After the first two "Bellissimo" recordings dedicated to Handel, Vivaldi and Italian opera arias, the new CD features some of the rarest and beautiful French opera arias. As performed by Montserrat Caballe, Desire Rancatore, Jeon-Won Lee, Warren Mok, Luca Grassi, Guylaine Girard and more!

Francesco Cavalli (1602-76) is a central figure in the history of 17th c. Italian music. He showed his talent as an opera as well as a sacred music composer, though the number of his known, extant sacred works is relatively small for the times in which he lived. His 1675 collection of Vesperi a 8 voci, dedicated to the Doge Niccol� Sagredo, consisting of three different Vespers, is here offered in world premiere recordings by the "La Pifarescha" Instrumental Ensemble, the "Claudio Monteverdi" Choir of Crema, led by Bruno Gini, it's founder and conductor, and organist Alberto Dossena.

La secchia rapita (The Stolen Bucket), music by Jules Burgmein- alias Giulio Ricord- and libretto by Renato Simoni, was the second of three operettas composed by Ricordi, and has now been revived in a modern edition that faithfully follows the autograph manuscript. The libretto, which has truly hilarious situations, is taken from the famous mock-heroic poem by Tassoni. The opera hinges on historical facts which happened during the war between the cities of Bologna and Modena, at the time of Emperor Frederick II. During the battle of Zappolino, fought on November 15, 1325, the Bologna forces, though numerically superior to those of Modena, suffered a major defeat; before returning to Modena, as a gesture of scorn, the Modenese stole a wooden bucket from a well; the bucket still exists and is now kept at Modena's town hall. Performed by the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi and the Soloists and Chorus of the Civica Scuola di Musica along with several world-renowned soloists, this is a world premiere recording.

ROSSINI: Italiana in Algeri (L') (The Italian Girl in Algier

ERNANI

VIVALDI: Sonatas for Wind Instruments

Also available on Blu-ray

Florence, May 2nd, 1589: on occasion of the wedding of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I and Christina of Lorraine an impressive celebration apparatus was put up to display the magnificence of the Medici household. Behind this official event lay an ambitious project which involved an incredible team of the most important poets and musicians of the time, such as Cristofano Malvezzi, Luca Marenzio, Giulio Caccini, Jacopo Peri, Emilio De’ Cavalieri as well as Count Giovanni De’ Bardi, who was engaged to compose the Intermedi for Girolamo Bargagli’s play La Pellegrina. Renaissance intermediums were sumptuous musical interludes inserted between the acts of a theatrical show on allegorical and moral themes with eclectic references to classical mythology. They are considered as the forerunners of musical opera. The spectacular show, which was performed using a complex stage machinery set up in Palazzo Pitti’s Boboli gardens, was an immediate success, so much that the intermediums were performed in the days to follow during another two plays. The Six intermediums in La Pellegrina provide for choral madrigals, double and triple choirs, solo accompanied numbers and instrumental pieces, inserted into the impressive and sumptuous staging by Bernando Buontalenti. 430 years later, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in collaboration with Galleria Degli Uffizi produces the first staging in modern times of the Intermedi della Pellegrina through an itinerant show in Palazzo Pitti’s Boboli Gardens. Stage director Valentino Villa’s approach was to “attempt at an ironic historical reconstruction, [where] imageries blur together, classical mythology is grafted onto contemporary iconography”. Conductor Federico Maria Sardelli leads Modo Antiquo and Chorus Master Alberto Allegrezza is at the head of Coro Ricercare Ensemble and Compagnia Dramatodìa.

TELEMANN: Double Concertos / (Overture) Suite in A minor

Elmira Veda, Annamaria Popescu, Sally Wilson, Carlo Barricelli, Luca Salsi, Emanuele Giannino, Manrico Signorini, and Giovanni Guagliardo star in this Puccini opera with Laurence Gilgore conducting the Orchestra e Coro del Festival Puccini.

PAGANINI: Ghiribizzi (Complete)

These two masterpieces presented on DVD were filmed in the breathtakingly beautiful Eremitani Church in Padua. Galuppi’s “Mass for the delivery of slaves” shows his talent as a composer with its contrapuntal mastery. This is its world premiere recording. Mozart’s Mass in C major was composed in 1779, fourteen years after Galuppi’s. Claudio Scimone conducts I Solisti Veneti for this recording. They are joined by the Lege Artis Choir of St. Petersburg, conducted by Boris Abalyan.

Salvatore Accardo is considered to be one of today’s most celebrated violinists. Dynamic is happy to feature a series of DVDs proposing the master classes held by Salvatore Accardo in Cremona (the world capital of Violin Making) at the famous Walter Stauffer Musicology Centre in 2011.

Directed by Matteo Ricchetti, Mario Corradi. Starring Giorgio Surian, Antonia Cifrone, Massimo Laguardia. "It may not contain well-known singers but it is all a performance of Tosca should be. The sets are imaginatively inventive, demonstrating how to make much from little: Mario Corradi's production is theatrically powerful, the singing first class. Antonia Cifarone, who can act as well as sing, is a mesmerizing Tosca... No matter how many Toscas you may already own, this is one well worth adding to your collection" -- Opera Now Sept/Oct 2009

While these pieces have been recorded and performed many many times, what makes this recording unique is the use of the tangent piano (Tangentenflugel.) The tangent piano was quite popular throughout Germany during the late 18th century. The instrument has strings which are struck by wooden slips that don’t have any soft coverings. The strikers move perpendicularly to the strings like harpsichord jacks. The pieces on this release were published between 1779 and 1787 as part of six books of Sonatas, Fantasias, and Rondos titled Fur Kenner ind Liebhaber (for masters and amateurs).

After the admission to Endenich (Bonn), where he was hospitalized following a suicide attempt in February 1854, with his mind already seriously disturbed, Schumann composed, in the spring of 1855, piano accompaniments to Paganini’s 24 Capricci; they were found by his wife Clara among his papers only after his death, and published for the first time in 1930. Rarely recorded and performed, the 24 Caprices with Schumann's piano accompaniment are a moving musical document with a high symbolic value. It's the closing of a circle. Paganini, with his unparalleled virtuosity, had marked the beginning of Schumann’s professional career as a musician and now, in that gloomy spring of 1855, it also marked its ending.