French, Germany, Japan, and Korea.

Also available on Blu-ray

Rossini wrote L’equivoco stravagante (‘The Curious Misunderstanding’), his first full-length opera, when he was only 19 years old. As its title suggests, the plot of this dramma giocoso offers a panoply of absurdist stagecraft with one character being led to believe that the work’s heroine is in fact a castrato trying to avoid military service. Full of his trademark buffo humour, melodious and musically buoyant, the opera ran foul of the censors and was swiftly banned, which accounts for its rarity in performances and recordings. The new edition of the score used in this production corrects numerous previous errors.