Praise for the Bayerische Staatsoper's new Ballo in Maschera: "A formidable vocal feast" (Bayerische Staatszeitung). Ten years after stepping down as music director fo the Bavarian State Opera, a "grand Zubin Mehta" (Bayerischer Rundfunk) returned to Munich in March, 2016 to celebrate his 80th birthday conducting Verdi's masterpiece for the first time in a staged production. His cast features some of today's finest Verdi singesr: soprano Anja Harteros, singing "Amelia" for the first time and "filling every note with Verdian intensity", tenor Piotr Beczala as a "visually and vocally dashing Riccardo" and George Petean as an "exemplary" Renato (Neue Musikzeitung). In director Johannes Erath's musically super-sensitive new production, this historically-based tale of illicit love, conspiracy and betrayal unfolds in a surrealistic, shadowy setting transformed by lighting and projections. Special praise was showered by the enthusiastic critics on Maestro Mehta, who "creates concetrated musical connections, miraculously guiding his orchestra and unsurpassable voices the way a thermal lifts a paraglider...Musically the performance was a dream" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). "A total triumph" (La Razon). "This production shows what a utopia opera can be" (Abendzeitung).

Based on Schiller's play of the same name, Don Carlos was written for the Paris Opera between 1865 and 1867 in the tradition of a French grand opera. Reportedly revised and performed in Italian as Don Carlo, the opera seen here in the version that Verdi prepared for Modena in 1886. This is Verdi's most ambitious and most forward-looking work.

Classical Music

Oberto was Verdi's first staged operas and was heard for the first time at La Scala, Milan in November 1839. As a young and unknown composer, Verdi was subject to the rules governing the opera industry in Italy. Even so, there are many scenes in this early work that reveal unmistakable signs of the composer's individual style.

As part of the ambitious Tutto Verdi project, the rarely performed La battaglia di Legnano is available for the first time on DVD and Blu-ray. The patriotic war story of La battaglia gives a taste of the real-life revolutionary ideals of the composer, as he delivers a thinly veiled exhortation to throw off the bonds of foreign rule for love of country.

Following the conventions of the Paris Opera, Giuseppe Verdi was also obliged to compose ballet music for the French premieres or first performances of his stage works. Between 1847 and 1894, he wrote a total of seven so-called divertissements, some extensive, for Jerusalem, Les v�pres siciliennes, Le trouvere, MacBeth, Don Carlos, Aida and Otello. With catchy melodies, lively, accentuated rhythms, descriptive sound effects and vivid gestures, but above all with incredibly colourful instrumentation, he succeeded in giving new impetus to the ballet music of his day. While the ballet music was generally omitted from productions of Verdi's operas for a long time - with the exception of Aida - it has recently been performed increasingly often and linked to the dramaturgy of the respective work. These beautiful, well-crafted pieces of music should no longer be withheld from the public. On the new double CD from BR-KLASSIK, the Munich Radio Orchestra and it's chief conductor Ivan Repusic present Verdi's complete ballet music. In 19th-century Italian operas, a ballet was not part of the composition but was performed either between the acts or after the opera performance - and was usually a work created by a ballet composer who had little or no connection to the operatic work in question. The strict convention at the Paris Opera, however, was that an extensive dance interlude had to be included as a divertissement in the third act of a grand opera. So if an Italian opera composer wanted to have his works performed in Paris (and who would not, given the international importance of that great opera house in Europe's leading musical metropolis), ballet music had to be provided as well. In the case of works originally written for the Paris Opera, the ballet was included in the French-language libretto from the outset, and ballet music also had to be newly added to all existing works as well. Italian opera composers such as Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi were hardly ever enthusiastic about this French preference for extensive dance interludes in the third act, but they had to bow to convention. Verdi's ballet music for Les v�pres siciliennes (Les quatre saisons - The Four Seasons) and Jerusalem was the most extensive he created. In the dance sequence composed for Le trouvere, which utilises musical material from the gypsy scenes, he created a close musical and dramaturgical link with the stage action. He composed extensive ballet music for MacBeth to illustrate the Hecate scenes of Shakespeare's drama. In the third act of Don Carlos, a Ballet de la Reine entitled La Peregrina is performed in Queen Elisabeth's gardens to celebrate the coronation anniversary of the Spanish King Philip the following day. And for the premiere of Aida in Cairo, there were no obligations regarding the design of the dance interludes, which is why Verdi probably came closest to his ideal of linking the dances as directly as possible to the opera's plot. His shortest ballet music, with oriental-sounding dances, was composed for Otello.

Re-release of a previous ORFEO bestseller, the present album contains the premiere of the new production of Don Carlo from October 1970 in Vienna. The premiere was surrounded by a great scandal, caused by the Karajan's fans, who expected their idol to conduct the new production. However, Karajan entrusted the conductor Horst Stein with the new production and though Stein had until then been the favourite of the local audience, this time he was greeted with a torrent of 'boos" which were totally unrelated to his artistic performance. The singers, by contrast, were cheered to the rafters. The house had gathered together a cast for this production that was hand-picked right down to the smallest part. The booklet offers detailed information about the scandal and indignation surrounding the premiere together with archive photographs of the stage.

Ernani is a gripping drama about love and revenge by Giuseppe Verdi. Written in his unique style it brims with poignant arias, rousing choruses and enthralling ensemble scenes. The rebel leader Ernani recognises his father's murderer in the Spanish King Carlo and seeks revenge on him. Both men love Elvira - as does old Silva whom she is to be married to... Director Lotte de Beer and her set and costume designer Christof Hetzer devote themselves to the fictional plot which bears references to the 16th century. They demonstrate their rich scenic imagination in this production, conducted by Enrique Mazzola who "provides musically magic moments at the stand of the Wiener Symphoniker" (Schwabische Zeitung). "Great singers, fiery music and an action-packed staging" (Allgauer Zeitung). "A mixture of Tarantino's 'Kill Bill' and Monty Python's 'The Knights of the Coconut'." (Deutschlandfunk)

Ernani is a gripping drama about love and revenge by Giuseppe Verdi. Written in his unique style it brims with poignant arias, rousing choruses and enthralling ensemble scenes. The rebel leader Ernani recognises his father's murderer in the Spanish King Carlo and seeks revenge on him. Both men love Elvira - as does old Silva whom she is to be married to... Director Lotte de Beer and her set and costume designer Christof Hetzer devote themselves to the fictional plot which bears references to the 16th century. They demonstrate their rich scenic imagination in this production, conducted by Enrique Mazzola who "provides musically magic moments at the stand of the Wiener Symphoniker" (Schwabische Zeitung). "Great singers, fiery music and an action-packed staging" (Allgauer Zeitung). "A mixture of Tarantino's 'Kill Bill' and Monty Python's 'The Knights of the Coconut'." (Deutschlandfunk)

Giuseppe Verdi wanted his seventh opera to be passionate, fiery and action-packed, and he wanted a real prima donna to take centre stage. He found the ideal subject in one of the most famous female figures in world history: Joan of Arc. Verdi was highly satisfied with Temistocle Solera's libretto. It was, he wrote in August 1844, 'almost of an unusual beauty'. In fact, the title role brings a special radiance to the opera, which is not necessarily one of the composer's most prominent roles on the repertoire today. However, it was celebrated by the premiere audience, and the day after the premiere Verdi wrote to his friend Francesco Maria Piave: 'Without exception and without doubt, it is the best of my operas'. A few successful performances followed, but then the work faded into the shadows of Verdi's later, even more famous operas. It is high time to bring it back to light!

Falstaff is Verdi’s masterpiece of comic opera, in which the behavior of the ageing Sir John Falstaff, a devious freeloader and would-be ladykiller, causes uproar in the petty-bourgeois household of the Windsor’s. In this performance stage and film director Mario Martone updates the action to the present day and shows Falstaff as ageing rebel in dodgy sideburns and leather jacket. Among the “exquisit vocal cast” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), Michael Volle gives his debut in the title role “with masterly dynamic shadings” (Financial Times) and “as if he had been preparing for this role for a lifetime.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) while “Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin are tickling out all the wit and all the momentum from this score.” (Online Merker)

Gilda Cruz-Romo is without a doubt the most significant soprano that Mexico has given to the world, with a brilliant career as a performer of the highest level in all major international stages, comprising more than thirty years of professional activity. Since her debut in 1962 at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City, until her farewell recital in 1999, her magnificent spinto soprano voice, high volume and unmistakable timbre, her impeccable musicianship, her expressive capacity, histrionic ability and physical beauty, placed her in a prominent place among the singers of her time. In her repertoire of over forty operatic roles, Verdi’s roles always occupied a prominent place, and Ms. Cruz-Romo soon established herself as one of the leading exponents of Giuseppe Verdi of the nineteen seventies and eighties. Cruz-Romo was invited by all great opera houses in the world be them the Palais Garnier in Paris, La Fenice in Venice, the Colon in Buenos Aires or the Liceu in Barcelona, to give her voice to Elvira (Ernani), Odabella (Attila), Lady Macbeth (Macbeth), Luisa (Luisa Miller), Leonora (Il Trovatore), Violetta (La Traviata), Amelia (Un ballo in Maschera), Leonora di Vargas (La forza del Destino), Elisabetta (Don Carlo), Aida (Aida) and Deemona (Otello), and of course to sing the solos in Verdi’s Messa da Requiem. A true gem of a compilation of historical Live recordings.

Commissioned by the Viceroy of Egypt, Aida is Verdi's only opera written for a non-European house. Although set in 19th century BC Egypt, it borrows only superficially from the current fashion for exotic subjects but on closer examination emerges as an implacable indictment of nationalism and imperialism.

Classical Music

After the success of Aida in December 1871, and despite his enormous popularity, Verdi retired as an operatic composer. + It took the young publisher Giulio Ricordi and composer and librettist Arrigo Boito a number of years to entice him to embark on what was originally called Jago, and only later known as Otello. + Verdi retained a reverence for Shakespeare, and had already composed Macbeth. + With Otello, completed in November 1886, and triumphantly received, he created a masterpiece from a play that, as Bernard Shaw noted, had all the ingredients of an Italian opera.