Le nozze in villa (‘The Wedding in the Villa’) tells the story of Sabina and the young Claudio. They are in love, but this match goes against the will of her father, who wants her to marry the Schoolmaster Trifoglio. Misunderstandings and tensions between city emancipation and provincial narrow-mindedness are resolved, and romance ultimately triumphs thanks to the alliance of ‘gracefulness, faith and youth’. This early and virtually unknown opera buffa by Donizetti is full of Rossini-influenced lyrical inventiveness and beautiful arias. Specially restored for the 2019 Bergamo Festival, this revival brings out all of the opera’s ‘sparkling spirit and melodiousness’ (bachtrack.com).

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Le nozze in villa (‘The Wedding in the Villa’) tells the story of Sabina and the young Claudio. They are in love, but this match goes against the will of her father, who wants her to marry the Schoolmaster Trifoglio. Misunderstandings and tensions between city emancipation and provincial narrow-mindedness are resolved, and romance ultimately triumphs thanks to the alliance of ‘gracefulness, faith and youth’. This early and virtually unknown opera buffa by Donizetti is full of Rossini-influenced lyrical inventiveness and beautiful arias. Specially restored for the 2019 Bergamo Festival, this revival brings out all of the opera’s ‘sparkling spirit and melodiousness’ (bachtrack.com).

Le nozze in villa (‘The Wedding in the Villa’) tells the story of Sabina and the young Claudio. They are in love, but this match goes against the will of her father, who wants her to marry the Schoolmaster Trifoglio. Misunderstandings and tensions between city emancipation and provincial narrow-mindedness are resolved, and romance ultimately triumphs thanks to the alliance of ‘gracefulness, faith and youth’. This early and virtually unknown opera buffa by Donizetti is full of Rossini-influenced lyrical inventiveness and beautiful arias. Specially restored for the 2019 Bergamo Festival, this revival brings out all of the opera’s ‘sparkling spirit and melodiousness’ (bachtrack.com).

A lifelong friend of Prokofiev and frequently performed outside of Soviet Russia in his lifetime, Nicolay Myaskovsky is best known today for his 27 symphonies. His lyrical and intensely passionate First Cello Sonata was one of his first important works, finished not long after completing his studies in St Petersburg. Premiered by Rostropovich, the Second Cello Sonata became immediately popular amongst cellists for its imaginative blend of folk-music styles with a sweet Romanticism that recalls Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. The award-winning duo of Kehayova and Miller complete this recording with the perfect encore – Rimsky-Korsakov’s melodious Serenade.

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After the great success that Il Trovatore received in Paris, Verdi was proposed to compose a French version of the opera to suit the tastes of the local public. The original work, based on the Spanish play El trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez, had a libretto by Cammarano, which was translated into French by Émilien Pacini . Le Trouvère was first staged in Brussels in 1856 and premiered at the Paris Opera in 1857. In this new version the composer added some music in act 3 for the gypsie ballet scene, extended the finale of act 4 and made several other revisions. The plot is highly dramatic and captivating: Verdi portrays strong characters who deal with war, obsession and revenge. To use director Robert Wilson’s words “this is a family tragedy, and in many ways, it is a very contemporary story.” Wilson’s approach to the opera aims at preserving its emotional strength by using a very essential décor, whose main element is light: “As a director, when I design the stage and lighting, I think about if what I see can help me hear better. Le Trouvère requires a tremendous amount of concentration, so the set I designed is abstract in order to create a space for the music in the Farnese. I have designed an environment in concrete, creating a juxtaposition to the theatre’s ornate interior. […] Light in my work functions as part of the architectural whole. It is an element which helps us hear and see. Without light there is no space. To light a world that Verdi has described as so dark, one needs light to make the space darker.” In the set’s background the director also uses some photos by American photographer Robert Rosenkranz. This production was staged in the splendid Teatro Farnese of Parma, which was built in 1628 and belongs to the Complesso Monumentale della Pilotta, one of the oldest museums in Italy. Extra content: Interview with the curator of the Museum subtitled in all languages.

Dvorak had an ambivalent relationship with Classical and Romantic traditions, something that is clearly exemplified in his piano trios. The Piano Trio in E minor, Op. 90 is a daring late work that uses popular moods and freer forms consisting of six Dumky – a melancholic and poetic musical form that draws from the composer inexhaustible melodic creativity. The Piano Trio in F minor, Op. 65 was influenced by the death of the composer’s mother and also by Dvorak having heard Brahms’ Piano Quintet, Op. 34, a work composed in the same key. Cyclic elements and fiery drama permeate the writing. “Individually excellent, they are even more impressive together”, wrote the Gazzetta di Mantova after a concert by the Italian-Swiss Trio des Alpes, thereby describing one of this Trio’s essential qualities: three independent, all-round successful personalities meeting as a trio. What attracts them is the quintessence of chamber music: dialogue, a shared sound and the blending of three instruments into a single whole.

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Antonio Vivaldi’s three-act opera Orlando Furioso is set to an Italian libretto by Grazio Braccioli and is based on Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem of the same name. The opera alternates arias with recitative, and is set on an island at an unspecified time. The story line combines several plot lines from Ariosto: the exploits of the hero Orlando are detailed, as well as the tale of the sorceress Alcina. Orlando is performed in this production by Sonia Prina, and Alcina by Lucia Cirillo. Recorded at the 43rd Festival della Valle d’Itria, this production is the first video recording of this rare opera. Subtitles are available on this release in Italian, German, English, French, Japanese, and Korean.

With this recording Dynamic brings to completion the project of recording Nicolo Paganini's entire output. Included in this programme are some absolute rarities, such as the Sonata Napoleon MS. 5, the splendid Maestosa Suonata Sentimentale MS. 51, the Sonata movimento perpetuo M.S 66 and La Primavera MS. 73, all performed faithfully following Paganini's original manuscripts. The set also features an exciting interpretation of the rare Concerto No. 3 in E major MS. 50, perhaps the less frequently performed of Paganini's concertos, and the Caprice No. 24 in an interesting version with piano accompaniment. Mario Hossen received his musical education in Sofia, Vienna and Paris. He made his debut as a soloist with an orchestra at the age of eight. Hailed for his incredible virtuosity and charismatic stage presence, Hossen plays a repertoire that ranges all the way from Renaissance music to Classic music to contemporary works and Jazz. As a concert soloist of international acclaim, Mario Hossen has performed with renowned orchestras such as the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, the Orchestra della Scala di Milano, the Royal Philharmonic, the Orquesta Sinfonica del Estado de Mexico, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Sofia Philharmonic and the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie. Hossen's musicological and artistic endeavors are focused among other things on source research on Niccolo Paganini. Mario Hossen plays a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, 1749, on loan from the Austrian National Bank collection.

This sparkling opera buffa is a premiere from the 2016 Donizetti Festival of Bergamo, with the part of Pasquale in Neapolitan dialect. It is the story of two rich merchant brothers from Lisbon, who are used to weighing everything against their barganing power. Also the marriage of Pasquale's niece Isabella is a "bargain" to them: she must marry another merchant, so as not to break with family tradition. The gags among the various characters are hilarious - especially those between the two brothers, who have competely different characters - creating an almost surreal atmosphere. Olivo, interpreted by Bruno Taddia, is teh real protagonist: as Isabella's father, he portrays a gruff, inflexible man, and does so with self-assurance and ease but never over the top. No less convincing is Filippo Morace as his brother Pasquale: istrionic and exhilarating as a na ctor, musically precise, and excellent in his Neapolitan dialect performance. Laurea Giordano, also thanks to her physique du role, is perfect as Isabella, the heartbroken girl torn between love for the young Camillo and obedience towards her grouchy father.

This release is a new volume of the series "Great violins." Each volume of this series traces the life of a famous string instrument: its history, photographs and recorded sound through the years and the artists who have owned it. The publication includes a panoramic view of the instrument with detailed color pictures, and a full-size poster, as well as a recent digital recording to appreciate fully its current tone-color qualities. The Stradivari violin featured here is the marvelous "Marechal Berthier 1716", owned by Napoleon Bonaparte who gave it to Alexandre Berthier, Marshal of France and Prince of Neuchatel and Wagram. Pavel Berman is the chosen artist that is heard on this release as he performs works by Bach, Beethoven, Paganini, Brahms, Ysaye, and De Sarasate.

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Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a child prodigy whose early genius was recognized and admired by the likes of Gustav Mahler and Giacomo Puccini. His musical style, deeply affected by music for the theatre, possessed great lyrical breadth; he managed to develop his own voice by blending all the different influences he absorbed in Vienna during his studies. The advent of Nazism in 1934 forced him to seek refuge in the United States, where he became the first composer of film scores, winning two Oscars and marking a milestone in the Hollywood film industry. Teatro Regio di Torino has contributed to the rediscovery of this precious one-act opera by staging its Italian premiere. Violanta is Korngold's second opera, which the composer wrote in 1914 at the age of 17. It was premiered with great success at Munich’s Hoftheater on 28 March 1916, and a few days later in Vienna. The influence of the Austrian capital is key to understanding Korngold’s style. From the late 1800s to the early 1900s Vienna was a place of contrasts: nostalgia for the past and innovative trends; conservatism and creative energy. Korngold grew up in this environment, absorbing various influences which are all present in Violanta, making this opera a sort of 'small-scale Vienna'. Pier Luigi Pizzi, stage director, costume and lighting designer for this production, chose to set the action at the beginning of the 1920s in a decadent Venice, where distant echoes of a melancholic Carnival add a sense of gloom to the whole performance.

Gaetano Donizetti's La Favorite was rather laborious in the making: it started out as a re-working of L'Ange de Nisida, to which the composer added parts taken from some other operas of his. The work, which was premiered at the Op�ra of Paris, is set in 14th-century Castile and tells the story of the hapless love between Fernand, who has second thoughts about taking holy orders and leaves the monastery of Santiago de Compostela, and Leonor, the mistress of king Alphonse XI. It is an intimate drama, where history and politics are but the backdrop to the protagonists' passions and torments. Fabio Luisi's conducting is both measured in balancing the orchestral sounds, and personal, varied and vigorous. The orchestra is crystal-clear, neat in it's accompaniment, neither subject to the voices nor prevaricating. Veronica Simeoni (Leonor), Celso Albelo (Fernand) and Mattia Olivieri (Alphonse) give excellent vocal and acting performances.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a child prodigy whose early genius was recognized and admired by the likes of Gustav Mahler and Giacomo Puccini. His musical style, deeply affected by music for the theatre, possessed great lyrical breadth; he managed to develop his own voice by blending all the different influences he absorbed in Vienna during his studies. The advent of Nazism in 1934 forced him to seek refuge in the United States, where he became the first composer of film scores, winning two Oscars and marking a milestone in the Hollywood film industry. Teatro Regio di Torino has contributed to the rediscovery of this precious one-act opera by staging its Italian premiere. Violanta is Korngold's second opera, which the composer wrote in 1914 at the age of 17. It was premiered with great success at Munich’s Hoftheater on 28 March 1916, and a few days later in Vienna. The influence of the Austrian capital is key to understanding Korngold’s style. From the late 1800s to the early 1900s Vienna was a place of contrasts: nostalgia for the past and innovative trends; conservatism and creative energy. Korngold grew up in this environment, absorbing various influences which are all present in Violanta, making this opera a sort of 'small-scale Vienna'. Pier Luigi Pizzi, stage director, costume and lighting designer for this production, chose to set the action at the beginning of the 1920s in a decadent Venice, where distant echoes of a melancholic Carnival add a sense of gloom to the whole performance.

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Giuseppi Verdi’s Messa da Requiem arose out of the composer’s admiration for the influential poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni, and as a response to the lack of appreciation shown to the writer in the press after the his death in 1873. The extraordinary character of Verdi’s Requiem confronts us with unanswerable questions, from the stormy and terrifying Dies irae, to consolatory and touching lyrical oases in which Verdi communicates liturgical texts in the most profound and expressive ways possible. This Teatro Regio di Parma production, which was performed open-air at the Parco Ducale of Parma, was dedicated to the victims of the Covid-19 pandemic and all the health workers engaged in the emergency. The mayor of Parma introduces the performance with a brief and touching speech and a minute’s silence. Conductor Roberto Abbado declared in an interview : “I think that Verdi felt the need to compose a sacred work to deal with some themes that ,as he got older, he felt very strongly about. They are themes that every human being sooner or later asks themselves. Verdi is not afraid to show that he fears death, and therefore his approach is extremely humble and human, showing…some of the frailties we all have. How does the Messa da Requiem end? It ends, in my opinion, with a huge question mark. Basically, I believe, Verdi, like many of us, cannot answer these questions. I, myself, cannot answer them.”

Alessandro Stradella was a highly influential composer in his day, producing an abundance of masterpieces despite his dissolute and dramatically brief life. Written for the lavish celebrations marking Leopoldo de’ Medici being made a cardinal, La Circe is set near a fountain on the leafy slopes of Parnassus. It evokes the spirit of the sorceress Circe who, while searching for the grave of her son, is dazzled by a bright light – the presence of a Medici. Complete with echo effects and deliciously lyrical and expressive music, La Circe is both a fascinating enigma and a perfect example of aristocratic tastes in Baroque Rome. This double album release contains the unabridged version of La Circe I and the World Premiere Recording of La Circe II, and the booklet provides detailed notes. Played on period instruments.

REVIEW:

The recording presents two versions of the story of the sorceress Circe, described as an operetta. The two versions are quite different, which goes far beyond the usual adaptations of compositions to local requirements. The composition has an operatic feel with its virtuosically ornamented arias, frilly and pronounced ornamentations, interwoven duets and effective recitatives. In common formal schemes Stradella creates a great variety of expression, surprising turns as well as delightful shaping of affect.

Estevan Velardi and his original sound ensemble Alessandro Stradella Consort present, in addition to the two versions of Circe, a Sonata di Viole in D major and other samples from the chamber cantata oeuvre of the Italian composer: Soffro, misero, e taccio and the Prologue to La Dori.

Velardi is also responsible for the settings and instrumentation. He keeps his ensemble playing in a lively and tomboyish manner that can easily be imagined in the atmosphere of a feast in an Italian garden. While the cantata Soffro, misero, e taccio and the prologue still sound a bit anemic, the music unfolds its full liveliness in the Circes. At the same time, the ensemble plays very well the complicated gentle melodies and the sometimes bold harmonies for the 17th century.

Singing overall is exquisite. Leslie Visco as Circe is convincing in both cases with individual timbre, agile and focused voice, and fine articulation of the text. The clearly led, if restrained voices of Cristina Farinelli and Anna Chierichetti prove good mediators for the difficult balance between declamation and virtuosity. Tenor Franceso Toma and bass Giuseppe Naviglio provide euphony for the male voices.

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Enrico di Borgogna is a melodramma per musica that was premiered in Venice in 1818, marking Donizetti’s stage debut. The plot of this rare opera follows a rather traditional scheme: Enrico wants to defeat the son of the villain who usurped his father’s throne and is about to marry his beloved Elisa. Fortunately, he succeeds in stopping the marriage and regaining his inheritance. This release is a world premiere video recording of the 2018 Donizetti Opera festival performance, which received great reviews for its brilliant staging. Director Silvia Paoli uses a “theatre within the theatre” approach which gives way to moments of sheer humor and amusement: as the curtain opens, the public is brought back to the time of the opera premiere. Played on period instruments by Academia Montis Regalis and conducted by repertoire specialist Alessandro De Marchi, this opera features two prima donnas like Sonia Ganassi and Anna Bonitatibus in the main roles. Extra content: interviews with Conductor Alessandro De Marchi, Sonia Ganassi and Anna Bonitatibus. “This was…a genuinely funny presentation, which had the audience laughing out loud. Everything was treated as a source of fun, from the narrative, and its mix of characters through the theatrical conventions of the time, even poking fun at the singers themselves. It was all staged in a blaze of color, fast-moving action, fabulous costumes and cleverly managed extraneous silliness.” (Operawire) [Anna Bonitatibus] displayed a burnished, deep timbre, sparkling coloratura and wonderful phrasing, confirming her status as the most interesting mezzo of her generation.” (Bachtrack.com) “Sonia Ganassi…has a strong, dynamically versatile and flexible voice which she is able to manage intelligently and with skill. . “(Operawire)

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REVIEW:

A love story with the usual intrigues is at center of the plot of Donizetti’s rediscovered opera Enrico di Borgogna. A lively staging, tight tempi as well as glowing colors from the orchestra, a very good choir and good soloists make this a valuable production.

– Pizzicato

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Before starting to work at Nabucodonosor, which will later become his iconic Nabucco, Giuseppe Verdi was on the verge of abandoning music, discouraged as he was by the flop of his second opera. He then received a libretto by Temistocle Solera almost by chance, as it was destined to another composer. Verdi was very reluctant to put himself to work, but later he referred that one night he “threw the manuscript on the table […]. the booklet opened: unwillingly, my eyes were drawn to the page that was before them and on these verses: ‘Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate’”. So he started focusing on the task and “one day one verse, the next day another verse, a note and a phrase at a time, […] little by little the opera was composed”. The rest is history. Nabucodonosor was a triumph, the public of La Scala, on the night of 9th March 1842, repaid him with an unprecedented success hailing all the numbers of the opera with warm ovations and paying a special tribute to the chorus Va’, pensiero, sull’ali dorate, which in Italy has since become a sort of second national anthem. The reasons of such a success were that the opera possessed such force in itself, such simplicity and smoothness of style that made it the perfect example of tragic opera. This production has been filmed at the 2019 Festival Verdi in Parma. It’s a very powerful and engaging creative project by 2018 Abbiati prize winner duo Ricci/Forte. The most striking feature of this staging is that the action takes place in 2046 on a military ship, which reminds us of an Ark. This performance portrays a dystopic society where we can find many references to real contemporary events. Nabucco is turned into an oppressive dictator who is obsessed with his own image. The Hebrew slaves are portrayed as refugees wearing life vests, while on the ship deck various screens are used to display the regime’s propaganda.

Among the musicians of 17th-century Naples who have been rediscovered and re-evaluated during the last decades - mainly thanks to Antonio Florio's performances - Antonio Nola is one of the least known, even though the few works of his that have been studied definitely place him among the forerunners and the protagonists of the Neapolitan school of the day. The few biographical information that we have about this enigmatic figure are that he was born in Naples in 1642 and entered the Piet� dei Turchini Conservatory at the age of ten. He later worked as an organist in the city's Cathedral and composed sacred music for the local music schools. Later on in his life he became a priest. The programme of this World Premiere Recording release consists of six unpublished works by Domenico Antonio Nola, five motets, a dialogue, and the sequence Stabat Mater, the manuscripts of which are all found in the Archive of the Girolamini Oratory in Naples. In addition, there is a work for instrumental ensemble by Pietro Marchitelli, a Sonata a tre composed in Naples in Nola's time. This monographic programme was prepared by Antonio Florio for the 2019 edition of the Cracow's Misteria Paschalia Festival - of which he's the artistic director- celebrating Easter week. The Neapolitan conductor is at the head of the ensemble Cappella Neapolitana and a group of solo singers who are all specialized in this kind of repertoire.

The programme of this triple album features 31 sonatas for solo violin that Giuseppe Tartini presumably wrote between 1745 and 1750 and are kept today in the archive of the Veneranda Arca del Santo in Padua. This collection contains the autograph manuscripts of these works that the composer kept editing throughout his lifetime, as the many marginal additions and corrections attest. However, many of these sonatas have come down to us also through other contemporary manuscript copies, which often differ substantially from the autographs, thus making it futile to look for a “final” or “correct” version. Quoting Giuseppe Tartini’s own words “in these small violin sonatas […] the bass is a formality; indeed, I play them without bass, which is the way I really intended them.” Although the first fifteen sonatas have a bass part, undoubtedly written for those who wished to perform them that way, the rest do not, this being a tangible proof that the continuo practice was being abandoned and the bass was no longer being included, not even as “a formality.” Further indications in Tartini’s manuscript suggest that the movements of a sonata had no predetermined position and could be interchanged with other ones from a work in the same or similar tonality. This flexibility was also extended to the order of movements, thus leaving the performer with freedom of choice. Crtomir Šiškovic, violinist from Trieste of Slovenian origin and a specialist in Tartini’s music, chose, for each sonata where there were alternative movements, those that he deemed best for his interpretation. Just as Tartini would have expected. Together with the previous release - Tartini Sonatas for solo violin, Vol. 1, published in 2012 – we are proud to have completed recording the cycle of Tartini’s solo violin sonatas in the year of the 250th anniversary of Tartini’s death.

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Before starting to work at Nabucodonosor, which will later become his iconic Nabucco, Giuseppe Verdi was on the verge of abandoning music, discouraged as he was by the flop of his second opera. He then received a libretto by Temistocle Solera almost by chance, as it was destined to another composer. Verdi was very reluctant to put himself to work, but later he referred that one night he “threw the manuscript on the table […]. the booklet opened: unwillingly, my eyes were drawn to the page that was before them and on these verses: ‘Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate’”. So he started focusing on the task and “one day one verse, the next day another verse, a note and a phrase at a time, […] little by little the opera was composed”. The rest is history. Nabucodonosor was a triumph, the public of La Scala, on the night of 9th March 1842, repaid him with an unprecedented success hailing all the numbers of the opera with warm ovations and paying a special tribute to the chorus Va’, pensiero, sull’ali dorate, which in Italy has since become a sort of second national anthem. The reasons of such a success were that the opera possessed such force in itself, such simplicity and smoothness of style that made it the perfect example of tragic opera. This production has been filmed at the 2019 Festival Verdi in Parma. It’s a very powerful and engaging creative project by 2018 Abbiati prize winner duo Ricci/Forte. The most striking feature of this staging is that the action takes place in 2046 on a military ship, which reminds us of an Ark. This performance portrays a dystopic society where we can find many references to real contemporary events. Nabucco is turned into an oppressive dictator who is obsessed with his own image. The Hebrew slaves are portrayed as refugees wearing life vests, while on the ship deck various screens are used to display the regime’s propaganda.

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The 2017 edition of the Reate Festival of Italy staged two operas composed by Nino Rota (1911-1979). Mostly known for his cinema soundtracks, Rota was able to merge the great Italian operatic tradition of Rossini, Puccini and Verdi into a contemporary musical language. I due timidi is drawn from a text of Italian writer Suso Cecchi d’Amico and the libretto of La notte di un nevrastenico was written by Riccardo Bacchelli. An all-star cast is featured here, including Giorgio Celenza, Sabrina Cortese, Daniele Adriani, Antonio Sapio, Chiara Osella, and Carlo Feola, among others. The Reate Festival Orchestra, led by Gabriele Bonolis, accompanies the soloists perfectly. This release is the world premiere recording of these works, and has been filmed in high-definition. Subtitled are available in Italian, English, German, French, Japanese, and Korean.

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REVIEW:

I due timidi is a gorgeous piece. Rota doesn't quite muster Puccini’s final layer of harmonic interest and novel orchestration but he rivals his senior for melodic generosity and is brilliant with vocal characterisation and linguistic clarity.

The performances are simply staged with a touch of commedia dell’arte and allowed to blossom in all the right ways by the conductor Gabriele Bonolis. There’s some ragged orchestral work but lovely singing that indulges Rota’s irresistible legatos. Daniele Adriani stands out as the male lover Raimondo in I due and as the Commendatore in La notte. His is not a classic Italian tenor sound, rather something with more grain but still adequate smoothness and notable presence.

– Gramophone

This is the first volume in what will be a three disc series profiling the best Overtures and Symphonies in Italian Opera. This release tackles the 18th century, and features favorites from Vivaldi, Salieri, and the great Neapolitan School. Specialists in the repertoire conduct these masterpieces, including Antonio Florio, and Giuliano Carella.

Gaetano Donizetti's L'Ange de Nisida was commissioned by the director of the Th��tre de la Renaissance in Paris. The libretto was entrusted to Gustave Va�z and Alphonse Royer, and the op�ra en quatre parties was completed in 1840. Unfortunately the theatre went bankrupt and the opera never reached the stage. Donizetti was aware that other venues would have rejected his work as it stood, for both repertoire and censorship reasons (the plot revolved around the King of Naples, Ferdinando d'Aragona, and his mistress). Consequently, he revised the score and incorporated a significant portion of it within his new one, La favorite. The autograph score of L'Ange was subsequently lost and it is only thanks to the painstaking research of musicologist Candida Mantica that it was brought to light again. She took on the huge challenge of classifying the roughly 470 randomly alternate pages of L'Ange de Nisida that had survived at the Biblioth�que Nationale de France in Paris; she re-established their original order and finally managed to reconstruct roughly 97 percent of Donizetti's music. The few gaps in the score were judged as irrelevant by both Mantica and Donizetti Opera, so that the opera was considered a complete work in itself, with no need for additions written by other composers. 180 years after it's composition, the opera was finally performed for the first time in it's original theatrical form in Donizetti's native Bergamo, at the construction site of the city theatre bearing his name, a most symbolic coincidence that added emotional value to a long-awaited event. The performance was hailed as a triumph by both the public and the critics and was awarded a special prize at the 39th Franco Abbiati Prize of Italian music critics.

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Gaetano Donizetti's L’Ange de Nisida was commissioned by the director of the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris. The libretto was entrusted to Gustave Vaëz and Alphonse Royer, and the opéra en quatre parties was completed in 1840. Unfortunately the theatre went bankrupt and the opera never reached the stage. Donizetti was aware that other venues would have rejected his work as it stood, for both repertoire and censorship reasons (the plot revolved around the King of Naples, Ferdinando d’Aragona, and his mistress). Consequently, he revised the score and incorporated a significant portion of it within his new one, La favorite. The autograph score of L’Ange was subsequently lost and it is only thanks to the painstaking research of musicologist Candida Mantica that it was brought to light again. She took on the huge challenge of classifying the roughly 470 randomly alternate pages of L’Ange de Nisida that had survived at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris; she re-established their original order and finally managed to reconstruct roughly 97 percent of Donizetti’s music. The few gaps in the score were judged as irrelevant by both Mantica and Donizetti Opera, so that the opera was considered a complete work in itself, with no need for additions written by other composers. 180 years after its composition, the opera was finally performed for the first time in its original theatrical form in Donizetti’s native Bergamo, at the construction site of the city theatre bearing his name, a most symbolic coincidence that added emotional value to a long-awaited event. The performance was hailed as a triumph by both the public and the critics and was awarded a special prize at the 39th Franco Abbiati Prize of Italian music critics.

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REVIEW:

The cameras of the filming and the detailed and careful preparation of conductor Tingaud and director Micheli provide viewers of the DVD, through excellent sound and vision, with a more complete visual and aural experience than might have been possible for the real-life audience. Cunningly and efficiently done, both staging and musical interpretation fit the score like a glove. Hugely recommended.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice, Jan 2021; DVD/Blu-ray of the Month)

Antonio Vandini was born around 1690 in Bologna, the city where the cello knew its first glories as a solo instrument. He held several assignments in Bergamo, Venice and later Padua, where he developed a friendship with Giovanni Tartini. His virtuosity was brought to fame by Charles Burney who defined him “the famous old Antonio Vandini on the violoncello who, the Italians say, plays and expresses a parlare, that is in such a manner as to make his instrument speak.” Vandini’s cello works are the apex of the instrument’s output of his time, for the persistent exploration of the high register, the frequent use of double stopping, arpeggios and chords even in unusual combinations, a variety of bowing techniques, and rapid passages. The works recorded on this release represent his complete output and are played by the specialist period ensemble L’ Arte dell’Arco, as usual on period instruments, using the original under-hand bow technique invented by Vandini himself. Cellist Francesco Galligioni declared “when one uses the underhand grip, the cello has a particular sound. It is very much 'inside the instrument', very present, but with a completely different articulation from what we are used to. I believe that those who perform early music have a responsibility to explore obsolete practices and return to the genuine sound of the period, a varied sound which has perhaps been lost today. I did not use a grip in imitation of the one used for the viola da gamba, but I wrapped the palm around the frog as Vandini seems to be doing in Ghezzi’s caricatures.”