In 1835 Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor made it's triumphant debut at the San Carlo in Naples. For it's Parisian appearance four years later as Lucie de Lammermoor, the composer went much further than merely Gallicising the heroine's first name, he subjected the opera to a condensation in which Lucie became the only woman in the entire cast. Donizetti's orchestration remains largely the same but the French influence is audible in new recitatives. This later version is no surrogate or mere abridgement, but, perhaps because of it's greater concision, is more brutal and emotional than the original.

Italian pianist Sergio Ciomei (b. 1965), founding member of the Tripla Concordia” ensemble and musical partner to soprano Cecilia Bartoli is an oft-recorded, well-regarded, much-awarded and busy concert artist. His Mozart duo recording with violinist Fabrizio Cipriani was anointed by Japanese magazine Ontomo Guide as one of the finest Mozart recordings of all time". His new Dynamic release features performances of works by the singular genius French composer Claude Debussy.

The brilliant oboist and Hector Berlioz contemporary Stanislas Verroust (1814-63), composed 12 Solos de Concert for oboe and piano between 1854 and the year of his death. Composed for use at the Paris Conservatoire where he was Professor of Oboe from late 1853 onwards, these world-premiere recordings of these rarely heard works feature oboist Enrico Calcagni and pianist Alberto Magagni.

Brazilian composer Ant�nio Carlos Gomes was among the many musicians who travelled to Italy to master the language and the rules of operatic works. He studied in Milan and succeeded in having a few operas staged at Italian venues, before returning to Brazil where he was hailed as the most famous living national composer. Gomes felt compelled to commit his work to the country's anti-slave cause, which was still legal practice then. Lo schiavo was therefore conceived as a politically engaged work. However, the issue was rather volatile and the composer had to change the contemporary time setting to a more distant one. In Brazil the opera was a triumph, but elsewhere it failed to gain popularity and soon fell into oblivion. This recording of the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari's production documents the opera's first performance in modern times and reveals Gomes' flamboyant richness of melodic creativity, his sound grasp of construction, and a technical mastery of the theatrical mechanisms that are always of the highest level. "The most popular title of the entire Brazilian repertoire. The most represented and, perhaps, the most loved one." (John Neschling, conductor)

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 Garc�a Guti�rrez, had a libretto by Cammarano, which was translated into French by �milien Pacini. Le Trouv�re 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 it's emotional strength by using a very essential d�cor, 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 Trouv�re 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.

Solo – Harmonica on Harmonica charts a journey from the Middle Ages to our own time and showcases the harmonica in all its versatility and variety. From jazz legends Chick Corea, Charlie Parker and Lester Young to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and from the sinful tango of Mato Rodriguez’s famous La Cumparcita to the sacred monody of O Virgo splendens – the repertoire and the performances display striking juxtapositions. Luca Littera is an acclaimed chromatic harmonica virtuoso. He performs here on a selection of instruments, multi-tracking each part to create the unique sound of an ensemble of harmonicas.

Gaetano Donizetti's comic opera L'aio nell'imbarazzo or A Tutor in a Jam! Was greeted with wild enthusiasm at it's Rome premiere in 1824 and became one of the composer's first great successes both in Italy and abroad. Modeled on operas by Rossini but already displaying the psychological depths of Donizetti's mature work, this is a narrative in which, shielded from female company, the overprotected sons of a strict Marquis are entrusted to their tutor, Don Gregorio. Of course, everything unravels into emotional chaos in the best opera buffa tradition, with it's universal themes of romance and social politics colorfully set in 2042.

After his Neapolitan training Gaspare Spontini settled in Paris for a few years, where he was nominated “compositeur particulier de la chambre” of Empress Josephine, Napoleon’s wife. It was indeed Napoleon who, in 1808, commissioned him the opera, Fernand Cortez, ou La conquete du Mexique, of which he attended the 28th November 1809 premiere. The strongly idealized figure of Cortez, presented as a brave, wise and merciful general, predestined to victory, was to be an image of Napoleon. His fight against Spanish “obscurantism” was Cortez’s fight against the cruelty, superstition and dark power intrigues of the Aztec sacerdotal class. Cortez frees the Mexicans from their “evil god”, and only the High Priest refuses his clemency. Like in a piece a sauvetage, at the last moment Montezuma’s niece, Amazily, who had offered her life in exchange of that of her beloved Cortez’s brother Alvar, is rescued. The Mexican chief Telasco promotes the cessation of hostilities: the marriage between Cortez and Amazily sanctions the peace between two peoples. In Spain, the French troops met a very different fate than Cortez’s men in the happy ending of Spontini’s opera and it has been suggested that the disastrous outcome of the Spanish campaign was responsible for the limited number of performances run by Fernand Cortez in Paris between the end of 1809 and January 1812. This production is a world premiere recording of the first modern times performance of the original 1809 version. It was recorded in October 2019, exactly 500 years after Cortez’s first arrival in Mexico. Director Cecilia Ligorio drew inspiration from a murales painted by Orozco inside a building in Mexico city, where Cortez is depicted in a shiny, silver armor and Malinche – the historical figure who inspired the character of Amazily – wears no clothes and is painted with the color of Earth.

Dirindina by Scarlatti and Pimpinone by Albinoni are two “intermezzi buffi”, which were placed in the intervals of the opera seria. Pimpinone, an intermezzo in three parts, was performed for the first time in Venice in 1708 inside the opera seria Astarto by Albinoni himself. The work was immediately a great success and was repeated many times in Italy and abroad. Dirindina was composed seven years later in 1715, by Domenico Scarlatti, son of Alessandro. Both intermezzi were filmed in high definition with 16:9 aspect ratio and stereo PCM sound.

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.

This new release is homage to a great Italian soprano, Daniela Dessì, who passed away last year, just one year after these performances at Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa. This is a superb interpretation of this signature role of her long artistic career. Daniela Dessì was considered one of the world’s leading sopranos and a reference point for the Verdi, Puccini and Verismo repertoire. Thanks to the beauty of her voice, a strong technique and an intense dramatic talent, she was able to sing from Monteverdi to Prokofiev, performing in more than seventy different operas. This versatility has significantly been underlined when, in 2011, she was awarded with the Prize Belcanto “Celletti”, recognized as an “absolute soprano”. In this production of Umberto Giordano’s Fedora, she is joined by an all-star cast, including Fabio Armiliato and Daria Kovalenko.

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.

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.”

This opera was recorded at the 2019 Festival Verdi in a new coproduction from Teatro Regio di Parma and Teatro Comunale di Bologna. I due Foscari, a tragedia lirica in three acts based on a work by Lord Byron, was premiered in 1844. It proved quite popular for the next fifty years, thanks in part to its brevity and ease of staging; in fact it’s Verdi's shortest opera. The composer also revised the libretto by the rather inexperienced Francesco Maria Piave. From the musical point of view, this work is characterized by extreme simplicity of form and by the use of distinctive themes for each character, reminiscent of the Leitmotiv technique. The simple plot describes the mortal hatred between a Venetian gentleman, Jacopo Loredano, and two members of the Foscari family - the Doge Francesco and his son Jacopo - whom Loredano holds responsible for the deaths of his father and uncle. The effectiveness of this recording stems from both the cast of singers (notably Vladimir Stoyanov in the role of Francesco Foscari) and the orchestra under Paolo Arrivabeni's direction Paolo Arrivabeni is a highly experienced, international conductor who specializes in this repertoire.

VERDI: Lombardi alla prima crociata (I)