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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.

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Gioacchino Rossini was only 23 years old when he wrote what was to become his most famous opera, composed after the scandalous eponymous play by Beaumarchais. Il Barbiere di Siviglia premiered in Rome in 1816: an innovative work, full of sophistication and finesse that first intrigued the Italian public, before winning over the entire peninsula and the rest of the world. The opera displays with great clarity the essence of the Rossinian revolution: situation comedy, sharp criticism of social hypocrisy, together with a witty musical style, the glory of belcanto, and the contagious energy of assertive melodic lines. With the adventures of the factotum Figaro and his master Almaviva, looking to seduce the beautiful Rosina and steal her away from the old Bartolo; through the endless criss-crossing of this lover’s chase, Rossini was to begin a new chapter in Italian opera, and forge a new brand that shaped the musical landscape of the 19th century. For this reprisal of Hugo de Ana’s famous staging at the Arena di Verona, Rossini’s masterpiece is conducted by Maestro Daniel Oren. Italian baritone Leo Nucci, a true connoisseur of the part, is a boastful and virtuoso Figaro, while soprano Nino Machaidze and tenor Dmitry Korchak are perfect as the not-so-candid lovers around whom the opera revolves. And who better than Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto, who shines in the "Calunnia" aria, for the part of Basilio?

Rossini had a truly explosive effect when, at the age of eighteen, his comic one-act farce La cambiale di matrimonio was staged at the San Moisé theatre in Venice, on the evening of November 3rd, 1810. From that moment, Rossini’s career would be a series of masterpieces, with triumphs and flops. It was in the comic genre that he achieved his greatest successes, with works such as L’Italiana in Algeri (1813), Il Turco in Italia (1814), Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816), and Cenerentola in 1817, which was Rossini’s last great comic work in the traditional sense. Between 1817 and 1819, year of that Guillaume Tell that prematurely cut short his operatic career, Rossini composed fifteen serious operas and only three comic ones; but he had already given his best in his incomparable youth, with the four incredible masterpieces that are in this box set. In this release DYNAMIC assembles some of the most famous opera buffa by Rossini, played by great performers, conductors and directors, including some rarely performed works such La Gazzetta, L’Equivoco stravagante, La Cambiale di matrimonio.

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Rossini’s second masterpiece La Cenerentola premiered at the Teatro Valle in Rome on the 25th of January 1817, less than a year after the first performance of his The Barber of Seville and it´s pure, perfect Rossini. In this production, a set-up made to celebrate 200 years Rossini in Rome, Emma Dante´s “rousing Cinderella” (Corriere della Sera) “succeeds in impressing her own contemporary vision on a classic masterpiece, in perfect symbiosis with the spirit of Rossini.” (Opera Now) “Alejo Pérez deserves the credit for an excellent ensemble and a dazzling rhythmic rendering of the Rossinian score.” (La Nazione – Il Resto del Carlino – Il Giorno)

Rossini’s Eduardo e Cristina was a huge success in its day, but as perhaps the last centone opera (one assembled from previously existing material) by a major composer, it became forgotten under the subsequent tide of Romantic idealism. Today we can put these prejudices aside and enjoy this masterful creation for what it is: a hugely entertaining parade of beautiful and spectacular musical ‘hits’ set to a familiar story of secret love, dramatic crisis and triumphant resolution. This 2017 Bad Wildbad revival was summed up as “an evening of pure bel canto pleasure!” by Operagazet.

All Rossini’s qualities as a musical giant are to be found in concentrated form in the famous overtures. The sheer vitality of the music is astounding, and the wealth of thematic material ensures that each is remarkable in its own different way. The Rossini anniversary of 2018 presented an opportunity to shed new light on these familiar works, but in a form that the composer himself would have recognised. This long-established mandolin quintet took a mix of old and newly commissioned arrangements and toured them across Italy to great success before making the present recording. The quintet takes its name from the mandolin virtuoso Giuseppe Anedda (1912-97) who popularised the instrument throughout his native Italy with his own ensemble and established for it a place in classical concert halls and modern works beyond the ‘early music revival’ of the 50s and 60s. He took part in pioneering recordings of Vivaldi and early performances of Stravinsky’s Agon. This all-Italian quintet (comprising a pair of mandolins, a mandola, guitar and double bass) was founded in Anedda’s memory in 2003 to carry on his work. Its members are all soloists and teachers in their own right. They commissioned Michele Di Filippo to arrange the first four overtures on this album: L’Italiana in Algeri (1813), Il Viaggio a Reims (1825), La Cenerentola (1817) and La Scala di Seta (1812). The other four overtures are from Il Signor Bruschino (1813), Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1816), Tancredi (1813) and La Gazza Ladra (1817), for which the quintet performs from transcriptions made and published in the first half of the 20th century by Mario Macchioci and Enrico Marucelli. All the arrangements preserve the heady excitement of the famous ‘Rossini crescendo’ as well as the chamber-like dialogue between wind and strings in the original scores.

REVIEW:

Let me preface this review by saying I am a sucker for oddball arrangements of familiar classics. A group of eight Rossini overtures transcribed for mandolin quintet would certainly qualify as such. But this release transcends my own idiosyncrasies, for these arrangements work very well indeed, preserving the charm and liveliness of these frothy works and adding an extra dimension to them.

The sound quality of the recording is quite vivid and the brightness of the mandolins comes across quite well without being piercing. The placement of the musicians is quite precise in the wide soundstage. The ends of each piece do have a bit too much echo for my tastes. There’s no dynamic compression here, permitting the carefully mounted tension to grip the listener and not let go until the conclusion of each piece. There’s sufficient variety in the pieces that I didn’t feel any need to take a break between the different overtures.

In all, I found this disc tremendous fun and a creditable variation on these well-known works.

– MusicWeb International

Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) was the most significant Italian composer of the first half of the nineteenth century. Born to working musicians – his father was a horn player, his mother an opera singer – his operas, both comic and serious, conquered Maples, Italy and later the rest of the world. His style is sensuous, brilliant and rhythmically vital, a constant source of delight and excitement. Rossini was just twelve years old when during the summer holidays, spent in 1804 at the Conventello in Ravenna estate in the home of the Triossi family, he composed the “Sei sonate a quattro”. Rossini had been invited by the young Agostino Triossi, a self-taught double bass player, who had asked him to write chamber music for him and for his cousins Luigi and Giovanni Morini, who used to play the violin and the cello, respectively. After their composition, the tradition of performing them frequently in transcription for string ensembles has established itself, although the performance, according to the original text, (certainly better), highlights the lively dialogue among the instruments. The present recording is played in the original form by four string players, Francesco Manara , Daniele Pascoletti , Massimo Polidori and Francesco Siragusa , in the best Italian tradition of instrumental Belcanto.

The first misconception that the Rossini Renaissance has gradually corrected is that Rossini was only able to excel in the comic genre. Rossini’s serious operas, as a matter of fact, are not only overall of high artistic quality but also quite original. Indeed, they had a huge influence on the Italian Romantic output of Donizetti, Bellini, Pacini, Mercadante and of the first Verdi. We could go as far as to say that Rossini was not merely an Italian phenomenon but a European one, whose arrival had the explosive effect of a bomb sweeping away centuries-old conventions and manners of speaking and introducing, in their place, a series of new codes and attitudes which all 19th-century opera drew upon; also and perhaps especially in the serious genre. This collector’s boxset offers an interesting selection of Rossini’s main opera seria (and semiseria, with reference to La Gazza Ladra) played by great interpreters, conductors and directors, recorded live in prestigious venues such as Rossini Opera Festival (ROF) with the philological approach granted by Fondazione Rossini of Pesaro. Such titles as Torvaldo e Dorliska, Ermione, Bianca e Falliero are less knowns works as well.

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Rossini’s comic masterpiece The Barber of Seville was based on Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’s French play Le Barbier de Séville and is the ultimate opera buffa. The score is a compendium of the composer’s wittiest and most brilliant writing, and includes the famous entrance aria Largo al factotum and a raft of superbly dynamic ensembles. This vibrant and youthful production features Florian Sempey, one of the world’s best Figaros, the ‘Rossini tenor’ Michele Angelini, vivacious and critically admired Catherine Trottmann, and the award-winning team of acclaimed director Laurent Pelly and conductor Jérémie Rhorer who directs his spirited period ensemble Le Cercle de l’Harmonie.

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REVIEW:

The cast are in modern dress but the interaction of characters is so forceful as to sweep away any lurking objections. Add to this some very fine singing, particularly from Michele Angelini’s glorious high tenor as Almaviva, and there is a great deal here to admire and enjoy.

– Lark Reviews

Rossini drew a line under his hugely successful operatic career at the age of 37 and wrote little until his final years in Paris, where he became renowned for his musical salons. For these he wrote numerous short piano pieces which he jokingly called Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age): sometimes experimental miniatures that can raise a smile or touch the heart, blurring boundaries between the irreverent and the serious. Rossini’s publisher Antonio Pacini considered the composer’s late works as his most illustrious period: ‘what he composes daily is a series of masterpieces that seems as though it will never end.’ Including songs and fascinating novelties, this acclaimed complete edition contains a myriad of rarities and numerous world premiere recordings.

Gioachino Rossini was summoned to Paris in 1824 to breathe new life into its opera culture, and one of his most exciting innovations in this period was the creation of an entirely new genre of opera comedy. The risqué tale of Le Comte Ory had its origins in vaudeville theatre and is based on the story of a villainous Count who attempts the seduction of Countess Adele as she awaits the return of her husband from the Crusades. ‘Le Comte Ory’ is the last of Rossini’s comic operas, making full use of the libretto’s farcical disguises and humor in one of his most colorfully orchestrated scores. This production, staged by Linda Mallik, features the Malmo Opera Orchestra and Chorus with world renowned soloists Leonardo Ferrando as Count Ory and Erika Miklosa as Countess Adele. Linda Mallik made her directorial debut in 2012 and received unanimous praise in the Swedish and international press, making her one of the most sought-after opera directors in Sweden. She has also staged ‘Le Nozze di Figaro’ at NorrlandsOperan, ‘M/S Aurora’ at the Berwaldhallen, ‘Faust’ and ‘Mayday Payday’ at Folkoperan in Stockholm, among others.

Claudio Abbado's collection of Rossini overtures is flecked with moments of special illumination... With Abbado, the difficult to manage Il Turco in Italia is a rare treat, Tancredi, in Philip Gossett's new revision, is a tour deforce and the liquid-toned cellos at the start of Guillaume Tell are nothing short of miraculous. Abbado's Scala di seta, too, wings into life, sweet and silken, like feathered Mercury.

-- Gramophone [8/1979, reviewing the LP release of the Rossini overtures]

Giorgio Caoduro is one of the leading Italian baritones of his generation and one of the reigning Bel Canto singers of today. He has appeared at such renowned opera houses as the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Opéra National de Paris, La Scala di Milano, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Teatro Regio Torino, Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Semperoper Dresden, Liceu Barcelona, San Francisco Opera, or Los Angeles Opera House. At the center of his singing are the bel canto roles of Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and Verdi. With his selection of highly virtuosic arias from operas by Rossini, Giorgio Caoduro reminds us of the dazzling richness of the repertoire composed for this type of voice, a repertoire in which the old roles of basso buffo, the more modern ones of tyrants, afflicted fathers or repentant criminals converged, and finally where the roles of mature heroes were already appearing, roles to which Verdi would give, a few years later, their letters of nobility.

Sonate a Quattro are the brilliant compositions from Italian composer Gioachino Rossini, written during the summer of 1804 at the young age of 12. These works, at the time, were commonly performed by wind quartet and it wasn’t until 1954 when the original manuscripts were discovered in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. showing their original arrangement for string quartet. The world premiere recording of Rossini: 6 Sonate a Quattro features two of Canada’s most respected and beloved performers - Mark Fewer (violin), and Joel Quarrington (bass) - and two of North America’s rising stars - Yolanda Bruno (violin), and Julian Schwarz (cello) and produced by JUNO award-winning producer John D.S. Adams. These performances, from November 2017, were recorded in collaboration with the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance using the newly released (2014) Critical Edition published by the Fondazione Rossini Pesaro.

L'occasione fa il ladro ('Opportunity Makes a Thief') was composed by the young Rossini in just eleven days, working alongside his librettist Luigi Prividali. The tale presents a comedy of multiple confusions in one act. Count Alberto, travelling to marry a fianc�e he has yet to meet, leaves an inn with the wrong suitcase. Left holding the Count's papers and possessions, Don Parmenione audaciously adopts Alberto's identity intent on taking the bride for himself. Jochen Sch�nleber's acclaimed production adapts Rossini's swift and deftly plotted moral drama to give present-day relevance to Rossini's exuberant ensemble burletta.