This is famous 1953 RCA recording of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, starring three of the greatest singers of the day: Zinka Milanov, Jussi Björling and Robert Merrill.

The recording features Renato Cellini conducting the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra with the Robert Shaw Chorale, and features singers Zinka Milanov, Jussi Björling, Robert Merrill.

Who today, or in any day, fills Mascagni’s grateful phrases with quite such full, lustrous tone and with such a wealth of feeling for the text as Milanov? This is verismo singing on the grandest, most authentic scale … Like his soprano, Björling’s singing is an exemplar of the spinto style at its best. As Alfio, Merrill turns in one of his most considerable performances on disc.

- Gramophone Magazine

"Levine is equally successful with Cavalleria rusticana, of which he gives one of the most compelling accounts available on disc. Scotto and Domingo bring Santuzza and Turiddu excitingly to life."
-- Charles Osborne, BBC Music Magazine

"the Scotto/Domingo set now stands as a first recommnendastion for Mascagni's red-blooded opera, with Domingo giving a heroic accoungt of the rolee of Turiddu, full of deciance...James Levine directs with a splended sensse of pacing..."
-- Penguin Guide [2003/4 Edition]

The Italian tenor sings the world’s greatest Italian tenor arias, including the hit “Nessun dorma” – without question the most famous opera arias.
Verissimo meaning “very true” in Italian and is a play on the word “Verismo” – the late 19th century opera style from which these featured operas are taken. The style is known for its big passions, dramatic lyricism, lush orchestral sound and storylines about normal people in the throes of love, death, betrayal and revenge. Key composers of this style include Puccini, Mascagni, Cilea and Leoncavallo.

Classical Music

Following the runaway success of Cavalleria rusticana in 1890 at the age of 27, Mascagni did not rest on his laurels. In just a few years, he completed no less than five operas, including Iris, premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome in 1898. Mascagni might well have taken for his own Puccini's famous quip, “Against everything and everyone, make a work from melody”. And in Iris it is melodic invention which shows the composer's genius at its greatest. A melody by Mascagni is usually long, smooth and Italian-sounding; and Iris is full-on melody all the way, particularly in such crowd-pleasers as Jor's Serenade, the “Hymn of the Sun” or the duet in Act II “Oh come al tuo sottile corpo s'aggira”, which includes the famous “Piovra”. Furtheremore, with a little effort listeners can identify what would be the various musical “numbers”. In Iris, Mascagni is almost obsessively attentive to recitative and his exemplary flexibility at times recalls the sublime "conversation style" "invented" by Puccini. The present production was recorded live at the Teatro Goldoni, Livorno, in December of 2017.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Cavalleria rusticana is the short opera that has all the elements of a grand opera compressed into a single highly dramatic time span. The story of love, lust, blood-feud and betrayal played out against the pageantry of the Easter celebrations in a Sicilian village delivers an emotional wallop because of the youthful vigor and musical wealth of it's great score which includes the glorious Easter Hymn and the deeply moving Intermezzo. Mascagni was never to repeat his youthful success but this brief work is enough to ensure his immortality. 1 CD with 12-page booklet.

Inactive since Il Piccolo Marat (1921), on March 23, 1932 Mascagni reproposed Pinotta, reelaborated from his cantata In Filanda. The Author’s interventions in 1932 were undoubtedly important: the little chorus of Zeffiri that after the short prelude announces the idyll shows a harmonic restlessness hardly thinkable in a twenty-year-old Mascagni; and the same goes for the unusual effect in the finale, with the two voices whispering a fading “T’amo” on the silence of the orchestra. Also, the rich instrumental ensemble is much wider than the one thought for the cantata. For the symphonic poem with voice A Giacomo Leopardi Mascagni followed the great examples of Liszt, Smetana and Strauss: the poem gets its inspiration not only from the few verses sung by the soprano; wider fragments - quoted in limine on the score - supply the expressive suggestions to the orchestra interludes acting as “bridges” among the different episodes. So we might say that this A Giacomo Leopardi is not a cantata, but a downright symphonic poem where a few singable episodes occasionally emerge. Zanetto can be considered as a “little” opera not because of its short duration, of the orchestra ensemble including no brass or its only two characters (soprano and mezzosoprano en travesti), but because of its decidedly lyrical style and basic lack of action: the act is just a long encounter-conversation in a Renaissance Florence between a young minstrel and Silvia, a rich, bored lady who reciprocates his love but, being a courtesan, cannot allow herself such a feeling and must reject the young boy.

Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945) was one of those composers famous for a single work, the remainder of their oeuvre being practically unknown. His opera Iris is based on the libretto by Luigi Illica, who also wrote the libretti for Puccini operas such as La Bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. It was Illica who gave birth to the idea of an opera about Japan. Exotic subjects, i.e. those set in distant lands, were in vogue throughout Europe, and the Far East in particular was very present at the time. It was Mascagni’s express wish to write ‘original’ music to this specific material, something hitherto unheard-of. This recording with the choir and orchestra of the Berliner Operngruppe under Felix Krieger is a live recording of the Berlin premiere of the original version from the Konzerthaus Berlin. The Berliner Operngruppe celebrated its 10th anniversary.

The Messa di Gloria belongs to the period before Cavalleria Rusticana: the lack of a choral or a fugue as well as the simple, almost ingenuous tonalities reveal the dominance of the operatic style over the religious one. Only a careful listening can disclose in the operatic melodies of the Messa di Gloria some kind of references to church music. Echoes of Guglielmo Ratcliff can be heard in the Gratias, and the Incarnatus clearly recalls Turiddu’s “resta abbandonata” from Cavalleria. Before a modern audience the Messa, made of “pray, all love and passion”, as the composer described it, still retains its character. The lyrical element, vehement in the Gloria or tender in the Elevazione, is soaked with Mediterranean feelings, like in a deep and touching popular songs.

One would be hard pressed to find an opera more proudly Southern Italian than Cavalleria rusticana, set in Vizzini, a small mountain village in the Sicilian hinterland that was the birthplace of the story’s playwright, Giovanni Verga. Its enduring popularity makes it surprising indeed that the last studio recording dates to exactly 30 years ago (1990, Semyon Bychkov), preceded just a year earlier by Giuseppe Sinopoli’s critically acclaimed production dedicated to his father, who, like its protagonists and Verga, was Sicilian. This new interpretation is thus long overdue and joins a small but prestigious circle of recordings, with Carmine Gallone (1953, film), Tullio Serafin (1960), Herbert von Karajan (1965), James Levine (1978), Franco Zeffirelli (1982, film) and Georges Pretre (1983) predating Sinopoli. This new production of Cavalleria Rusticana brings together some of the most prominent artists on today’s international opera stages under conductor Filippo Arlia, a native of South Italy’s Calabria and youngest-ever Director of an Italian conservatory (Nocera Terinese’s ‘Tchaikovsky’ Conservatory). The recording’s soloists are no less impressive: tenor Piero Giuliacci (Turiddu, winner of the ‘Mascagni d’Oro’ 2013 and ‘Pavarotti d’Oro’ 2017); mezzo-soprano Alessandra Di Giorgio (Santuzza); baritone Domenico Balzani (Alfio); mezzo-soprano Irina Dolzhenko (Lucia); and soprano Giorgia Teodoro (Lola) who, like Arlia, calls Calabria home. This recording revives Mascagni’s voice in a new millennium with artists capable of honouring the verismo vocal color he pioneered, before an entire generation of opera composers followed suit.

The performance of Cavalleria Rusticana republished in this album took place in the hometown of Mascagni, Livorno, on the occasion of the centenary of the premiere, which took place in 1890 in Rome, at the Teatro Costanzi. Already scheduled for some time, this publication due out in autumn 2021 commemorates one of the most important voices of post-World War II, the tenor Giuseppe Giacomini, recently passed away at the age of 80, and caught here in a role to him particularly congenial and at the zenith of his career. Known and loved by European, American and Asian opera audiences, a unique voice for its richness of harmonics and extension. The English critic Alan Blyth wrote of him: “... he is the true inheritor of the spinto mantle last worn by Corelli, and to some extent by Vickers. Yet his tone, with his strongly baritonal timbre, bears an even closer resemblance to that of Francesco Merli...” Conductor is Bruno Bartoletti, who had a long and honored theatrical and recording career; to be noticed the "extraordinary participation" of Fedora Barbieri in the part of Lucia.

The first performance of I Rantzau took place at the Pergola Theatre in Florence on 10th November 1892. It was a triumphal success right from the dress rehearsal; the ovations for the composer were so great that according to the reports of the time his wife Lina fainted with emotion. On the first evening, six pieces were encored. Born under such splending auspices, the opera continued its career almost into the new century, but inexplicably, in its complete version, it was no longer put forward for production. And we had to wait until the celebration of the centenary of the first performance for the first new production in modern times. What was the reason for its disappearance? Whatever answers might be given, today I Rantzau has to be considered an important and delicate stage in Mascagni’s creative work. Indeed, the opera marks the saturation of the so-called “realistic” phase of the composer’s work. It highlights the consolidation of the change from the idyllic naturalism tried out in the earlier Amico Fritz, to a true experimentalism which was to lead soon after that to the pessimistic tensions of the heavy Nordic romanticism of Guglielmo Ratcliff.

This recital by Jean-Francois Borras honours the fascinating history of the Opera de Monte-Carlo, the house that has performed more French repertoire than any other. Jean-Francois Borras, who received his initial training in the choir of the Monte-Carlo Cathedral and is an internationally-renowned ambassador of French vocal style, presents excerpts from works by Mascagni, Gunsbourg and Massenet that were composed for the Opera there. Raoul Gunsbourg was the director of the Opera de Monte Carlo (architect Charles Garnier) from 1893-1951 and the variety of his programming created the institution's exceptional renown. Borras sings arias from operas that he has performed on the stage of the Opera de Monte-Carlo, including Romeo et Juliette (Gounod), Manon, Herodiade, Werther (Massenet), Carmen (Bizet) and Les Contes d'Hoffmann (Offenbach), accompanied by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo under Pierre Dumoussaud, a young French conductor and specialist in operatic repertoire who is rapidly building an international career.

Melody Moore pays tribute to the legendary soprano Renata Tebaldi, presenting a selection of arias and scenes by Rossini, Verdi, Boito, Catalani, Puccini, Mascagni, Giordano, Cilea and Alessandro Scarlatti, documenting the most important stages in the career of “la voce d’angelo”. Moore performs these pieces together with the Transylvania State Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra under the baton of Lawrence Foster. Melody Moore and Lawrence Foster both have a vast Pentatone discography, including collective complete recordings of Verdi’s Otello (2017) and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and La Fanciulla del West (both 2021). The latter album was also the Pentatone debut of the Transylvania State Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra.

REVIEW:

Does Moore sound like Tebaldi? Not exactly: a track-by-track comparison reveals subtle differences in timbre and interpretation. But this is an act of homage, not impersonation, and Tebaldi’s repertoire certainly suits Moore’s voice and showcases her versatility, as she differentiates each heroine from the next.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Composers are often tasked with creating from a void, an emptiness. The blank page is an easel. The parts of a structure of a piece of music – melody, accompaniment, line, harmony, tension, and release – must take shape to reach the listener’s ear. Sometimes, instead of starting with an empty sheet of staff paper, a composer creates something which is pollinated by another source. Perhaps it is a folk song, a poem, a melody, or an even larger work, such as a full-length opera. New works are then realized. In the case of this two-cd set, an East South African folk tune receives new life as a romantic piano ballade. A sonnet of Petrarch resurfaces centuries later as a dramatic declaration of love, through a solo piano work. The repertoire on these discs traces Kristin Ditlow’s own growth as a pianist and musician. Each work marks a chapter of her development and artistry to the present. The song transcriptions are pieces that have been played countless times with vocal partners: the operatic works are works that she has coached or conducted. Her passionate pursuit of travel is also a thread which weaves throughout the discs: the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor spiritual arrangements are works that she became acquainted with as a high school choral accompanist: meeting her husband while on tour in China in 2012: the Mongolian Shepherd Song is her arrangement of a traditional folksong from the Chinese Mongolian community, a work introduced to her by her husband in China originally for erhu and pipa (traditional Chinese instruments) accompaniment but transcribed for violin and piano. Kristin Ditlow has spent five summers performing, teaching, and coaching in Hungary and the Bartók selections all harken back to those times in the Hungarian countryside. Pianist, coach and conductor Dr. Kristin Ditlow dedicates her musical career to collaboration and connection. She has been seen in concert throughout North America, Mainland China, and Western Europe as a soloist, collaborative pianist, and conductor. The set of music pieces in this album is representative of her “Passages” in her career.

Since it's foundation in 2013, the Berlin Opera Group has made a name for itself with Berlin premieres such as Donizetti's Deux Hommes et une Femme and Betly, and other operatic rarities. This album is a Deutschlandfunk Kultur recording of the 2021 performance of Pietro Mascagni's Zanetto from the Konzerthaus Berlin. Yajie Zhang was also heard in the role of Ugo d'Asti (OC989). The orchestra of the Berlin Opera Group plays under the direction of Felix Krieger.

A unique demonstration of massed instrumental playing, featuring no less than 48 violinists under the baton of Geoffrey Simon. Three of London's finest sections drive the concept of the violin ensemble to new heights in these innovative, hugely sonorous treatments of repertoire from Debussy to Gershwin. "Monti's Csardas of course sounds appropriately passionate: and when it gets going the 48 players clearly enjoy their own virtuosity: the result is exhilarating" (Gramophone) "Stand out track is Shostakovich's Romance from The Gadfly which demonstrates how an effective melody can benefit from an arrangement sympathetic to colorful harmonies" (Classic CD)

First released in May 2020, Piotr Beczala’s PENTATONE debut album Vincerò! has been one of the must successful and critically acclaimed opera recital albums of the last few years. During the 2021 Opus Klassik Awards, Piotr Beczala was crowned as Singer of the Year for this exceptional recording. Initially released on SACD, the album now returns in a more affordable Stereo version. Global star tenor Piotr Beczala presents Vincerò!, the first fruit of his exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE. Vincerò! is a collection of heart-wrenching opera arias by Puccini, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Giordano and Cilea. For Beczala, this recording documents his vocal transition from the lyrical tenor repertoire to the more dramatic roles of Verismo, and thus simultaneously marks a significant new chapter in his stage career. Beczala is accompanied by the Cor de la Generalitat Valenciana and the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana, led by maestro Marco Boemi; an extraordinary singer’s conductor who has worked with the greatest vocalists of our age.

Following his recent heroic Met debut as Hermann in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades, Arsen Soghomonyan makes his solo recording debut for Delos. A fast-rising figure in the dramatic repertoire, the Armenian tenor has enjoyed success at major opera houses such as Bayerische Staatsoper, Teatro di San Carlo, Bolshoi Theatre and Staatsoper Wien. In his album Bridges of Voice and Soul, Arsen lends his powerful voice to some of the greatest Italian arias; "Nessun dorma" and "E lucevan le stelle" by Puccini, Verdi's "Niun mi tema" and "Vesti la giubba" by Leoncavallo are some of the delights that comprise this operatic feast, enlivened by the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra and conductor Constantine Orbelian.

In the search for a specific form and language, the music of “Sì”, under the modernist patina, returns to our most sincere sources, to the spirits of comedy and comic opera. After all, the audience of the melodrama found in the 'little lyric' a sort of deforming nail in which situations, behaviours and conventions were reflected with polite caricature. Such was the Mascagni operetta, which, in its background of parodist grotesque, re-enacts the petty-bourgeois salacity, even in the title: Sì, from the name of the protagonist, so called because she never knew say no to anyone. In this operetta Mascagni lavished the gifts of his most spontaneous melody; the letters aria sung by Vera, the andantino of the duet in Act 1, the page of the wedding party in act 2, the seduction duet between Chablis and Vera, the “sad waltz” sung by Sì; the prelude for strings opening Act 3. The Mascagni talent however reveal itself in the entire score with his fluent streak, rhythmic liveliness, and skill for developing the ensemble scenes.